On April 3, the 100th anniversary of the birth of Prof. İhsan Doğramacı, the Translation Unit of the Bilkent International House student club held a special event. At the suggestion of the founding chair of the Department of Translation and Interpretation, Prof. Tanju İnal, and under the guidance of Asst. Prof. Şirin Okyayuz and instructor Burçak Fakıoğlu, the unit organized a small internal “Retour au Foyer” (Homecoming) event to commemorate Prof. Doğramacı, to which successful graduates from various sectors in the field of translation and interpretation (T&I) were invited in order to share their experiences with students.
According to the statistics kept by the TRIN Department, Bilkent T&I graduates practice their profession in many different settings: as staff translators and interpreters for private and public sector entities including government offices, ministries, municipalities, embassies and T&I firms; and as freelance translators and interpreters, working either from home offices or commercial office space. Bilkent graduates may be found in a wide array of positions: some are online translators for multilingual service providers worldwide, while others are audiovisual translators of games, films and television series. Still others are technical translators, literary translators, interpreters, and language and communication experts/negotiators for private firms.
The graduates attending the homecoming, who represented a number of these job sectors, were: Serkan Daşar, the co-owner of NOVA Translation & Interpreting Services, an Ankara-based company with an excellent track record; Anıl Uzunboy, the head translator for the Gaziantep Metropolitan Municipality; Sevgi Tuncer, a freelance translator specializing in technical translation who works for major translation service providers in İstanbul; Ebru Gevher Çevikoğlu, an EU projects staff translator and interpreter with experience in project T&I in sectors such as agriculture and health care; and Celâl Demirel, a literary translator with more than a dozen published works, several in the genres of children’s books and adult crime fiction.
A number of important issues were discussed during the event, at which students had the opportunity to ask questions. Graduates expressed pride in Bilkent’s prominent presence in the T&I market and gave many examples of Bilkent graduates’ success in being hired and attaining key positions in the field. They urged students to make the best possible use of the opportunities provided by the university, including exchange programs such as Erasmus, internships during their course of study and interaction with mentors to gain an entrée into the market. They also noted the usefulness of the existing Bilkent network in the T&I sector for learning about new opportunities.