Emotions of liaison interpreters and the causes: Evidence from China

Research on emotions has revealed the considerable impact of affective states on professional trajectories. This study investigates the emotions of liaison interpreters during work and the underlying causes by examining 181 posts from RedNote, one of the most popular social media platforms in China via content analysis. Results suggest that positive emotions outnumber negative ones and interpreters are subject to a mixture of both of them. Additionally, this study classifies the causes of emotions into four broad categories of interpreter-related ones, client-related ones, content-related ones and others, with 30 components for positive emotions and 28 components for negative emotions, among which client-related reasons are the principal stimuli for positive emotions while interpreter-related factors contribute most to negative ones. It is expected that this study may enable liaison interpreters to anticipate and respond to the emotional demands of their roles, and inform the inclusion of emotional preparation strategies in training modules.