(Please note that this article was written before I became aware that ITI somehow represents both individual translators and corporate members.)

Dear Sara Robertson

I am writing this as an open letter in response to your remarks during the event Studying Translation in the Age of AI, where you presented an overly positive on AI as a force encouraging greater collaboration and more relationship-based working practices within the translation industry.

I have raised these concerns with you previously. The fact that they remain unaddressed is precisely why I am now raising them publicly.

Let me be direct: the narrative you presented is, at best, partial—and at worst, it risks misrepresenting the reality of the profession the Institute of Translation and Interpreting claims to represent.

While there may be an isolated example of more collaborative models emerging, a substantial and growing body of research into Algorithmic Management and platform-mediated work points in the opposite direction.

Across the sector, many translators are experiencing:

• increased monitoring and performance tracking
• sustained downward pressure on rates, particularly in machine translation and post-editing
• fragmentation of work into smaller, lower-paid units
• reduced autonomy and bargaining power

This is not a shift away from transactional work. It is the intensification of it—more granular, more controlled, and more extractive.

Against this backdrop, the gap between ITI’s public narrative and the lived reality of its members is difficult to ignore.

Why are issues such as:

• financial precarity
• declining rates
• late or non-payment
• and the cumulative pressures of platform-mediated work

so consistently absent from institutional messaging?

Are you willing to acknowledge that AI is not only enabling new forms of collaboration, but also driving cost-cutting, efficiency pressures, and tighter control over labour?

And if so, why is this not being communicated with clarity?

Why echo the constructed narrative by organisations such as the Association of Translation Companies (ATC) who represents corporate interest?

You are the head of ITI after all! ITI should not represent corporation interest. It should represent translators and interpreters. When a professional body adopts the same framing as corporate actors—without foregrounding the structural challenges faced by its members—it raises serious questions about representation.

At stake is not simply tone or emphasis, but function.

If labour conditions are downplayed:

• advocacy is weakened
• precarity is normalised
• and members are left without meaningful representation

This also has wider implications. Professional bodies are frequently treated as authoritative voices by academic institutions, policymakers, and researchers. When their narratives omit material realities, those omissions are reproduced elsewhere—in research agendas, training programmes, and policy discussions.

So the question is:

Why is the ITI choosing to foreground corporate narratives while underrepresenting well-documented labour concerns?

And more importantly:

How does that serve the translators and interpreters ITI is supposed to represent?

What stands out most is the persistence of the same justifications. When I previously criticised the report “The Strategic Case for Languages in UK Higher Education”—a joint publication by the Association of Translation Companies (ATC), the Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIOL), and the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI)—for omitting the financial realities facing translators, you told me that rates of pay are “discussed elsewhere.” And it was not the first time I heard this justification. I had previously heard the exact same phrase of pay and working conditions being discussed elsewhere from the CEO of the ATC. Do you honestly not see the problem when the head of a professional body, often presumed to represent translators and interpreters, repeats the same line as a representative of corporate interests? For me, it raises serious concerns about whose perspectives are being prioritised and whose are being obscured.

This concern is not personal but structural. The ATC has consistently framed industry challenges in ways that foreground collaboration, “talent shortages,” and external constraints, while deflecting attention away from the responsibilities of language service providers. At the same time, there is a growing body of research documenting financial precarity, downward pressure on rates, and an exodus of translators and interpreters from the profession due to unsustainable conditions.

Despite this, the ATC continues to promote a constructed narrative of ethical leadership and was even shortlisted for an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion award in the same period that evidence of systemic precarity in public service interpreting was widely documented. It is precisely this dissonance—between institutional self-presentation and material realities—that I am drawing attention to.

Perhaps you could understand my frustration, as we have had this same conversation multiple times. For example, after you spoke at the House of Lords public inquiry into court interpreting. I critiqued you for framing the conversation as if, if we do not pay interpreters decently, they would leave—as if interpreters matter only as long as they keep working and continue paying membership fees.

Additionally, when your institution was among the organisations issuing the white paper, working together in collaboration with the ATC, the paper attributed problems in public service interpreting to external factors such as a complex procurement landscape, and called for continued outsourcing under the pretext of “working together” with translation and interpreting firms that treat interpreters as a commodity rather than knowledge workers entitled to enjoy the fruits of their labour. At that time, you were upset with my critique and complained to my university. However, you still repeat the same strategic and ethical failure!

If the ITI is to remain credible as a representative body, it must do more than promote adaptation and alignment with industry trends. It must be willing to name and address the structural conditions shaping the profession—including those that are inconvenient or uncomfortable.

That includes:

• acknowledging the uneven and often negative impact of AI on working conditions
• representing the experiences of those facing financial insecurity—not only those benefiting from new models
• and advocating clearly for fair, sustainable labour practices

Anything less risks reducing representation to messaging.

I invite you to respond to these concerns directly and publicly.

Yours sincerely,
Fardous

About the author

Fardous Bahbouh is a Researcher and Consultant specializing in Labour Rights, Public Policy, and the Political Economy of the Translation Industry.

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Seeing More — Seeing Less by Anna Riepe & FARI

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