Public service interpreting and translation: training and useful skills for the labour market

Public service interpreting and translation (PSIT) is a subfield of translation and interpreting. Still, it could stand independently due to the variety of subfields it encompasses and, thus, the job possibilities. Despite being considered an under-professionalised field in Spain, hundreds of graduates are interested and trained in PSIT, hoping to enhance their employment chances. However, this field relies on very few studies that focus specifically on employment, the skills that can make students employable or the graduates' perspectives regarding the usefulness of the education and training received. This paper has three objectives: to explore the most useful skills for the PSIT labour market in Spain from the perspective of the graduates of a specific programme based on a selection of skills, to explore the potential relationship between internships and labour market insertion and to determine differences by language pairs. Results are obtained based on data gathered through a questionnaire sent to this specific training programme graduates. They show essential differences between the perception of the different language pairs in which the programme is taught, which could be correlated with other labour market needs and job opportunities. In turn, these differences also affect the usefulness of the skills that the students develop in the programme. Moreover, despite the variety of the subfields involved in the PSIT field, there is a specific relation between internships and certain jobs, especially for part of the Arabic, Chinese, French, and Russian groups graduates.