An Empirical Survey of Employment and MTI Competence in China

Abstract

[EN] The Master of Translation and Interpreting (MTI) of China is controversial as less than 10% of graduates take translation as their job, in contrast to over 89% employment rate. The striking disparity poses a question: why MTI graduates are popular with the employment market? This research, uses questionnaires and comparative empirical research to explore the impact of employment requirement on MTI competence from the perspective of ‘professionalism’. We find that that a cluster of technology applications have entered the employment requirement and becomes integral to the MTI competence, framing a new type of professionalism that focus on information acquisition and language conversion. Employment recruitment also put emphasis on sector practice. The MTI education may improve the employment rate via these enhancement measures relating to professionalism.