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

Translators’ and interpreters’ labour rights are often framed as merely a matter of low rates and consistently displaced in collaborations with commercial interests under the pretext of being out of scope or better addressed “elsewhere,” in order not to alienate stakeholders. This recurring response from academic scholars as well as translators’ institutes is not neutral. It functions as a structural deflection that removes universally established human rights and labour rights from core debates and risks adopting a constructed, misleading narrative of “opportunity” and ethics for profit-extracting companies.

This article reflects on a recent interaction with the head of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI), following my critique of a report on language teaching in universities co-authored by the ITI, the Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIOL), and the Association of Translation Companies (ATC). The exchange exposes a deeper and persistent question: where, exactly, are translators’ and interpreters’ rights supposed to be addressed, and why are professional bodies so reluctant to confront them directly—particularly when commercial interests are involved? Is it acceptable to contribute to the ATC’s constructed image as a champion of “equal opportunity,” when they actually represent many companies that pay translators low, or even exploitative, rates? As a result, this report functions as undeserved publicity for the ATC and promotes a misleading construct of “equal opportunity”. There is no such thing as “equal opportunity to be exploited” except within the ATC’s constructed narrative.

For an example of academic scholars using this logic, see my article On the Ethical Risks of Translation Academics “Collaborating” with the Industry Without Adequate Critical Engagement and Objective Analysis, which examines how a field-defining handbook deliberately excluded any serious discussion of labour rights to avoid making stakeholders—including the ATC—feel they were being “attacked.”

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What the report addressed — and what it excluded

The report focuses on the closure of Modern Languages departments in UK universities. There is no dispute that these closures represent a serious loss: for global understanding, cross-cultural communication, economic development, and the continued intellectual and social progress of society.

However, the way this loss is framed in the report is ethically and strategically problematic. The closures are presented primarily as a threat to the UK economy and to the health of the supposedly flourishing UK language services market worth £2 billion. This framing is misleading because it deliberately omits a central reality: many translators and interpreters are facing financial insecurities, which makes the language speciality neither attractive nor stable.

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The problem of collaboration with commercial interests

Perhaps the most serious issue raised by the report is the failure to maintain a clear and principled distance from commercial interests.

By collaborating with the ATC on reports and public narratives, translators’ and interpreters’ organisations allow an industry lobby group—one that actively promotes the continued outsourcing of public service translation and interpreting—to present itself as a champion of equal opportunity and professional sustainability.

This is not a neutral partnership. It is a political and economic alignment that risks absolving companies of responsibility for the conditions they help create.

Equal opportunity cannot be meaningfully discussed without addressing pay, working conditions, and the distribution of value within the sector. Framing the issue solely in terms of education supply while ignoring labour rights is analytically incomplete and ethically indefensible.

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The £2 billion figure and what it conceals

The repeated reference to a £2 billion market size functions as a rhetorical device rather than an informative economic indicator.

While the market may indeed generate that level of revenue, the ATC’s own data shows that translation companies have self-reported gross margins of up to 77% (ATC, 2021, p.25). This raises important questions:

• How much of this revenue reaches the translators and interpreters who perform the core labour?
• How is value distributed between intermediaries and workers?
• Given that many contracts are outsourced to professionals outside the UK, how much of this value actually benefits those working domestically?

These questions are notably absent from the report. So too is any meaningful engagement with concerns that the majority of translation companies actively contribute to the precarious working conditions faced by translators and interpreters.

Economists such as Guy Standing (2011) have long argued that flexible market arrangements tend to shift risk and insecurity from firms onto workers. In the language services sector, this dynamic is exacerbated by increasing market concentration among a small number of dominant companies. Such concentration has been associated with downward pressure on pay, the erosion of professional standards, and the normalisation of precarious work.

These dynamics are not peripheral to discussions about education, access, or workforce sustainability. They are central to them.

In a market-based system, persistent signals of low pay, job insecurity, and limited career progression act as powerful disincentives. While students’ motivations for choosing courses of study are complex and varied, the systematic undervaluation of language work at the point of employment inevitably shapes perceptions of the profession. If language careers are widely understood to be financially insecure and poorly rewarded, it is neither surprising nor irrational that fewer students choose to pursue them.

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‘Better tackled elsewhere’: the displacement of responsibility

In response to my critique, I was told by the head of the ITI:

“This report considers a very specific issue regarding language teaching in universities. Your concerns about remuneration are entirely valid; but this issue is better tackled elsewhere.”

This response partially acknowledges the deterioration of labour rights in terms of remuneration, while simultaneously displacing responsibility for addressing them. Yet no clear institutional space is ever identified where these concerns are meaningfully confronted.

Professional bodies repeatedly position labour conditions as external to their remit, while continuing to collaborate with commercial interest groups that directly shape those conditions.

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Conclusion: no more ‘elsewhere’

Labour rights are not a peripheral concern to be deferred to an unspecified “elsewhere.” They are foundational to any serious discussion of educational access and sustainability.

Until translators’ and interpreters’ organisations are willing to stop legitimising commercial interests and spreading constructed PR narratives, the same conversations will continue to be displaced, and the same structural problems will persist.

The question is not whether translators’ rights are being discussed elsewhere.

It is whether they are being addressed at all.