Translators and interpreters are specialists whose work revolves around words, meaning, context, nuance, and intention. We spend our professional lives analysing how language frames reality, shapes relationships, legitimises power, and influences how people understand the world. We know that words are never neutral; the terms we choose carry assumptions, values, and political implications.

It is therefore worth asking what happens when we turn this analytical lens back onto our own work. How do the words used to describe translation and interpreting shape how the field is organised, governed, and imagined? Whose interests do these terms prioritise, and whose experiences do they obscure?

This article does not aim to offer a single definition of the industry. Instead, it examines how different actors use different terms—ecosystem, collaborative community, profession, precarity trap, and exploitation—and what these choices reveal about power, labour, and responsibility. Before we can meaningfully debate the future of translation and interpreting, we first need to ask a more fundamental question: translation for whom?

1. Is It an Ecosystem?

I want to begin with the term ecosystem, a concept frequently used by organisations such as the Association of Translation Companies (ATC), an interest group representing translation companies that often function as intermediaries between clients and linguists. These companies are commonly referred to as Language Service Providers (LSPs). Ecosystem is perhaps the term I am most uncomfortable with. On the surface, it sounds balanced, collaborative, and even harmonious. It evokes the image of a naturally occurring system in which different actors coexist, adapt, and contribute to a larger whole that should not be disturbed. The problem is precisely that sense of naturalness.

Describing translation and interpreting as an “ecosystem” risks presenting existing market structures, power relations, and economic inequalities as if they were organic and inevitable, rather than social arrangements open to criticism, negotiation, or reform. The term subtly shifts attention away from questions of agency, accountability, labour conditions, exploitation, and conflicting interests. After all, ecosystems are generally understood as naturally evolving phenomena rather than systems actively designed, regulated, negotiated, and contested by institutions, corporations, policymakers, and economic actors.

My discomfort with the term was reinforced when I heard economist Mariana Mazzucato argue in an interview that the language of “ecosystems” is often embraced by powerful actors precisely because it serves their interests. In her 2021 book Mission Economy, Mazzucato notes that while ecosystems are often portrayed as positive and naturally balanced systems, ecosystems can also be deeply predatory. That observation helped clarify for me why I react so strongly against the term.

The translation industry is not a rainforest. It is a human economic and social structure shaped by decisions about pricing, outsourcing, technology adoption, platformisation, procurement policies, labour protections, professional standards, and access to resources. Some actors within this so-called ecosystem possess vastly more power, visibility, and influence than others. Meanwhile, many linguists struggle to sustain themselves and their families.

What concerns me is that the language of “ecosystems” can depoliticise these realities. It may encourage practitioners to view destabilising market changes not as political or economic choices open to debate, but simply as natural evolution to which everyone must adapt.

Unfortunately, the term has increasingly appeared in industry-aligned academic and institutional narratives. For example, in 2023, a collection of translators’ and interpreters’ organisations, including ITI, CIOL, and NRPSI, issued a white paper in collaboration with the ATC about public service interpreting. That document absurdly attributed problems in public service interpreting to external factors such as procurement complexity, while completely absolving LSPs of responsibility. It also called on the government to continue outsourcing public service interpreting and to allocate more public funding to LSPs, without recommending any mechanisms to ensure that interpreters themselves would meaningfully benefit from this funding.

Unsurprisingly, the “Working Together” document used the term ecosystem repeatedly — six times, to be precise. The language helped obscure the role LSPs play in the financial insecurity, deteriorating working conditions, and, in some cases, exploitation experienced by interpreters.

The term ecosystem also appears prominently in Joseph Lambert and Callum Walker’s introduction to their edited volume The Routledge Handbook of the Translation Industry. I have previously critiqued the book for amplifying industry narratives without sufficient critical engagement. Again, the book does not scrutinise the power LSPs have in shaping the rates of pay and working conditions of translators and portrays the translation industry as an “ecosystem.” In particular, I found it troubling that the head of the ATC was granted the opportunity to author a full chapter in which translation students interested in project management were effectively encouraged to view translators primarily through the lens of cost calculation and LSP profitability, without meaningful critique of the underlying assumptions behind that framing. Not only the editors, but many contributing authors in The Routledge Handbook call for more industry-academia collaborations, which takes me to the second term.

2. Is it a collaborative community?

While the framing of a “collaborative community” sounds inclusive and even empowering, it obscures more than it reveals. In practice, it risks blurring key structural realities of the industry, especially its economic asymmetries, uneven power distribution, and the contractual nature of most commercial relationships.

