Over the past three years, my anger at the multiple levels of oppression surrounding public service interpreting has been building. I often feel like a member of the audience in a Forum Theatre performance, watching a scripted show unfold before me. I can see the harm. I can see problematic power dynamics and absence of representation, transparency, and accountability. I can see the alternative paths that could be taken. Yet the performance never pauses for intervention and discussion. The actors continue with the script. The audience remains seated while some of us are boiling with anger. Those most affected by the consequences are denied the opportunity to step onto the stage and reshape the outcome.

I love the concept of the theatre of the oppressed and forum theatre. A few years ago, I facilitated creative leadership programmes creating Forum Theatre with migrant and refugee women in London. Together, we used theatre to explore the challenges and opportunities of building new lives in a new country. Participants discussed experiences of exclusion, discrimination, isolation, employment barriers, language challenges, and belonging. The purpose was not entertainment. It was collective reflection, community building, and raising awareness.

A typical Forum Theatre performance begins with a scene of a problem. A person encounters barriers they cannot overcome alone. Then the actors pause to allow audience members to become what Augusto Boal called “spect-actors.” They are invited to interrupt the performance, replace characters, test alternative strategies, and collectively explore different possibilities. The aim is not to discover a perfect solution. The aim is to create a space in which people can critically examine power and rehearse social change. Theatre, in Augusto Boal’s view, was a rehearsal for reality.

However, as I observe developments in the translation and interpreting industry, especially public service interpreting, and translation studies, I am increasingly reminded of these ideas. Yet what I see bears little resemblance to the emancipatory vision that inspired Forum Theatre. Instead, I see a performance that continues uninterrupted despite mounting evidence of harm, unfair labour practices, and exploitation.

When the BBC investigation into interpreting failures in public service interpreting emerged in 2023, I listened with sadness and anger to the stories of people whose lives had been irrevocably lost or ruined. Mothers dying during childbirth. Children suffering severe brain injuries. Communication failures were identified as contributing factors. As I listened, I could not help thinking: this could have been me. Or my child. Or any one of us.

As a Syrian, who also works in news coverage, I am familiar with stories of loss, suffering, and systemic failure. I also know that I was fortunate. I was already in the United Kingdom for my education when war transformed the lives of countless Syrians. I know many people are increasingly aware that any one of us could be a migrant or a refugee. The stories presented in the BBC investigation felt painfully personal because they revealed how vulnerable any of us can become when communication fails at critical moments.

What continue to disturb me most was not only the suffering itself but the persistence of the conditions that made such suffering possible. The failure of professional organisations to speak out and demand immediate accountability and improvement. Instead, they are busy collaborating with industry actors.

Perhaps what makes this situation even more difficult to reconcile is the contrast between the lived experiences of many interpreters and the public narratives of progress and inclusion. When the interest group representing intermediaries, the Association of Translation companies (ATC) is shortlisted for an equality, diversity, and inclusion award for its role in public service interpreting, it raises uncomfortable questions about who gets to define success, whose voices are heard, and whose experiences remain invisible.

Even in academia, reports are written about AI. Conferences are organised. Partnerships are celebrated. Yet the fundamental issues remain remarkably familiar. Translators and interpreters continue to report low pay, insecure working conditions, and exploitative labour arrangements. The people responsible for enabling communication are frequently denied economic security, protection from exploitation, and the support necessary to perform that work properly, as my PhD findings reveal.

Yet as I followed conferences, webinars, professional discussions, and academic events over the years that followed, I found myself writing emails, contacting policymakers, academic scholars, professional organisations, journalists, and human rights organisations.

If communication failures can contribute to life-changing injuries and deaths, why is academia not investigating these issues with due urgency. Why discussions of the exploitation of translators and interpreters remain so marginal, or completely absent? Why were the experiences of those working under increasingly precarious conditions so rarely placed at the centre of professional debate? Why were industry actors placed as essential sources of knowledge without being asked hard questions about their role in the dysfunctional system? Why were professional organisations not scrutinised for their claim to represent the interests of translators and interpreters? Why were there no investigations into due diligence on vetting mechanisms before collaboration and partnerships?

I have been kicking and screaming that we need urgent conversations about power and the multiple levels of oppression, including miscarriages of justice, bodily harms, and even death for service users, as well as low pay, substandard labour conditions, and exploitation. I expect the financial and emotional struggles of translators and interpreters to be visible participants in these discussions. Instead, they often seemed strangely absent.

The dominant themes are different. The conversation repeatedly returned to professionalisation, adaptation, responsibility, standards, resilience, innovation, and collaboration with industry. These topics are not unimportant. Yet I could not shake the feeling that they were addressing the symptoms while avoiding the underlying conditions. I often feel like these conversations add insult to injury.

The people most affected by exploitative labour arrangements appeared primarily as objects of discussion rather than participants in it. Linguists are spoken about, studied, trained, regulated, and advised. But where were they as agents capable of defining the problems themselves?

This is where the metaphor of Forum Theatre became impossible for me to ignore.

In Forum Theatre, those experiencing oppression are invited to become spect-actors. They intervene, challenge assumptions, and test alternatives. Their lived experience becomes a source of knowledge rather than merely a topic of analysis.

Yet much of what I observed in industry and academic events felt like the opposite. The stage was occupied by institutions, professional bodies, researchers, and industry representatives. The script revolved around improving the profession, modernising the profession, and preparing for the future of the profession. Meanwhile, many of the interpreters experiencing the consequences of low pay and exploitative working conditions remained in the audience and were silenced.

From the perspective of Theatre of the Oppressed, oppression rarely operates through a single actor or institution. It emerges through interconnected structures that reinforce one another. Patients and families experience the consequences of communication failures. Interpreters experience economic and professional marginalisation. Academic institutions pursue relevance and external partnerships. Industry actors acquire credibility through association with universities and professional bodies. Each level influences the others. The result is a system in which harm becomes normalised, responsibility becomes diffuse, and meaningful intervention becomes increasingly difficult.

This is why I often feel as though I am watching a Forum Theatre performance that has lost its most important feature. The audience can see the problem. The audience can identify alternatives. Yet nobody is invited onto the stage.

That is why I use my blog articles to raise these important issues. To speak truth to power!

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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Suraj Rai & Digit / https://betterimagesofai.org / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/