Although several studies have examined translators' and interpreters' experience in various contexts, relatively few studies have attempted to explore the freelance simultaneous conference interpreters' experience in the Iranian context. In this country, the increasing number of international conferences is creating a demand for quality conference interpretation. In this study, we used qualitative analysis of narratives to delve into the experience of eight freelance simultaneous conference interpreters in Iran to realize their perception of their job and the impact of contextual factors on the quality of their experience as well as that of interpretation. Three themes, namely job-finding experience, on-the-job-experience, and the locus of the problems were extracted from eleven sub-themes. Overall, the narratives characterized interpreting in Iran as a non-professional occupation that amounts to an ad hoc event, language brokering, and ability-oriented task. The findings can raise some critical considerations for stakeholders involved in the field of translation and interpretation studies as well as practitioners.
Chapter 18. Language brokering