As I have emphasised in my critique of the Routledge Handbook, calls for increased industry–academia collaboration can unintentionally legitimise unfair market practices, normalise precarity, and marginalise translators’ lived realities by reproducing industry-aligned narratives under the guise of dialogue or mutual benefit.

One major issue with the “community” framing is that it masks the fundamentally transactional structure of translation work. Agencies and platforms typically act as intermediaries that control access to work, set rates, and enforce quality standards. Calling this a “community” risks downplaying the hierarchical nature of these relationships and the limited bargaining power many translators actually have.

A further risk of collaboration rhetoric is that it lends commercial actors a veneer of respectability and trustworthiness that obscures the realities of translators’ day-to-day working conditions. For instance, the Association of Programmes in Translation and Interpreting Studies (APTIS), which brings together translation departments across universities in the UK and Ireland, has granted the ATC a membership in the organisation alongside university departments. These developments suggest that patterns of industry engagement and the narratives they promote are not isolated, but actively shape research agendas, professional training, and broader industry norms.

Another example is the ATC’s claim that it has “partnerships” with multiple UK universities. However, three of these universities have denied that such partnerships exist. The University of Cardiff has also shared with me a recently adopted due diligence process for assessing partnership proposals, including considerations of reputation and labour practices. Further Freedom of Information responses are still pending from other universities listed by the ATC.

The only confirmed partnership involving the ATC appears to be with the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI), which is often perceived as a representative body for translators and interpreters and as a professional home for practitioners. However, I have only recently become aware that the ITI also represents LSPs alongside individual translators and interpreters. As I have discussed elsewhere, ITI’s public statements often appear to adopt commercial narratives that absolve LSPs of responsibility towards their workforce, while shifting a significant portion of that responsibility onto individual translators and interpreters.

While I strongly disagree with the narrative the ATC constructs around the industry, I also recognise its “skilled” public relations work. The ATC was a finalist for an equality, diversity, and inclusion award for public service interpreting, which is one of the most underpaid sections of the industry. The awarding body stated:

The way the ATC tackles the industry’s collective needs is two-fold: through research and through engagement with public sector commissioning organisations.
The ATC’s original research and public sector engagement help identify pathways towards diverse, inclusive translation and interpreting professions, and support a sustainable ecosystem in the procurement and provision of language services. Through increased understanding and visibility of the EDI and community languages landscape, the ATC is paving the way for more equitable, diverse and inclusive public sector procurement of the future.

This raises a simple question: have the organisers of the award, or anyone else, ever seen the supposedly “original research” of the ATC? If the ATC really wants to show care about ethics and sustainability, they would have encouraged their member LSPS to pay their workforce fairly. This becomes particularly problematic when considering that the ATC presents itself as an organisation that “defines standards of excellence for language service companies by promoting quality-driven services and best practice.” Yet it remains largely silent on standards relating to translators’ and interpreters’ rights or their ability to earn a sustainable income. Personally, I believe that the promotional rhetoric of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion by the interest group representing LSPs adds insult to injury.

In fact, across the public statements and multiple collaborations of ATC, I have not encountered any example that questions the role and responsibilities of LSPs—an effect I have elsewhere referred to as “the ATC effect.” That said, this is a personal observation, and I would welcome any evidence that challenges it. In the absence of such evidence, I remain cautious. The rhetoric of collaboration and community, in this context, often appears to obscure structural realities and shift responsibility away from LSPs.

In short, while the idea of a collaborative translation community may foster a sense of solidarity, it can also function as a rhetorical smoothing mechanism—one that downplays hierarchy, competition, and labour precarity in favour of a harmonious image of how the industry actually operates and which predominantly benefits the interests of LSPs. Unfortunately, I have to conclude that corporate-aligned academic and institutional narratives are, no matter how unintentional, complicit in contributing to the obscuring of the struggle of translators and interpreters and the responsibilities of LSPs.

3. Is it a profession?

“Profession” is a powerful term. It signals expertise, recognition, and stability, and for many practitioners it reflects an aspiration for meaningful and sustainable work. Yet it sits uneasily alongside the realities of the sector.

Translation and interpreting are highly feminised and racialised fields. Many enter after significant financial and personal investment, including international study and high tuition fees. Against this backdrop, persistent precarity is experienced not as abstract instability but as lived frustration and disappointment.

