Turkey: Community Interpreter Training During the COVID-19 Period in Turkey—Practices and Education

Abstract

Community interpreting in Turkey came to the fore after the devastating earthquakes in 1999, with the arrival of foreign search and rescue teams. The influx of Syrians fleeing war in 2011 further gave rise to interpreter training and service provision. Starting in extramural settings, community interpreter training (CIT) courses were gradually introduced at universities. During the COVID-19 pandemic, CIT was severely disrupted as it had been delivered solely in face-to-face mode. This chapter starts by providing the context about the pandemic and the steps taken by the Turkish government in response. A survey, then, is reported, which was conducted to investigate the Emergency Remote Teaching for CIT implemented by universities and the experiences of teaching staff. The results identified the challenges for teaching CIT remotely, as well as the new horizons opened as a result of the use of digital tools and innovative educational activities. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023.