One of the most common responses from professional organisations to concerns about declining rates and deteriorating working conditions is to advise translators to “get more direct clients.” But is this sound advice, and is it free from contradictory institutional incentives?

As part of my ongoing work on re-politicising translation labour and developing a theory of change for the UK translation and interpreting industry, this article examines how professional advice and institutional narratives may contribute to the individualisation of responsibility for managing structural pressures in translation markets. It argues that widely promoted strategies, such as investing in direct-client acquisition, should be subject to stronger evidence-based scrutiny, particularly regarding their effectiveness under current market conditions. Without such scrutiny, there is a risk that these strategies shift financial risk onto individual translators, encouraging substantial personal investment under uncertain prospects of return.

On the surface, the advice to seek direct clients appears entirely rational. If an agency retains a percentage of the client’s payment, working directly with clients should allow translators to retain a larger share of the value they create. However, this assumes that acquiring direct clients is both accessible and economically viable for most translators. That assumption warrants closer examination.

Translators are encouraged to improve their marketing, strengthen their personal brand, attend networking events, optimise their websites, increase their visibility on social media, and invest in business development. The underlying assumption is that improved outcomes primarily result from better individual choices.

Yet translation markets are not composed of equal actors. A relatively small number of large language service providers (LSPs) possess significant advantages in sales capacity, marketing budgets, client acquisition, procurement processes, and economies of scale. Individual translators typically operate with only a fraction of these resources.

From this perspective, acquiring direct clients is not simply a matter of choice. It requires time, capital, expertise, and sustained investment, often with uncertain returns. Given increasing financial pressures and evidence that some translators are struggling to achieve sustainable incomes, it is worth questioning the promotion of strategies that require substantial personal investment without clear evidence of their likely effectiveness.

Beware the sunk cost mechanism

In translation and many other professions, individuals may already have invested heavily in degrees, certifications, memberships, and training. When returns decline, there is a natural tendency to invest further rather than reassess, simply because disengaging feels like wasting prior investment.

In this context, advice to “get more direct clients” risks functioning as a form of speculative investment guidance, encouraging translators to commit significant personal resources under uncertain prospects of return, despite structurally constrained market conditions.

Contradictory institutional incentives

Professional organisations increasingly occupy a dual role as providers of training and gatekeepers of economic opportunity through directories, accreditation, and certification systems.

In this context, the advice to pursue direct clients may function—however unintentionally—as a reinforcing narrative for institutional membership. If visibility, credibility, and access to work are partly mediated through professional bodies, then encouragement to “go direct” may still channel translators back into membership structures that provide those very forms of access.

This also complicates conventional claims of representation, as I have argued in a previous article. Where access to labour markets is mediated through institutional membership, organisational authority cannot be assumed to reflect collective agreement. Instead, representation becomes entangled with gatekeeping functions, and economic dependency.

At the same time, this model continues to place both the cost and responsibility of adaptation primarily on individuals, even within a market structure shaped by large agencies, platform intermediaries, and uneven bargaining power.

In addition, training offered by professional organisations often frames financial precarity primarily as a matter of personal strategy, mindset, and pricing behaviour, rather than as a structural outcome shaped by market organisation, agency practices, demonetising bargaining power and limited legal protection. In doing so, it risks shifting attention away from collective or institutional mechanisms for improving income conditions, and towards individual optimisation within existing constraints, including the need to perform professional success.

This is why my theory of change for the UK translation and interpreting industry distinguishes between individual adaptation and structural reform. Direct-client acquisition may be a viable strategy for some practitioners, but it should not be treated as a universal solution to industry-wide problems.

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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