I want to begin with a clarification. I am not suggesting that the challenges facing translators are equivalent to the historical discrimination and oppression experienced by women. However, social movements often generate important lessons about power, responsibility, and social change. Some of those lessons are surprisingly relevant to current debates within the translation and interpreting profession.

1. Beware of responsibilisation rhetoric

Historically, women were often told that the success or failure of a relationship depended primarily on their behaviour. If a husband was distant, unhappy, unfaithful, or even abusive, advice frequently focused on what women should do differently: be more accommodating, understand his needs better, improve their appearance, avoid upsetting him, or work harder to preserve the relationship.

The underlying message was clear: responsibility rested largely with women, while the behaviour of men often escaped equivalent scrutiny.

A similar dynamic can sometimes be observed in discussions about the intensifying economic challenges of translation and interpreting. Translators are encouraged to adapt, upskill, become more entrepreneurial, embrace new technologies, strengthen their personal brands, and continuously reinvent themselves.

None of these things are necessarily bad. Translators should continue developing their skills. The problem arises when these discussions focus overwhelmingly on what translators should do while paying comparatively little attention to the behaviour of other actors in the industry.

Who scrutinises the role of LSPs in setting rates? Who examines procurement systems? Who investigates how value is distributed across the supply chain? Who questions business models that may contribute to deteriorating working conditions? Who explores how freelance translation could be made more secure and sustainable?

When responsibility becomes concentrated on one group, it is often a sign that something important is being overlooked.

2. Change requires collective action and public debate

Women’s rights did not advance because individual women quietly adapted to unfair conditions. Progress required collective action, public debate, advocacy, and institutional reform.

Translation and interpreting face a similar challenge.

Many translators may privately recognise problems within the industry but feel unable to speak openly about them. For freelancers who depend on agencies for work, criticism can feel risky. The fear of losing assignments can discourage public discussion of unfair practices.

Yet meaningful change rarely emerges from silence.

Translators need spaces where structural issues can be discussed openly. Professional bodies, academic institutions, researchers, and journalists all have a role to play in facilitating those conversations. Institutions should not be treated as passive observers; they should be held accountable for how they represent and advocate for the profession.

Without collective discussion and genuine representation, structural problems are easily reframed as individual failures.

3. Avoid blaming those under the greatest pressure

One of the important lessons that emerged within women’s movements was that women do not all experience the same social realities. Some face additional barriers linked to race, poverty, disability, sexuality, migration status, or other forms of disadvantage.

The translation profession also contains enormous diversity.

Some translators have established client bases, strong financial security, and greater bargaining power. Others are early-career professionals, sole earners, carers, living in disadvantaged or remote areas, or people facing significant economic pressures.

In difficult economic conditions, it is tempting to direct frustration towards colleagues who accept lower rates or make different choices. Yet many of those choices are shaped by circumstances that may not be immediately visible.

When economic pressure intensifies, workers are often encouraged to compete with one another rather than examine the structures creating the pressure in the first place.

The real challenge is not understanding why some translators accept low rates. The challenge is understanding why so many translators feel they have little choice.

Conclusion

The most valuable lesson from social movements is perhaps the simplest: structural problems should not be reduced to individual responsibility.

Translators should continue developing their skills and professionalism. But they should also feel able to ask difficult questions about power, accountability, value distribution, and working conditions within the industry.

When discussions focus exclusively on what translators need to do, learn, or adapt to, we risk overlooking the systems that shape the choices available to them in the first place.

Meaningful change requires more than individual adaptation. It requires collective action, open public debate, and a willingness to hold our professional institutions, academic communities, and industry actors accountable for the role they play in shaping the future of the profession.

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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