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First off, what is a PhD? Most people think PhDs are about tiny theoretical details. They can be but in interpreting, they are often about practical skills: how we interpret, how organisations use interpreting, how interpreters make decisions, *quality*, training, etc.
There are no exact figures that I know of but the overwhelming majority of researchers in interpreting are either current interpreters or those with previous professional practice, often considerable. This is why the vast majority of interpreting research is practice-oriented.
From research, we have gained insights into improving training, ergonomics, a better understanding of clients, the challenges of remote interpreting and some ideas for dealing with them, insights into ethics, and more besides.
Yet the #1nt professions don't always see these improvements or know where they came from. Even more, not all developments in research get accepted. Some examples.
In EVERY interpreting context, from court to conference, we have found a huge difference between what interpreters say they do and what they actually do and another one between what clients say when we talk to them using *our* terms and what we find out when we use theirs.
Ebru Diriker's PhD thesis, which turned into a book, Seyda Eraslan's PhD thesis, @tulkur's PhD work, and @terptraining's PhD all post huge important questions for #conf1nt but those questions haven't always been taken up by the profession. Far from it.
The problem isn't that PhDs don't create important knowledge for the #1nt profession or that research is disconnected from practice; it's that research is fundamentally challenging many core certainties (impartiality, the conduit model, ethics, what "our job" is) and this is hard
There are two big challenges: 1) We need sustainable, reliable ways to get #1nt research noticed and acknowledged by professionals. 2) We need ground rules for what to do when research shakes what we thought were the foundations.
Since this is my business account and not my research account, I'll end with this: the future of human #1nt depends on partnership between researchers, interpreters, #eventprofs and trainers. Get that right and we're golden.
