By Fardous Bahbouh, Researcher & Consultant on Labour Rights, Public Policy, and the Political Economy of the Translation Industry

In today’s fast-changing labour market, translators and interpreters are increasingly facing precarious working conditions and intensifying insecurities. The Precariat (2021) is an excellent book by economist Guy Standing that captures the lived realities of workers who experience unstable employment, fluctuating incomes, and weakened labour protections. Understanding this concept is essential for anyone in the language services sector navigating insecurity, outsourcing, and new work models, as well as students, teachers, and researchers in translation and interpreting studies.

Understanding the Precariat

Standing identifies the “precariat” as a new social class emerging under neoliberal capitalism: people living without security, stability, or even curtailed rights. They often have to cope with fragmented employment, irregular pay, and weak bargaining power. The main concern about the self-employed model is that, while ostensibly offering autonomy, it often functions in practice as a form of dependence. Standing raises concerns about this dependency, noting that it often disguises subordinate labour relations and effectively absolves employers of the obligations associated with direct employment. He refers to such workers as “dependent contractors” (2021, p.16). In these contexts, workers bear the risks of fluctuating demand, lack of employment benefits, and unpaid time, without genuine control over work allocation or the ability to negotiate rates of pay.

Sound familiar? For translators and interpreters, this is almost our default condition: short-term assignments, outsourcing, low and variable pay, monopolistic agencies and little recognition for our expertise or professional risk. Many translators and interpreters can relate to Standing’s description of “precarious existence” as they grapple with unpredictable workloads, reliance on opaque platform metrics, constant pressure to accept undervalued assignments to survive, and unpaid work-for-labour (i.e. tasks required by the job that are not compensated, such as preparation, travel, and administrative duties). Many interpreters and translators operate as “dependent contractors,” bearing the risks of fluctuating demand without receiving higher pay to compensate for the increased risks they observe.

Standing further notes that labour law and collective bargaining were originally constructed on the basis of direct relationships between employers and employees, but the introduction of intermediaries complicates this dynamic: “Who is responsible when a third party becomes an intermediary? Who is in control, the final employer or the intermediary? The blurring of boundaries of decision-making and responsibility adds to the precariousness… temporaries themselves know only that they report to two masters” (Standing, 2021, p.40). For many in the language services sector, this blurred responsibility translates into heightened vulnerability and uncertainty.

Additionally, Standing’s analysis of neoliberalism’s impact on the public sector observes that outsourcing, privatisation, and casualisation have undermined secure employment and stable benefits while simultaneously expanding the ranks of the precariat (2021, p.60). Standing also observes that the shift of work from the public to the private sector, coupled with temporary, part-time, and low-paid contracts, has systematically heightened financial insecurity and long-term vulnerability for workers who previously depended on the public sector for stable income and protections.

Interpreters and translators, particularly those working in outsourced public services, are often excluded from employment protections. They are increasingly being paid meagre rates per word of translation or—most outrageously—per second of actual interpreting. This fragmentation of income and the loss of control of one’s own time create a clear example of precarious work in action.

These unfair conditions are further exacerbated by weakened welfare systems, once designed to provide a safety net. Means-tested benefits often place additional pressure on workers to demonstrate employability, leaving linguists caught between unstable work and conditional welfare support.

Labour Intensification for a Racialised, Feminised Workforce

Precarious work often leads to labour intensification, where workers are pressured to take on multiple jobs to secure financial stability. This burden disproportionately affects workers from migrant backgrounds who often face systemic obstacles in accessing more secure and better-paid jobs. Additionally, women, who frequently shoulder unpaid care responsibilities alongside paid work, face more intensified circumstances. Standing (2021) highlights how women balancing childcare, eldercare, and paid work may find themselves forced into a “quadruple burden,” managing multiple jobs alongside these responsibilities (p.140).

Health, Stress, and Psychological Strain

Chronic insecurity and unstable income also take a toll on mental and physical health. Standing (2021) refers to this as “precarity-related stress,” which manifests as persistent anxiety, an inability to plan one’s life, and cumulative strain from unpaid work and insecure employment. For interpreters and translators, these pressures are amplified by fragmented schedules, short shifts, and unpredictable workloads. Additionally, interpreters who must travel to assignments are often not covered by health and safety measures, even though, according to the UK government’s own guidance, freelance workers are entitled to health and safety protection, protection against discrimination (in some cases), and the rights outlined in the contracts they hold with their clients (UK Government, n.d.a).

