Ethics in translator and interpreter education

This chapter discusses ethical issues in translator and interpreter education. It focuses on the main pedagogical aspects of teaching ethics within the context of both academic and professional training institutions, that is of those social structures which play perhaps the most significant role in shaping, conditioning and disseminating conceptions on the ethical behaviour of professional translators and interpreters. More specifically, it discusses the role such institutions have played across time, and, more importantly, some central questions that arise with regard to what theories or approaches to ethics future professionals should be taught, how the "ethical" is to be critically examined in terms of topics and methods, and which theoretical and methodological tools are best suited for guiding "ethical" decision-making. In this framework, this chapter reviews notions such as agency, ethical reasoning, reflexivity and responsibility, examines text-typological questions (genre) as well as questions of socio-political and cultural context, and provides a rudimentary classification of ethical issues, which is deemed to be quite important for shaping ethical behaviour.