Tag: ai
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Collaboration Everywhere: Is There Still Space to Critically Examine the Role of Intermediaries in Shaping Translators’ Pay and Working Conditions?
Collaboration between academia and industry is increasingly presented as an unqualified good in Translation Studies. It is associated with relevance, impact, employability, and practice-oriented scholarship. Yet collaboration is not neutral. In fields shaped by precarious labour markets, outsourcing regimes, and concentrated commercial power, it can also provide certain actors with privileged access to knowledge production,…
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After the BBC Investigation into Death, Bodily Harm, and Exploitation: What Translator Organisations’ Responses Reveal About Representation Failures in Public Service Interpreting
This article offers a chronological review of professional representation in UK public service interpreting over the past three years. It raises questions about whether professional organisations are adequately representing practitioners’ interests or have become increasingly aligned with commercial interests. In 2023, the BBC published an investigation linking interpreting failures in healthcare settings to cases of…
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Who Benefits When Professional and Commercial Interests Align—and Celebrate Together?
The Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI) reposted on their LinkedIn page a celebratory post by the Association of Translation Companies (ATC), the interest group representing translation companies, often referred to as language service providers (LSPs). The accompanying imagery places the logos of both organisations together, symbolically presenting them as partners in a shared journey…
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Three Lessons from Women’s Rights Movements for Translators
I want to begin with a clarification. I am not suggesting that the challenges facing translators are equivalent to the historical discrimination and oppression experienced by women. However, social movements often generate important lessons about power, responsibility, and social change. Some of those lessons are surprisingly relevant to current debates within the translation and interpreting…
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What Does the 2026 World Cup Have in Common with Court Interpreting?
At first glance, absolutely nothing. One is a global sporting event watched by billions. The other is an essential public service that helps ensure access to justice. Yet both are increasingly governed by the same principle: dynamic pricing. The 2026 FIFA World Cup has already generated headlines because of the extraordinary cost of tickets. Unlike…
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Are Translators Being Treated as Professionals, Entrepreneurs, or “Humans as a Service”?
Drawing on Jeremias Prassl’s concept of “Humans as a Service” (developed in relation to the gig economy) (2018), this article argues that translation work is increasingly organised in ways that combine formal independence with practical dependency. Translators are often presented as freelancers or professionals, yet in practice they operate within tightly structured systems where rates,…
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Educating End Clients About the Economic Conditions of the Translation Industry is Part of Change-Making: It Must Begin with Holding Professional Organisations Accountable
End clients—whether production companies, public institutions, agencies, or private service users—play a decisive role in shaping the economic conditions of translation and interpreting work. Through procurement choices, contracting models, and expectations around price and turnaround, they can influence how value and responsibility are distributed across translation supply chains. In this sense, end clients are not…
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Why Don’t Translators Just Get More Direct Clients?
One of the most common responses from professional organisations to concerns about declining rates and deteriorating working conditions is to advise translators to “get more direct clients.” But is this sound advice, and is it free from contradictory institutional incentives? As part of my ongoing work on re-politicising translation labour and developing a theory of…
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Why can’t translators go on strike? How dominant narratives obscure the possibility of collective action
I came across the claim that translators cannot go on strike in an academic book on translation and capitalism. I am interrogating this assumption as part of my work on re-politicising translation labour and developing a theory of change for the UK translation and interpreting industry. My interest is not simply whether translators can strike,…
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We Must Acknowledge the Ethical and Political Tensions of Advising Translators to Move into “Adjacent Careers”
As part of my ongoing work on re-politicising translation labour and developing a theory of change for the UK translation and interpreting industry, I have argued that a more robust theory of change should evaluate whether commonly promoted “solutions” are evidence-based, ethically sound, and proportionate to the structural realities of the labour market. This article…
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Who Authorised You to Speak for Translators? Access to Work, Power, and Representation in Translation and Interpreting
Translation and interpreting organisations frequently claim to represent translators and interpreters. They issue policy statements, publish position papers, respond to government consultations, and engage in “collaboration” on behalf of the profession. Yet a basic question is rarely asked: How do these organisations know that the positions they advance actually reflect what translators and interpreters want—or…
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