Higher sem. TÖI. Minna Ruokonen & Elin Svahn: Translators’ job satisfaction

Seminar

Date: Thursday 24 October 2024

Time: 13.00 – 14.30

Location: Room D600 and on Zoom

Higher seminar in Translation Studies. Translators’ job satisfaction: where do we stand and what next. Minna Ruokonen, PhD, University of Western Finland and Elin Svahn, PhD, Institute for Interpreting and Translation Studies (TÖI).

To the Zoominar

In this presentation, we aim to provide a comprehensive and critical overview of translators’ job satisfaction as a concept and object of study. The presentation builds on an exploratory overview of research articles (Ruokonen & Svahn 2024) complemented with more recent research articles and monographs. Firstly, we relate job satisfaction, or positive feelings and evaluations about one’s work (e.g., Judge et al. 2017), to concepts such as happiness at work (see, e.g., Bednárová-Gibová & Madoš 2019), quality of working life (Sakamoto et al. 2024) and professional sustainability (e.g., Lambert & Walker 2024), discussing the relevance of these concepts for Translation Studies as a discipline and for the translation industry. Next, we provide an overview of theoretical frameworks and research methods applied in studying job satisfaction within Translation Studies, drawing attention to trends and research gaps. Thirdly, we will highlight some major empirical findings concerning factors connected to translators’ job satisfaction, again suggesting avenues for further research.

References

Bednárová-Gibová, Klaudia & Branislav Madoš 2019. Investigating Translators’ Work-Related Happiness: Slovak Sworn and Institutional Translators as a Case in Point. Meta 64 (1): 215–241.

Judge, Timothy A., Howard M. Weiss, John D. Kammeyer-Mueller, and Charles L. Hulin. 2017. Job Attitudes, Job Satisfaction, and Job Affect: A Century of Continuity and of Change. Journal of Applied Psychology 102 (3): 356–374.
doi.org/10.1037/apl0000181

Lambert, Joseph & Callum Walker 2024. Thriving or Surviving: Motivation, Satisfaction, and Existential Sustainability in the Translation Profession. Mikael 17:1, 89–104.
doi.org/10.61200/mikael.136209

Ruokonen, Minna & Elin Svahn 2024. What do we know about translators’ job satisfaction? An exploratory overview of research results. Translation Spaces 13:1, 7–31.
doi.org/10.1075/ts.23019.ruo

Sakamoto, Akiko, Darren van Laar, Joss Moorkens & Félix do Carmo 2024. Measuring translators’ quality of working life and their career motivation: Conceptual and methodological aspects. Translation Spaces 13:1, 54–77.
doi.org/10.1075/ts.23026.sak

Minna Ruokonen

Elin Svahn