At the same time, “profession” does not simply describe status; it also functions as a form of governance. Drawing on Angela McRobbie’s work on creative labour, professionalisation can encourage individuals to internalise insecurity as personal responsibility. Practitioners are urged to remain entrepreneurial, resilient, and continuously self-improving, even as structural conditions deteriorate.

Professional bodies also reinforce this dynamic. Evidence given to a House of Lords inquiry into court interpreting illustrated a striking contradiction: while acknowledging that interpreters were leaving the profession for better-paid work in cafés, representatives of major organisations continued to advocate for stricter certification requirements and membership fees. This highlights how professionalisation can simultaneously signal authority, or governmentality, while reinforcing barriers and precarity.

4. Is it a precarity trap?

Across the sector, there is now extensive evidence of worsening working conditions: falling rates, fragmented workflows, weak bargaining power, and growing financial insecurity. My own research with public service interpreters shows that many struggle to meet basic living costs.

Yet this reality coexists with an increasingly dominant discourse of professionalisation that emphasises continuous upskilling—entrepreneurship, branding, specialisation, and now AI literacy. Practitioners are expected to constantly invest in their skills while returns remain stagnant or decline.

This creates a structural contradiction. What is framed as professional development increasingly operates as a mechanism for shifting responsibility onto individuals. Drawing on Angela McRobbie’s analysis of freelance labour, insecurity becomes internalised as a personal condition to be managed rather than a structural issue to be addressed.

The result is what can be understood as a precarity trap: a cycle in which practitioners are encouraged to invest more in themselves in the hope of a meaningful profession, while the conditions determining their income remain unchanged. The more they adapt, the more responsibility is displaced onto them for outcomes shaped by pricing structures, outsourcing systems, and weak regulation.

From a political economy perspective, the issue is not individual failure but structural design. The key question becomes whether professionalisation legitimising the deterioration of conditions and encouraging more people to remain in the sector by encouraging them to pay for training and membership fees, and by reframing systemic problems as personal challenges that could be overcome.

5. Is it exploitation?

I use the term exploitation cautiously. It is emotionally charged, lacks a single agreed definition, and may sit uneasily with practitioners who understand their work in professional or ethical terms. For that reason, I approach it empirically.

In my research with public service interpreters, exploitation was not a predefined category, yet it appeared repeatedly in open responses. Participants described conditions they experienced as fundamentally unfair despite their qualifications and essential role in public service delivery.

These accounts point to a labour system structured by strong asymmetries of power. Agencies control rates, assignments, and contracts, while interpreters absorb most of the financial and operational risk. Alongside satisfaction derived from the work itself, respondents consistently report emotional strain, exhaustion, and financial insecurity.

Several concrete practices illustrate these dynamics. One is the fragmentation of pay into extremely small-time units, sometimes paying only for seconds of interpreting while requiring full availability. As one respondent noted:

Many platforms require interpreters to log in but only pay for the interpreting time by the second. This is a clear exploitation enabled by different government departments.”

Concerns about value distribution are also widespread. Interpreters often observe that large public budgets exist while “the bulk of the money goes to agencies.” Whether or not all financial flows can be fully verified, these perceptions are central to how the system is experienced. They point to a structure in which value is concentrated upstream while risk is shifted downward.

In political economy terms, this aligns with Nancy Folbre’s concept of gain-seeking—value extraction enabled by unequal power relations—and broader accounts of rent-seeking dynamics. It also resonates with Guy Standing’s analysis of contemporary labour markets, where flexibility and outsourcing can intensify precarity and contribute to worsening conditions. Standing describes this arrangement as exploitation.

Taken together, these perspectives suggest that exploitation is not best understood as isolated misconduct but as a structural outcome of how value and power are organised. The central issue is not whether individual practices are fair or unfair in isolation, but whether the system consistently channels value upward while distributing risk downward.

The question, ultimately, is not only how we describe translation and interpreting, but who benefits from those descriptions—and who pays the price for them.

Conclusion

Perhaps the most important question is not whether translation is an ecosystem, a collaborative community, a profession, a precarity trap, or a site of exploitation.

The more important question is: who benefits from describing it in each of these ways?

I leave it to translators and interpreters themselves to decide which description most closely reflects the realities of their working lives.

About the author
Fardous Bahbouh is a researcher and broadcast interpreter specialising in labour rights and the political economy of the translation and interpreting industry. Alongside her academic research, she continues to work with agencies and production companies that value interpreters and translators and provide fair working conditions. She also runs a small translation company and does not generalise critiques of large intermediaries to all translation companies or agencies.

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Yutong Liu & Digit / https://betterimagesofai.org / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/