Dear Sara Robertson

I am writing this as an open letter in response to your remarks during the 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?

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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