I am a PhD researcher investigating inequality in outsourced public service interpreting in the United Kingdom. My research has documented low remuneration, economic insecurity, weak employment protections, diminishing bargaining capacity and inadequate health and safety protections among public service interpreters. It also examines the outsourcing arrangements within which these inequalities occur, and how those arrangements might be challenged and reformed to create more ethical and equitable public supply chains through a focus on rights, value distribution and voice.

As part of my thesis, I have spent considerable time reviewing what Translation and Interpreting Studies actually tells us about the economic and working lives of translators and interpreters. There is more evidence than we might sometimes realise.

Even before adding the findings from my own research, the existing literature gives us quite a substantial picture. Across different areas of translation and interpreting, researchers have documented low or declining remuneration, financial insecurity, unpaid work, limited bargaining over rates, dependence on intermediaries, uneven access to social and employment protections, long or irregular working hours, occupational risks, concerns about career progression, technological pressures and difficulties converting considerable qualifications and experience into economic security.

In the interest of collegiality, however, I am giving the critic in me a day off!

So, before I write about what I think we may be getting wrong – and what we might do differently – I want to start somewhere simpler: what has the research actually found? This is not intended as an exhaustive review of everything ever published about translators’ and interpreters’ working lives. It is a summary of some of the literature I have reviewed for my thesis, particularly research concerned with remuneration, job quality, financial security, working conditions, professional autonomy and technological change.

Public service interpreting: low pay and difficult working conditions

Research on public service interpreting has documented concerns about remuneration and working conditions for many years. Studies report low pay, limited opportunities for career progression and the absence of employment benefits such as paid leave and pensions. Research has also documented exposure to vicarious trauma and challenging or unsafe environments, sometimes without adequate psychological or organisational support. Jiqing Dong and Graham H. Turner’s (2016) study is particularly revealing about interpreters’ everyday experience of outsourced work. Their participants reported tight managerial control over work allocation and procedures, inadequate health and safety provision and insufficient risk assessment for potentially unsafe environments. Some interpreters were reluctant to raise questions because they feared appearing incompetent or losing future assignments. More than half of the participating interpreters reported difficulty refusing assignments because they feared losing work or being blacklisted. Interpreters also reported extensive unpaid travel and waiting time, unpredictable workloads and insufficient information to prepare adequately for assignments.

Joanna Drugan’s (2020) research on police interpreting similarly documented changes accompanying outsourcing, including compulsory booking applications and financial penalties for lateness or inability to attend assignments. Her research also highlights the diversity of the companies involved in organising outsourced interpreting, including multinational outsourcing businesses and private-equity-backed companies whose backgrounds are not necessarily in translation and interpreting. That is one of the reasons I prefer the term commercial intermediaries rather than the commonly used term language service providers (LSPs).

There is also evidence of considerable variation in rates between areas of public service interpreting. Brooke Townsley (2007), for example, reported that interpreters working for courts or police in Greater London could expect £28–£35 per hour, compared with £15–£20 in health and local-government settings. More recent systematic research specifically connecting remuneration to interpreters’ overall financial security remains limited. Rebecca Tipton (2017) observed that difficulties maintaining a reliable income from interpreting in Britain could lead practitioners to accept assignments across different domains without fully understanding the consequences. Esther Leung (2020), meanwhile, described complaints concerning inadequate remuneration, low morale and lack of transparency in outsourced UK public service interpreting.

More recently, Li Li’s (2025) research into maternity interpreting found evidence of interpreters withdrawing from healthcare work. Among 126 interpreters surveyed, 60.4% reported reducing their healthcare interpreting, 17.5% rarely undertook healthcare assignments and 7.1% had stopped altogether. Li connects these workforce difficulties with reduced interpreting choices for migrant women accessing maternity services.

Professional data point in a similar direction. A National Register of Public Service Interpreters survey of 381 interpreters working primarily with the Ministry of Justice found that 47% earned less than £10,000 gross in the tax year ending March 2024, while only 5% earned £30,000 or more (NRPSI, 2024). To put this in context, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (2023, p. 2) estimated that a single person required an annual income of approximately £29,500 to achieve a minimum acceptable standard of living in the United Kingdom.

Freelance translators: highly qualified, but not necessarily financially secure

The economic concerns documented in public service interpreting are not confined to PSI.

Joseph Lambert and Callum Walker’s Because We Are Worth It (2022) examines translator remuneration against technological change, platform-mediated work and the growing role of large commercial intermediaries. They identify lower-paid work accessed through intermediaries alongside potentially better-paid, although less secure, direct-client work, and describe translators’ earnings as a “chief ethical and pragmatic concern”.

Research into platform-mediated interpreting adds another dimension to this picture. Deborah Giustini’s (2024) qualitative research into digital interpreting platforms documents highly fragmented working time, including remuneration calculated down to minutes, while time associated with preparation and other activities may fall outside paid work. The study also documents algorithmic forms of work allocation and evaluation, ratings, visibility and possible deactivation, alongside expectations of rapid response and on-demand availability. Her research shows how digital technologies are changing not simply how interpreting is performed, but also how work is accessed, allocated, monitored and remunerated.

