Bridging the gap between translation and interpreting students and freelance professionals. The mentoring programme of the Professional Association of Translators and Interpreters of Catalonia

This paper presents the mentoring programme carried out by Professional Association of Translators and Interpreters of Catalonia (APTIC) based on a multiple-mentoring model. It was offered during the academic years 2015/2016 and 2016/2017 in collaboration with the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the Universitat de Vic and will continue in the future. The goal of APTIC’s mentoring programme is to let students experience the translators’ and interpreters’ profession from the point of view of freelancers. Each student spends one working day with each mentor. During this day, the student carries out the tasks that the mentor assigns him/her. These tasks are related to translation, interpreting, and proofreading, rates, work ethics, project and terminology management, ergonomics, marketing, and CAT tools, among others. In this paper, the following aspects will be discussed: 1) the benefits of mentoring programmes in general and particularly for future translation and interpreting freelance professionals; 2) the functioning, the contents and the assessment procedure of APTIC’s programme; 3) the results of the pilot test and of the programme offered in the academic year 2016/2017. Our findings show that, at the end of the programme, the students feel prepared to face some of the challenges of the labour market as freelancers.