Assessing Translation Practices of Non-professional Translators in a Multilingual Institutional Setting

This contribution presents part of a project on the current translation practices of non-professional translators working in a multilingual public institution and their possible improvements. A mixed method approach was applied to provide a complete overview of the translation practices. The chapter describes the results of a preliminary study, based on semi-structured interviews, which shows that the employees of the Province of Bolzano (South Tyrol, Italy) act as non-professional translators. An in-depth web-based survey was designed for the entire staff of the central administration (around 3,000 employees), drawing on previous surveys related to institutional translation. The challenges of adapting both the content and the wording of the questions to non-professional translators are then illustrated before discussing the results of the survey with regard to non-professional translation.