Akiko Sakamoto, Darren Van Laar, Joss Moorkens and Felix do Carmo’s (2025) survey of 381 members of ITI – 76.4% of whom were women – found that the balance between work obtained through commercial intermediaries and work obtained directly from clients was associated with several dimensions of working life. Respondents with a lower proportion of direct-client work reported lower control at work, poorer relationships with work providers, weaker career success, lower overall work satisfaction and lower perceived fairness of pay. The study also found that greater involvement in machine translation post-editing was negatively associated with dimensions of translators’ working lives. Some respondents also reported considering leaving the profession because of insufficient workload associated with emerging AI.

More recent research by J.C. Penet, Callum Walker and Joseph Lambert (2026) examined job quality among 216 UK freelance translators. The respondents were highly qualified and experienced: 77.8% were women and had an average of 16.4 years of translation experience. The study found significant problems relating to earnings, future prospects, bargaining power, work intensity and technological change, alongside positive experiences in other dimensions of work. Respondents reported considerable professional fulfilment, but many were dissatisfied with their income and perceived their career and financial prospects negatively.

The picture extends beyond the UK. Kristijan Nikolić, Mirjana Tonković and Jorge Díaz Cintas’ (2026) large European study of audiovisual translators found substantial economic insecurity within a highly educated workforce. Nearly 70% of respondents held a master’s degree or higher, yet 62% reported earning at or below the median wage in their respective countries. The study found no significant relationship between educational attainment and earnings and no significant relationship between years of professional experience and income. Many respondents depended heavily on commercial intermediaries for work. The study found that 43.4% never worked directly with end clients, while only 6.2% always did so. It also found that 41.2% rarely or never negotiated their rates. Working time extended beyond directly remunerated translation. Respondents reported spending an average of 2.97 hours each week on secondary activities such as finding clients, invoicing and bookkeeping, while 66.7% did not incorporate administrative work and time off when calculating their rates. Long and irregular working hours were also common. The study reports widespread long-hours and weekend working, while 53.4% of respondents took three weeks or less annual leave and 33.2% took two weeks or less. It also found uncertainty around social protection: 22.3% did not know whether they were eligible for unemployment-support schemes.

Together, these studies tell us a great deal about the lived economic realities of linguistic labour. That is where I want to stop in this first article. Because the next question is different.

If we already know all of this, how are we explaining and analysing it? Where are we locating responsibility? And what might we be getting wrong about it all?

Those are the questions I want to explore next, when the critic returns for her next shift. She has quite a lot to say. Stay tuned!

Bibliography

Dong, J. and Turner, G. 2016. The ergonomic impact of agencies in the dynamic system of interpreting provision: An ethnographic study of backstage influences on interpreter performance. Translation Spaces. 5(1), pp.97–123.

Drugan, J. 2020. Complex collaborations: interpreting and translating for the UK police.” Target. 32(2), pp.307-326.

Giustini, D. 2024. ‘You can book an interpreter the same way you order your Uber’: (re)interpreting work and digital labour platforms. Perspectives, studies in translatology. 32(3), pp.441–459.

Lambert, J. and Walker, C. 2022. Because We’re Worth It: Disentangling freelance translation, status, and rate-setting in the United Kingdom. Translation Spaces. 11(2), pp.277-302.

Leung, E. 2020. Medical interpreting as an emerging profession in Hong Kong. In: Ineke, C. and NG, E. eds. Interpreting in Legal and Healthcare Settings: Perspectives on Research and Training. The Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp263-286.

Li, L. 2025. The vicious circle: how systemic barriers perpetuate maternity interpreting service inadequacies for migrant women in the UK. Front. Glob. Women’s Health. 6:1638434. doi: 10.3389/fgwh.2025.1638434

NRPSI. 2024. NRPSI Survey for the House of Lords Inquiry into Interpreting and Translation Services in the Courts. Accessed 5 January 2025. NRPSI

Nikolić, K., Tonković, M. and Díaz Cintas, J. 2026. ‘Working conditions of audiovisual translators in Europe’. Parallèles, 38(1).

Penet, J., Walker, C. and Lambert, J. 2026. Love’s labour’s found?: A data-driven exploration of job quality among UK-based freelance translators. Target : international journal of translation studies.

Sakamoto, A., Van Laar, D., Moorkens, J. and do Carmo, F. 2025. Translators’ Work-Related Quality of Life Survey Report 2025. Institute of Translation and Interpreting

Tipton, R. 2017. Contracts and capabilities: public service interpreting and third sector domestic violence services. Translator (Manchester, England). 23(2), pp.237–254.

Townsley, B. 2007. Interpreting in the UK Community: Some Reflections on Public Service Interpreting in the UK. Language and intercultural communication. 7(2), pp.163–170.