The principal aim of the ReTrans project was to raise awareness to the challenges of interpreting in a humanitarian and transborder migration context among students and teachers of higher education interpreter training facilities and to contribute to the diversification of didactic approaches and materials by developing a range of innovative educational resources. The project also sought to establish an exchange among higher education institutions and stakeholders in the field to allow them to jointly reflect on the challenges of interpreting in a transborder humanitarian context. The project partners sought to give a voice not only to the different stakeholders in the field (interpreters, institutional representatives) but also to those most in need of support (migrants and refugees). Their individual experience helped us to shed light on the most prominent issues pertaining to interpreting in humanitarian contexts and to develop a range of openly available and easily useable training materials. The training materials complement existing resources and can be utilised in a higher education context but also in other training environments. Students and teachers were involved throughout this process.
Interpreter training in European higher education has historically focused on conference interpreting, but in the past two decades, there has been a shift towards training interpreters for public service contexts, known as public service interpreting (PSI). This includes interpreting in legal, medical, therapeutic, and social service settings. However, PSI professionalization in many European countries lags behind. Even where training is available, it is often offered outside higher education institutions. Public service institutions and users of interpreters frequently rely on untrained individuals. The recent surge in mass migration has exacerbated the need for overcoming language barriers in humanitarian and social service settings along European migration routes. Despite research shedding light on challenges and ethical dilemmas in high-stakes PSI encounters, the specific challenges of interpreting in humanitarian and migration contexts are often overlooked in higher education classrooms. This gap is evident in countries that serve as reception and host countries. As a result, students and graduates of higher education interpreter training institutions may be ill-prepared for the challenges they encounter in PSI.