Undoubtedly, individuals contribute to the construction of social identities and society in turn is influential in forming personal identities. This impact also holds true of translators and can be particularly substantiated within Bourdieu’s sociology and strengthened by Actor-network Theory (ANT). Bourdieu’s habitus, for instance, can associate the notions of identity and agency, which have obvious bearings on translator training. Further, ANT’s network-based conception of social phenomena defines interrelationships and power distribution, hence identity and agency, differently than Bourdieu’s and it can present a rather novel picture of the training setting through its key notions, despite the fact that the idea of constructivism in this theory has already informed translation pedagogy. Looking at the notion of trainee translators’ identities from a sociological perspective, the present study attempts to compare pertinent parameters from Bourdieu’s sociology and ANT to see their correspondence with a West-East distinction. Then, to validate our theoretical discussions regarding the social differences interpretable through sociological insight, and to illuminate how trainee translators’ personal, social, and professional identities are interrelated and how these identities are probably influenced by and influencing translation teaching practices, we carry out a comparative survey of Iranian and Italian students, the results of which indicate that the Iranian students tend to have a more socially-oriented identity, while Italians show a stronger personally-oriented identity. Moreover, with respect to their professional identity, the Italian students’ mean identity score was relatively higher and the microanalysis of three age/gender groups revealed, except for one age group of Italian students, that professional identity correlated positively with personal and social identities of both groups of students. All in all, the findings suggest that it could be fruitful t
