%0 Journal Article %A Gentile, Paola %T The professional status of public service interpreters. A comparison with nurses %D 2016 %@ 2341-3778 %U http://hdl.handle.net/10017/29642 %X This paper aims to investigate the relationship between the professional status of public service interpreters and that which sociologists (Etzioni, 1969; Abbott and Meerabeau, 1998) have attributed to semi-professionals such as nurses. Drawing on the sociological theories of professionalization (Albrecht et al., 2003) and on certain hypotheses suggested by interpreting scholars (Sela-Sheffy and Shlesinger, 2011), the concept of semi-profession will be defined and discussed. Subsequently, the three sociological features shared by the two professions – the lack of specialised training, increasing feminisation and the caring nature of their tasks – will be analysed from a sociological perspective. To test these assumptions, the results of a global questionnaire on the status of public service interpreters – which gathered 888 responses – will be illustrated and commented. The data showed a close relationship between the two professions, which appears to confirm the hypothesis that nurses and public service interpreters are still following the path towards full professionalization. %K Public service interpreters %K Nurses %K Status %K Sociology %K Survey %K Intérpretes de SSPP %K Enfermeras %K Estatus %K Sociología %K Encuesta %K Filología %K Philology %~ Biblioteca Universidad de Alcala