During their educational program, interpreting students develop their characteristics as interpreters for deafblind individuals while going through a process of self-transformation. Students process of becoming professionals is evident in how they develop their professional identity.
Professionals are commonly expected to strive for good practice that achieves a desired goal in accordance with certain procedures and standards, and the journey to become a professional can start as early as when studying at an educational institution. This presentation is based on a study that focused on how interpreting students develop their professional identity as interpreters for deafblind individuals. Investigating how students reflect upon their process of becoming professionals in focus groups at different stages during their interpreting program, made it possible to study their professional development and their process of self-formation, in this case, how they constructed their professional identity. The findings from the study shows that the students drew upon intersecting and antagonistic discourses in the construction of their professional identity. At the beginning of their education, and before meeting deafblind people, students emphasized discourses that were based on their previous experiences. Later on in their study, students also drew on the discourses that were made available to them in class and in the field of practice. At this point they demonstrated discourses related to the professional interpreter, exemplifying key aspects of their self-transformation process.
