For almost three years, I have been researching, analysing and critiquing the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI) — its public positions, its relationships with commercial actors, the narratives it promotes, the questions it asks and, sometimes, the questions I think it should be asking but isn’t.

My interest is not really in ITI for its own sake. My research documents intensifying economic insecurity among translators and interpreters, and I have become increasingly interested in how professional narrative could be obscuring and personalising the responsibility for that insecurity. I have critiqued, for example, narratives that encourage practitioners to invest further in training and client acquisition without adequately confronting the possibility of little or no return on that investment, and research that documents deteriorating financial security while continuing to emphasise the possibility of self-actualisation through work. I have even written direct and open letters to ITI’s leadership.

So I am going to put myself in the shoes of the CEO of ITI.

I think I know one thing I would try. I would hire a theatre.

I would invite stakeholders to discover together what meaningful, ethical and genuinely productive collaboration between industry, academia, professional associations and the wider community might actually look like.

Welcome to:

Professionally Speaking

SCENE ONE: NORA

Lights up.

The curtains open on NORA, an interpreter sitting alone.

Her phone is in her hand.

She checks it.

Checks it again.

Puts it down.

Immediately picks it back up.

She is visibly tense, as though she cannot quite allow herself to stop watching the screen.

PING.

Nora jumps slightly.

A notification appears.

NARRATOR (V.O.)

Police interpreting assignment.

£25 per hour.

Travel time: unpaid.

Travel costs: unpaid.

Nora sighs and reaches for the phone.

Before she can press ACCEPT—

PING.

The assignment disappears.

Nora stares at the screen.

Silence.

She puts the phone down.

A few seconds pass.

PING.

She snatches it up.

NARRATOR (V.O.)

Court interpreting assignment.

£22 per hour.

Travel time covered.

NORA
(thinking aloud)

Okay. Lower rate.

But at least I’m paid for the travel time.

She reaches for ACCEPT.

Too late.

The assignment disappears.

Nora stares at the phone.

NORA

Fucking hell!

(She catches herself. Breathes.)

Okay. Okay.

I’ll do some NHS interpreting.

She opens a different app.

NORA

Eighteen pence per minute.

(She looks at the audience.)

But they only pay me for the time I interpret.

By the second.

SOUND EFFECT: A CLOCK BEGINS TICKING.

Nora waits.

The audience waits with her.

She looks at her phone.

Nothing.

She refreshes the app.

Nothing.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

NORA

Still waiting for a call.

She puts the phone down.

Immediately checks it again.

Waits.

RING.

Nora grabs her headset and puts it on.

PROJECTION: A GIANT STOPWATCH APPEARS BEHIND HER.

It begins counting.

00:01

00:02

00:03

Nora’s demeanour changes instantly. She is focused and professional.

NORA
(into headset)

Okay. Emergency delivery. Patient speaks limited English. She’s bleeding.

Nora begins interpreting in the patient’s language.

She listens.

Her expression changes.

NORA
(into headset)

The patient isn’t responding.

She listens again.

A pause.

NORA

Okay.

You’ll call me again if you need me.

The call disconnects.

SOUND EFFECT: CLICK.

PROJECTION:

STOP THE CLOCK.

02:50

Silence.

Nora looks at the stopwatch.

Then at her phone.

Then at the audience.

NORA

Two minutes and fifty seconds.

Eighteen pence a minute…

She calculates.

Okay.

Let’s be generous.

Let’s call it three minutes.

She looks at the audience.

How much did I just earn?

A beat.

She gets up.

NORA

I need coffee.

She walks towards the kettle.

Her personal phone rings.

She stops.

Looks at it.

Answers.

NORA

Hello?

Yes, speaking.

A pause.

What?

Another pause.

What is that?

She listens.

Her face falls.

Four hundred pounds?!

For an effing clutch plate?

(She catches herself.)

I’m so sorry for the language. I’m just having a bad day.

Yes.

Sorry.

Thank you for understanding.

She listens.

But…

Can’t you fix the current clutch plate rather than putting in a new one?

She listens.

NORA

Can I pay you in 90 days?

A pause.

I didn’t say you were my bank.

She listens, increasingly incredulous.

No, but my job pays me after 90 days.

I thought that was standard procedure!

A longer pause.

Nora closes her eyes.

Can I call you back?

She hangs up.

Silence.

She looks at the phone.

Then at the NHS interpreting app.

Then towards the audience.

Suddenly—

LIGHTING EFFECT: A DISTANT, HEAVENLY GLOW APPEARS HIGH ABOVE THE STAGE.

Somewhere in the darkness, an imaginary IVORY TOWER becomes faintly illuminated.

