통번역대학원 통역 전공 신입생의 스트레스와 갈등에 관한 내러티브 탐구

Abstract

There is scant research on job-related stress experienced by translators as practitioners. Under the premise that research on translator’s occupational stress and ensuing internal conflict need to be viewed from a temporal, spatial and cultural context, the current paper adopts the qualitative research method of narrative inquiry to explore job stressors and psychological turmoil faced by a novice translator working for a foreign consulting firm based in Korea. To this end, data were collected through a series of unstructured interviews and conversations with the research participant. Data analyzed include interview transcripts, work-related documents and the participant’s self-portrait. Findings highlight five major themes related to the participant’s job stress: struggles of adapting to and performing PowerPoint slide translations as the company’s first-ever professional translator, stress caused by having to translate a wide range of texts with varied topics, styles and uses under extreme time pressure, frustration and loneliness over lack of face-to-face contact with consultants, pressure from official corporate reviews of translation quality, conflicts and stress arising from creation of a translator team and newly assigned responsibilities as the team leader, and internal conflict stemming from emotions of solitude, emptiness and uneasiness felt in the everyday work life as a translator.