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Professionalization of Interpreting and Interpreter Training:

A Case Study of the Chinese Nationalist Government’s Training and Regulation of Military Interpreters during the War of Resistance (1937-1945)

This paper revisits the history of the Chinese Nationalist government’s training of military interpreters in the Second Sino-Japanese War (1931-45). On the basis of sources from archive files, memoirs and interviews, it investigates the Nationalist government’s recruitment, training and regulation of these interpreters. It challenges the established definition of interpreting profession and argues that power relationships and training played a vital role in the professionalization and normalization of interpreters’ behaviour. It emphasizes that there are more complicated factors involved in the formulation of interpreter professional ethics, and a more critical approach to the understanding of the interpreter profession is needed.