When organisations procure translation and interpreting services, decisions often focus on practical considerations: cost, availability, turnaround times, scalability, and administrative convenience. I do not deny that these factors matter. However, language services are not simply interchangeable products moving through a supply chain. They are delivered by human beings.

Behind every translated document, interpreted meeting, healthcare consultation, court hearing, or multilingual campaign is a translator or interpreter who has invested years developing linguistic expertise, cross-cultural competence, subject knowledge, professional judgement, and ethical responsibility.

The quality of these services can influence product launches, corporate reputation, healthcare outcomes, legal proceedings, public trust, international partnerships, and access to essential services. Yet discussions about language procurement rarely consider the people whose labour makes these outcomes possible.

For corporations, public bodies, charities, and other organisations purchasing language services, an important question is often missing:

Are the translators and interpreters delivering these services being treated fairly and with dignity?

This question is not merely philosophical. It is increasingly supported by a growing body of academic research on low and exploitative pay.

Studies have documented deteriorating job quality in parts of the UK translation sector, worsening working conditions among audiovisual translators in Europe, increasing price pressure, and the growth of platform-mediated and outsourced models of work. My own doctoral research on the political economy and governance of public service interpreting, with a particular focus on interpreters’ working conditions and financial insecurity, has identified concerns including low pay, income instability, challenging working conditions, limited bargaining power, and inadequate consideration of workers’ wellbeing and safety.

Similarly, Deborah Giustini’s 2024 study of platform-based interpreting found that the rise of digital platforms is not simply changing how interpreting services are booked and delivered. It is also reshaping how interpreting work is organised, managed, valued, and experienced, with implications for autonomy, working conditions, and the distribution of economic risk and rewards.

At the same time, the profession has experienced disruption from artificial intelligence and machine translation. For many translators and interpreters, reduced workloads and increasingly unsustainable freelance business models have further diminished their ability to negotiate, challenge unfair practices, or speak openly about working conditions.

Most people would not knowingly purchase products produced through exploitative labour practices. Many organisations now scrutinise supply chains for evidence of modern slavery, unsafe working conditions, or unfair treatment. Ethical procurement has become an established consideration in sectors ranging from agriculture to manufacturing.

Yet when it comes to translation and interpreting services, far less attention is paid to the people performing the work.

Perhaps it is time to ask whether language services should be viewed through the same lens of responsibility: not simply as services to be purchased, but as human labour performed by professionals whose working conditions are shaped, in part, by the procurement choices of those who buy their services.

What Organisations Should Consider

When procuring translation and interpreting services, organisations should look beyond price alone.

Important questions include:

• Who is actually delivering the service?
• Are language professionals paid fairly for their expertise?
• How much of the fee paid by the client reaches the person performing the work?
• Does the procurement model encourage sustainable professional practice?
• Does it support long-term professional relationships or only transactional exchanges?
• Does the provider demonstrate a commitment to fair treatment and professional standards?

A low-cost service may appear efficient. However, pricing models that treat translators and interpreters primarily as a cost to be minimised can contribute to financial insecurity, reduced bargaining power, and growing inequality within the profession.

Agencies and platforms can play a useful role in organising language services. However, organisations should understand how these models operate and seek to work with intermediaries that demonstrate ethical practices. Questions about accountability, transparency, communication, and value distribution are becoming increasingly important.

Understanding the supply chain behind language services is part of responsible procurement.

A Social Responsibility Perspective

Public bodies, charities, and businesses increasingly recognise the importance of ethical procurement. Language services should be considered part of this responsibility.

Public services require particular attention because they are funded through public money. When public bodies procure translation and interpreting services, they are not simply making private purchasing decisions; they are deciding how public resources are distributed and what types of working conditions those resources support.

In correspondence I received from the Cabinet Office following concerns raised about public supply chains, outsourcing, equality obligations, and precarious labour arrangements affecting workers in publicly funded services, the Government acknowledged that existing protections do not always prevent exploitation. The response, which was issued following an open letter to the Secretary of State for Education and Minister for Women and Equalities, stated that the current legislative framework around certain forms of “bogus self-employment”:

does not prevent worker exploitation and leaves vulnerable workers without core employment protections.

This acknowledgement highlights a wider issue affecting the legal protection of labour rights. For organisations using public funds, ethical procurement therefore involves more than selecting a service provider. It requires consideration of the people delivering the service and whether the systems supporting that service uphold fairness, dignity, and responsible employment practices.

As technology, outsourcing, and market pressures continue to reshape the industry, organisations have an opportunity to support a more sustainable language-services industry. Procurement decisions do more than determine costs and service delivery. They also influence the working lives of the people who make multilingual communication possible. Recognising this reality is an important first step towards a more ethical and sustainable approach to buying translation and interpreting services.

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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