Defining Community Interpreting socially: Is there a field at all?

Since Translation Studies started drawing on Bourdieu’s sociology of culture in an attempt to get away from the translated text as focal point, there have been arguments both for and against the idea of community interpreting as a social field in Bourdieu’s sense. However, it is not yet clear whether community interpreting is a social field of any sort or a zone of uncertainty. The influence that other agents who also participate in the communicative process have on interpreters as social agents and their habitus have often been considered the major problem for this field. Interpreters’ “ill-defined” habitus have often been blamed without considering that there may be other factors. By examining the effect of the use of non-professional interpreters such as volunteer interpreters and family or friends acting as interpreters, this paper tries to explain why the community interpreting field is still undervalued and why the interpreter’s habitus is considered “ill-defined”