As part of my ongoing work on re-politicising translation labour and developing a theory of change for the UK translation and interpreting industry, I have argued that a more robust theory of change should evaluate whether commonly promoted “solutions” are evidence-based, ethically sound, and proportionate to the structural realities of the labour market. This article argues that as the translation industry becomes increasingly shaped by excessive value extraction, precarious labour conditions, and exploitation, we need to critically examine the growing advice encouraging translators to move into “adjacent careers” within the same industry.

When translators face declining rates, increasing precarity, technological disruption, and growing difficulties earning a sustainable living, how should academia and professional organisation respond? More specifically, how should we evaluate the solutions that are routinely proposed?

One increasingly common recommendation is that translators should consider “adjacent careers”. Rather than working primarily as translators, they are encouraged to move into localisation management, project management, language technology, prompt engineering, vendor management, training, consulting, recruitment, content creation, or even becoming social media influencers who advise others about the profession.

The advice is usually presented as pragmatic and forward-looking. Translators are encouraged to diversify, adapt, and make use of their translation knowledge. While this can be seen as a practical way for translators to continue using their language expertise, it does not address whether such advice simply individualises responsibility for structural and ethical problems within the translation industry. This raises both ethical and political questions that deserve closer examination.

Should translators continue to work for the system that has failed them?

In a previous analysis of why translators are often poorly paid, I argued that this is largely due to corporate practices that treat translators less as skilled workers and more as cost variables within a production system. Decisions about rates, productivity, technology, discounts, turnaround times, and profitability place sustained downward pressure on translators’ earnings, while translators are simultaneously encouraged to become more efficient, adaptable, and resilient.

This is what makes the adjacent-careers discussion ethically and politically sensitive. Many of the careers now promoted to translators involve moving into roles that participate in precisely these processes. If translators leave because they can no longer earn a sustainable living, is it politically neutral to encourage them to become the people who help manage the system that made translation economically unsustainable for others?

This is not a criticism of individuals who pursue such careers. People need to earn a living, and some adjacent roles may provide valuable and legitimate work. The issue is not individual choices. The issue is what academia and professional organisations choose to present as a solution. When these alternatives leave the underlying structures that produce low pay and insecurity untouched, they function primarily as adaptation strategies that obscure structural problems and the erosion of basic conditions of language labour. In such cases, they may improve individual outcomes without improving the conditions that made the move necessary in the first place.

Therefore, we should ask whether we are solving the problem of intensifying financial insecurities or merely relocating translators within the structures that produce it, while sustaining a cycle in which each new cohort is encouraged to invest in a profession that often fails to provide economic viability, only to later be funnelled into adjacent careers once that reality becomes unavoidable.

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 unfair intermediaries to all translation companies or agencies.

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