Abstract
Non-professional translation is an umbrella term that covers translation instances carried out by people with control of the language but without formal education in translation. One kind of non-professional translator is the one working in public services. In the last 30 years, the role of the community interpreter dealing with migration communities’ languages has received great scientific attention. Thanks to that, formal education and professionalization paths have been put in place and proved successfully in several countries. The non-professional translator dealing with “old” minority languages (i.e. historic minorities) in public institutions has not yet been documented in detail, instead. In this chapter, we aim to reflect on the professionalization prospects of the latter. We start presenting the results of a comparison between translation policies in three European regions with historic minority language’s communities: South Tyrol, Catalonia and the Basque Country. We propose a series of corrective measures for institutions where non-professional translation is the dominant translation strategy, such as South Tyrol’s, though excluding translators’ professionalization. Finally, we discuss why these measures might be an adequate response to a form of non-professional translation.