Where do translation students go? A study of the employment and mobility of Master graduates

Faced with technological disruption, the employability of translation graduates demands careful analysis. Interpretations of major previous surveys suggest that only about one third of graduates find employment as translators or interpreters, although about half of them tend to find employment using multilingual communication skills in various capacities. This reality check has major implications for any attempt to adjust training programmes to the demands of translation companies: it becomes very important to assess the wider range of jobs and the transferable skills that they require. A survey of graduates from the Chinese-English Master of Translation at the University of Melbourne offers detailed insight into the wider range of employment but differs from previous surveys in two respects. First, the international mobility of students means that multiple national differences have to be taken into account. And second, the 20% of graduates that undertook further study after the Master justifies part of the training being to meet the criteria of academic institutions. These two aspects may be generalisable to other training programmes and should help revise the way curricula are conceptualised.