An authoritative academic voice descends from above.

ACADEMIC VOICE (V.O.)

You can still achieve self-actualisation through the meaningfulness of your work.

Nora slowly looks up.

Confused.

She looks behind her.

Nobody.

NORA

Who is there?

The glow intensifies.

ACADEMIC VOICE (V.O.)

You can still achieve self-actualisation through the meaningfulness of your work.

Nora looks at the NHS app.

She looks at £400 written on the scrap of paper beside her.

She looks upwards.

NORA

Self-actualisation my arse. I need £400 to fix the fucking car so I can go to work.

BLACKOUT.

Then—

A SINGLE SPOTLIGHT SNAPS BACK ON NORA.

She is completely motionless.

FREEZE.

Now Step Into Nora’s Shoes

This is where another translator or interpreter would walk onto the stage and lead the next step.

Nora would remain frozen.

The translators would explain to the audience that their job is no longer simply to watch her.

Among that audience would be academics, policymakers, public-sector commissioners, commercial actors and professional bodies, alongside translators and interpreters.

They have just watched a few minutes of Nora’s life.

They have seen the same qualified professional offered three different valuations of her labour. They have watched her tethered to her phone, competing for assignments that disappear before she can accept them. They have seen unpaid waiting time, unpaid travel, speed-based allocation, payment by the second, delayed payment and household financial risk.

Now they would be invited to imagine stepping into Nora’s shoes — and onto the stage.

Can you navigate Nora’s life?

In an earlier article about challenging the scripts of power, I explained Augusto Boal’s Forum Theatre and wrote that researching the translation and interpreting industry often feels to me like watching a Forum Theatre performance that never stops.

Translators and interpreters too often remain in the audience while institutions, professional bodies, academics and industry actors occupy the stage, defining the problems and debating the solutions.

This time, I want to reverse that.

For Nora’s scene, I drew on material from my PhD research. But I would want translators and interpreters to write the rest of the script themselves.

Perhaps a professional association will pick up the idea. Perhaps a translators’ and interpreters’ union will. Perhaps a university, theatre company or group of practitioners will want to experiment with it.

I don’t particularly mind who does it.

I just hope somebody does.

Perhaps somebody would stage the humiliation and anxiety of having to seek help from the Jobcentre despite being an experienced, highly qualified professional.

Perhaps somebody else would stage a different dilemma: being offered an assignment involving somebody who genuinely needs their help, while sitting at the kitchen table calculating whether they can afford to accept it.

That aspect of public-service interpreting alone could make a devastating scene.

But I also hope translators and interpreters would have some fun with this.

I certainly would.

ENTER: THE MARKET

Perhaps somebody introduces a new character:

THE MARKET.

Whenever anybody asks who determines pay or working conditions, someone invokes The Market.

“Is The Market joining us today?”

“No. Unfortunately The Market couldn’t make it.”

“Can we call him?”

“No contact details.”

A pause.

Then somebody looks around the audiance.

Government is there.

The commissioner is there.

The commercial intermediary is there.

The professional body is there.

Academia is there.

Technology might even have acquired its own chair by this point.

Almost everybody involved in constructing, commissioning, governing, studying, legitimating or operating this market appears to be in the room. Except, apparently, The Market.

PASS THE PARCEL

Perhaps the interpreters decide we need a game.

Music starts.

A large box marked RESPONSIBILITY begins travelling around the stage.

Government passes it to the commissioner.

The commissioner passes it to the commercial intermediary.

The intermediary passes it towards procurement.

Somebody invokes technology.

Somebody else invokes competition.

Eventually somebody hands it to MARKET FORCES.

Nobody is entirely sure who Market Forces is, so the parcel keeps moving.

The music stops.

An interpreter is holding the box.

Everyone looks relieved.

Perhaps another translator walks onto the stage and starts stacking boxes around her.

One by one:

RESPONSIBILITY.

RISK.

UNPAID WAITING TIME.

CANCELLATIONS.

CHILDCARE.

INCOME INSECURITY.

Gradually, she becomes almost invisible beneath them.

And while she sits there, serious voices begin an extremely important discussion about:

INDUSTRY SUSTAINABILITY.

Eventually she crawls out from underneath the boxes.

Picks up her coat.

And starts walking towards the exit.

Suddenly the serious voices return.

“WAIT!”

“We have a recruitment problem!”

“A retention crisis!”

“What about human-capital sustainability?”

“How can the industry retain skilled linguists?”

She stops at the door.

Looks back at everyone.

“I’ve been sitting underneath your boxes for ten years.”

And leaves.

