Chinese MA theses: The people behind the papers

There is no denying that the growth of interpreting as an industry in China has been an explosive one. The increasing need for economic and political cooperation has spurred the demand for interpreters to bridge the linguistic and cultural divides that exist between China and the West. With the creation of master’s and bachelor’s degrees in Interpreting and Translation all over China, students from various universities have produced a wealth of literature in Interpreting Studies. However, owing to the lack of exchange of information and cooperation on the part of universities, to date there have been only a few systematic studies of MA theses, which represent years of work by aspiring interpreters. Using the latest statistical techniques and an exhaustive corpus, this paper is an objective examination of the differences and similarities between the choices of topic and theoretical inspirations of MA students at various Chinese universities, and of how their choices of topic and advisor affect their likelihood of pursuing careers in academia. This research indicates that Chinese Interpreting Studies cannot be considered a homogenous entity, even though universities tend to be influenced in similar ways and coincide on the most important research themes. This paper discusses the increasingly non-academic career paths of MA-level interpreting students.