Standing (2021) emphasises that these vulnerabilities were further intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic, as a large number of freelancers were not entitled to paid sick leave or institutional support. Additionally, many were disadvantaged or even excluded from COVID-related financial assistance due to the regressive redistribution policies adopted at the time.

For example, although public service interpreters were classified as key or frontline workers (Slator, 2020), many were not offered financial support or paid sick leave when unable to work due to illness or self-isolation, raising serious ethical concerns of expecting interpreters work in continuous places without even being offered compensation for the time they can’t work if they catch a virus.

The Commodification and Marketisation of Education

Standing also critiques the impact of neoliberal thinking on education, arguing that it drives university programmes to become profit-oriented rather than treating education as a public good. He observes that a key but often overlooked driver of precarity is the commodification of education. Education is increasingly sold as an investment in “human capital,” promising improved job prospects and higher earnings. Yet for many graduates—including translators and interpreters—this promise remains unfulfilled. Degrees and professional qualifications no longer guarantee secure or well-paid work, leading to widespread frustration, status anxiety, and debt without return, despite graduates carrying the financial burden of student loans incurred on false promises of opportunity. Standing states:

“Through the ages, education has been regarded as a liberating, questioning, subversive process by which the mind is helped to develop nascent capacities. The essence of the Enlightenment was that the human being could shape the world and refine himself or herself through learning and deliberation. In a market society, that role is pushed into the margins.”

For translators and interpreters, this dynamic is particularly damaging. There are growing calls to align university training with commercial interests, often referred to as “the industry,” despite falling rates of pay and worsening working conditions. This, in turn, reinforces a cycle in which linguists are encouraged to invest ever more in qualifications simply to maintain access to precarious work. If university degrees are to remain worth the investment, critical skills must remain a cornerstone of education. For example, why should an MA student be taught how to use a platform—a relatively simple task—when it may not even be economically viable to work for that platform due to extremely low rates of pay?

Standing’s forthcoming book Human Capital further elaborates on the shift from an educational philosophy centred on critical thinking to a model in which students are increasingly trained to function as effective workers in service of a hegemonic economic ideology (Standing, 2026).

Why Language Professionals Should Read This Book

1. It validates lived experience. Standing gives a name and a framework to what many translators and interpreters already feel: being undervalued, underpaid, and precariously positioned.
2. It exposes structural causes. The precariat is not an individual failing; it is a product of institutional arrangements, outsourcing chains, and market pressures. For students and researchers, it provides a vocabulary to analyse why translation markets operate the way they do—from corporate power dynamics to global economic pressures.
3. It inspires action. Understanding the structural forces shaping precarity is the first step toward advocacy, policy change, and building sustainable professional practices. Teachers can incorporate these ideas into curricula, researchers can frame studies around systemic inequities, and practitioners can use the language of the precariat to demand fairer conditions.
4. It defines exploitation. While it is difficult to define and measure what actually counts as exploitation, Standing argues that the precariat is “exploited—this is the correct word.”
5. It cautions academic scholars about the risk of unintentionally reinforcing industry narratives that downplay linguists’ struggles and attribute structural problems to external factors (see, for example, my analysis of the ethical risks of translation academics “collaborating” with the industry without adequate critical engagement and objective analysis).

Moving Forward

For translators and interpreters, awareness of the precariat concept is more than academic—it is a practical tool. Understanding the structural roots of insecurity can help professionals advocate for fair pay, stable contracts, and better working conditions. They can also be equipped with knowledge to seek better career options elsewhere.

Bibliography

Slator. 2020. NRPSI Voices Concerns Over Fair Pay, Safety of Registered UK Interpreters. Accessed 8 December 2023. https://slator.com/nrpsi-voices-concerns-over-fair-pay-safety-of-registered-uk-interpreters/

Standing, G. 2021. The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (Special Covid-19 Edition). London: Bloomsbury.

Standing, G. 2026. Human Capital: The Tragedy of the Education Commons. Penguin. https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/461384/human-capital-by-standing-guy/9780241688182

UK Government. n.d. Employment status: Self-employed and contractor. Accessed 10 December 2023. https://www.gov.uk/employment-status/selfemployed-contractor#:~:text=Employment%20rights&text=If%20a%20person%20is%20self,they%20have%20with%20their%20client