The Final Scene

Perhaps, after all the profanity, disappearing assignments, boxes, algorithms, self-actualisation, missing Market characters and institutional pass-the-parcel, the translators and interpreters decide that the final scene should contain no jokes at all.

No PowerPoint.

No panel.

No strategy workshop.

No discussion about resilience, recruitment, innovation or sustainability.

Just one interpreter.

One chair.

Silence.

And the words of one of the interpreters who participated in my PhD research:

“I hope they allow interpreters to live from their job.”

Nothing needs to follow it.

Except perhaps me, as the imaginary head of ITI, walking onto the stage.

I would look towards the academics.

The policymakers.

The commissioners.

The commercial actors.

The professional bodies.

And anyone else who has spent the evening watching Nora and the other translators and interpreters navigate the world we have collectively constructed around them.

Then I would ask:

Who wants to step onto the stage?

Let’s collaborate to fix this.

I was also tempted to add two more characters to the play:

THE ACADEMIC ADVICE DESK

and

THE PROFESSIONAL ADVICE DESK

Our translator approaches.

TRANSLATOR

My income is increasingly insecure.

The Academic Advice Desk consults the literature.

ACADEMIC ADVICE DESK

Have you considered the meaningfulness of your work?

TRANSLATOR

Large commercial intermediaries pay badly.

ACADEMIC ADVICE DESK

Interesting. Research suggests translators working directly with clients may fare better. Have you considered finding direct clients?

TRANSLATOR

My work is increasingly being allocated through automated platforms.

PROFESSIONAL ADVICE DESK

Have you considered adapting?

TRANSLATOR

My income is unpredictable.

PROFESSIONAL ADVICE DESK

Diversifying?

ACADEMIC ADVICE DESK

Have you considered content creation? You could help other people find their way into the profession.

The translator stares at them.

TRANSLATOR

Into this profession?

A pause.

TRANSLATOR

Have you considered researching why all the solutions seem to involve me changing?

If I Were Organising the Conference Too…

My favourite idea may be handing everyone the programme for an imaginary ITI conference:

09:00 — The Market: Is Anybody Actually Responsible?

10:00 — Pass the Parcel: Public Procurement Edition

11:30 — Self-Actualisation While Your Car Is Broken

13:00 — Lunch (Unpaid)

14:00 — First Come, First Served: Please Fight for This Assignment

15:30 — Where Have All the Interpreters Gone?

16:30 — Closing Plenary: I Hope They Allow Interpreters to Live From Their Job

At my conference, however, there would be no panel entitled “Giving Translators a Voice.”

They already have voices. I would give them the microphone.

Actually, no. The translators and interpreters wouldn’t be my guests.

They would write the script.

Personal Reflections

I want Professionally Speaking to draw attention to the lived experience of translators and interpreters. Public-service interpreters contribute to policing and the administration of justice. Their work can also affect people’s health and, sometimes, potentially their lives. Yet healthcare interpreting can attract some of the lowest rates offered to interpreters.

I have often wondered why. Why does interpreting intended to protect people’s health — and sometimes potentially their lives — appear to attract some of the lowest rates in public-service interpreting, while interpreting in policing and criminal justice can pay substantially more?

And I don’t want to hear that The Market decided. Institutions, companies and individuals design, commission and participate in markets. That is rather the point.

Meanwhile, Back at the Ivory Tower…

Academics writing about other people’s hardship from the comfort of the proverbial ivory tower is hardly an unfamiliar criticism.

But there is something particularly strange about downplaying the material significance of precarity now. The ivory tower itself is becoming precarious. Universities are restructuring. Departments are closing. Jobs are disappearing. Fixed-term contracts, insecure employment and financial anxiety are hardly alien concepts within academia.

So, if precarity is now knocking rather loudly on the tower’s own door, what exactly is our excuse for looking at translators experiencing intensifying financial insecurity and reaching so quickly for the consolations of meaningfulness and self-actualisation?

Perhaps this is precisely the moment when academia should become more attentive to what economic insecurity does to people’s lives — not more ingenious at finding ways in which people might flourish despite it.

Finally, I haven’t plucked “self-actualisation” randomly from the air.

I am referring to research that documented serious deterioration in aspects of freelance translators’ job quality while nevertheless interpreting some of its findings through ideas of meaningfulness and self-actualisation.

ITI subsequently gave the researchers an award for excellence for that research. That raises a different question: What does an institution choose to recognise as excellence? And perhaps that is ultimately what Professionally Speaking is about.

We need to create a space in which the people living with the consequences get to construct the problem first — and then inviting the rest of us onto the stage.

I genuinely hope somebody takes this idea and does something with it.

It doesn’t have to be me.

The script is yours to build on.