Tag: ai
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Who gets to define what counts as credible knowledge about translators’ rights—and whose knowledge is excluded in the process?
Recently, in a conversation with a senior representative of a translation and interpreting professional body, I found myself saying something quite simple: it does not make sense for us to be positioned on opposite sides of this discussion, because one side represents translators, and the other is trying to write about their rights. This perplexing…
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We need to talk about the value of translation—but wait… do we mean translators’ labour or LSP services?
I often come across the phrase “the value of translation” in professional discourse and academic writing, and I wonder what it really means—and whose value we are actually talking about. There is no doubt that translation enables communication and business exchange, but is it politically problematic to treat it as a single, undifferentiated entity? I…
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The Dangerous Politics of “Working Together”: Why Interpreter and Translator Organisations Must Review Their Role in Normalising Outsourcing
This second article in an ongoing investigation builds on a theory of change for the UK translation and interpreting sector. The first article examined the institutional structure of Professional Interpreters for Justice (PI4J) and the tensions between claims of representation, institutional hybridity, and embedded organisational incentives. This article turns to a critical analysis of the…
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Repoliticising Institutional Hybridity and Governmentality: Towards Meaningful Change in Labour Representation by Professional Interpreters for Justice
In this work, I build on my proposed theory of change for the translation and interpreting sector. It examines the structure and role of the umbrella organisation Professional Interpreters for Justice (PI4J) within outsourced public service interpreting, as part of a broader effort to repoliticise interpreting and translation labour and to analyse the structural organisation…
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10 Concrete Practice-Oriented Changes ITI Can Implement: Moving Beyond Adaptation Toward Labour-Conscious Institutional Framing
This article sets out a series of concrete, practice-oriented changes that the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI) could implement in order to engage more directly with the structural labour conditions affecting translators and interpreters. It builds on my earlier article, Theory of Change for the UK Translation and Interpreting Industry, and should be understood…
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Should Translators Pay to Play “Happy Community” with LSPs While Exploitation and Precarity Go Unaddressed? Urgent Changes Needed to ITI’s Conference
I am writing ahead of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI) conference because I believe meaningful change is still possible. My aim is not only to critique ITI, but to contribute to a discussion about what translators and interpreters urgently need from professional institutions at a time of intensifying precarity and labour insecurity, as…
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What hope is there for translators when their intensifying financial insecurity is often depoliticised, even in The Guardian’s coverage?
I read with interest the Guardian’s recent article on AI and translation labour titled “‘Being human helps’: despite rise of AI is there still hope for Europe’s translators?” While I am grateful for an article that acknowledges worsening precarity, declining rates, and reduced workflows, I believe it still reproduces a depoliticised and problematic framing, presenting…
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Is Professionalisation Rhetoric Contributing to a Precarity Trap for Translators and Interpreters?
There is a crisis across the translation and interpreting industry. An expanding body of academic research documents worsening working conditions across the profession: declining rates, fragmented work, weakening bargaining power, growing financial insecurity, and intensifying precarity. My own research shows that a large proportion of public service interpreters are struggling to earn enough to meet…
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Are translators really lacking entrepreneurship skills? What is the problem represented to be?
When we read reports about the profession, whether in academic studies or professional association publications, there are often lists of entrepreneurship skills translators supposedly need to acquire: better negotiation, improved business strategy, more active marketing, or greater adaptability in a changing market. But there is a useful question we should ask whenever we encounter this…
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Is the “Real Value” of ITI Membership Actually Negative? Professionalisation, Risk Transfer, and How Translation Labour Could Be Repoliticised
Like many questions that challenge established assumptions, I am aware this may be an uncomfortable one to ask. My aim in raising it is knowledge creation through a political economy analysis of membership organisations and translators’ labour. This article examines how institutional narratives, incentive structures, and representational arrangements shape what is made visible or invisible…
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Academic Research Documents Poor Job Quality and Intensifying Financial Insecurities Among UK Translators (Albeit with Theoretical and Analytical Weaknesses)
A recent academic study titled “Love’s Labour’s Found? A Data-Driven Exploration of Job Quality among UK-Based Freelance Translators” by JC Penet, Callum Walker and Joseph Lambert offers one of the clearest empirical snapshots to date of the deteriorating working conditions facing freelance translators in the UK. Many of the findings strongly resonate with my own…
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