Motivation is a decisive factor of human behaviour and professional performance. The motivational disposition of translators, interpreters, and students remains a relatively unexplored area. Motivational research carried out in the field of translation and interpreting has mainly focused on volunteer translation and interpreting. The present paper describes an empirical study whose aim was to gain valuable insight into what motivates 50 MA graduates at Eötvös Loránd University of Sciences, Budapest, at the time of their graduation. For this purpose, we devised a three-step mixed methods survey which included the development of a questionnaire. Our findings seem to indicate that intrinsic motivation, ideal self, mastery and significant others are the strongest motivators. Correlational and regression analyses showed that intrinsic motivation contributed effectively towards motivated learning behaviour; while interestingly, altruism appeared to contribute negatively to it.