A Study On Student Interpreters' Capital And Habitus From Bourdieu's Sociological Perspective

This paper from sociological perspective,adopts Bourdieu's "capital" and "habitus"theory,and refers to Bourdieu's definition and categorization of "capital" and "habitus",conducts an empirical survey on 20 MA students majoring in Interpreting Studies and 42 MTI students in Interpreting,aiming to explore the types and characteristics of capital and habitus of student interpreters,the similarities and differences between the two groups of subjects.This research mainly uses the empirical research method including questionnaire survey and personal interviews to collect data and analyze data from three aspects,the personal information,capital,and habitus.Based on the result of survey on student interpreters' capital,it is found that both MTI students and MA students possess certain amount of cultural capital which provides the prerequisite for their accessing to translation filed competition while their social capital and symbolic capital are largely insufficient,thus the whole capital structure is imbalanced and flawed and the capital types are not diversified enough;MTI students hold more cultural capital than MA students.Among the three types of cultural capital,MTI students hold more embodied capital and institutional capital while both of the two groups lack objectified capital such as translation works and academic achievements etc.;Both MA and MTI students have fair well self-evaluation on their language competence,interpreting skills and cross-cultural communication ability while neither MA or MTI students are good at using translation tools like Trados;More MTI students acquired professional certificates in translation and interpreting;As for social capital and symbolic capital,there is no obvious difference that social capital and symbolic capital the two groups have in the same way are insufficient;Specifically,in terms of social capital,MTI students outweigh MA students in better association with alumni in translation field while more MA students are members of college translation or interpreting clubs;Neither MA or MTI students have favorable social connections with translation companies,publishing houses or foreign-invested enterprises and government foreign affairs departments;Among MA and MTI students,almost no subject has earned high reputation and certain social influence in translation field,which reflects their defects in lack of symbolic capital;On the whole,MTI students have an edge over MA students in translation field in terms of capital but for two groups of student interpreters,problems still exist in following aspects such as imbalanced structure,undiversified capital type,and a lack of conditions for capital conversion.The survey on student interpreters' habitus reveals that there is no apparent difference in professional norm awareness,awareness of customer education and the employment of interpreting strategies between the two groups.Both MA and MTI students show a positive customer education awareness,and professional norm awareness such as neutrality and confidentiality and proper employment of interpreting strategies such as self-monitoring,compensation and repair strategy;But distinct difference exists in interpreting preference between MA and MTI students in S university.Specifically,compared with MTI students,MA students have more obvious preference in interpreting modes,contents and directionality.MA students have obvious preference in interpreting modes in particular and they prefer English to Chinese interpreting task.MTI students have certain preference in contents and modes while have no obvious preference in directionality;And the habitus of MTI students is more stable and presents collective features while individual difference is more obvious in MA students;Moreover,the comparison of interpreting scale indicates that MTI students ranks higher in each level of the scale than MA students.This study based on the sociological theoretical framework of Bourdieu and from multiple interdisciplinary perspective,adopts research methods of social translation studies to break through the limitations of its own disciplinary vision,which not only helps us broaden the perspective of interpreting studies,but also facilitates the integration of interpretation studies and translation studies.The results of this research are conducive to revealing the roles and behaviors of interpreter learners and practitioners,namely,student interpreters,improving student interpreters' field competitiveness and provide some references for field-oriented interpreter training.