The CEO of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI) is due to speak at an upcoming Association of Translation Companies (ATC) event in a discussion framed around “academia, associations and community”. But who, exactly, speaks for “academia”?

The ITI has a controversial membership structure: it offers membership to individual translators and interpreters, universities, and corporate organisations operating within the same industry. This places universities and practitioners within the same membership organisation as commercial intermediaries whose economic interests may not always align with theirs.

This is not merely a theoretical question about competing interests. The ITI has participated in lobbying concerning the organisation of public-service interpreting. In a joint white paper titled Working Together, it supported the continued outsourcing of interpreting services through public contracts worth hundreds of millions of pounds.

Outsourcing is not a neutral administrative question. It determines who sits between public authorities and interpreters, how public money reaches the professionals who perform the work, where bargaining power lies, and how responsibility for pay and working conditions is distributed.

This makes the question of representation particularly important. When a professional body encompassing practitioners, universities and corporate organisations lobbies on an economic model that affects those constituencies differently, in whose name — and in whose interests — is it speaking?

And what due diligence do its university members undertake?

The ITI–ATC relationship

These questions become more significant when the ITI’s relationship with the Association of Translation Companies (ATC) is considered.

The ATC is an interest group representing corporate actors in the translation and interpreting industry. It also lobbies the UK government on matters relating to public-sector outsourcing. The commercial interests it represents operate within an industry in which low pay, precarious working conditions and potentially exploitative labour practices have been documented in numerous academic studies.

The ITI has publicly described itself as collaborating closely with the ATC and last month awarded the ATC an Excellence Award. The conference at which the award was presented also included academic scholars in a range of roles, including within ITI’s board of directors, the conference organising committee and as speakers. Their involvement does not imply endorsement of the award, but it further highlights the increasingly interconnected relationship between academia, professional bodies and industry.

This raises legitimate due-diligence questions for ITI’s university members. Were they aware of the nature and extent of the ITI’s relationship with the ATC? Were they aware of its support for continued outsourcing? Were they aware of the decision to confer an award for excellence on the ATC? Were they consulted on any of these matters?

More fundamentally, do university members consider the award an endorsement made solely by the ITI, or could it reasonably be perceived as carrying some of the institutional legitimacy of the Institute’s wider membership, including its university members? These are urgent questions of due diligence, competing interests and institutional legitimacy.

If universities choose to become institutional members of a professional body, what responsibility do they have to understand not only that organisation’s activities, but also the relationships, lobbying positions and endorsements through which it exercises influence within their academic and professional field?

That is precisely why the boundaries need to be clear. Have ITI’s university members authorised it to represent them — individually or collectively — as part of “academia”? When the ITI lobbies government, collaborates with organisations representing commercial interests, contributes to policy debates, or participates in industry events involving “academia”, in whose name is it speaking? Where are the boundaries between the ITI speaking for itself, its individual members, its corporate members and its university members?

And do its university members know?

These questions are particularly important where the interests of those constituencies may diverge. A policy position that preserves the role of commercial intermediaries, for example, does not necessarily serve the interests of the individual practitioners who deliver the actual interpreting services, nor does it necessarily reflect the position of universities that hold institutional membership of ITI. That is why I am calling for clearer boundaries between institutional membership, participation, endorsement and representation.

Universities are public institutions with social and public responsibilities that extend beyond their own institutional interests. Where their memberships, affiliations and academic relationships intersect with organisations representing potentially competing economic interests, they should consider not only institutional benefits but also due diligence, academic independence, conflicts of interest and the potential for harm.

I would genuinely welcome responses from ITI’s university members, publicly or directly. I would much rather hear these answers directly from universities than have to send individual Freedom of Information requests to establish what their membership means and what due diligence, if any, has taken place.