Tag: writing
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Collaboration or Exclusion? Why is Translation Studies Still Ignoring Power and Legitimacy?
As someone researching equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI), with a focus on labour rights and working conditions in the translation and interpreting industry, I have been deeply concerned by growing calls for industry–academia collaboration within Translation Studies. The value of collaboration is often asserted rather than supported by evidence or logical arguments. These collaborations are…
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Language Justice Reading List
The list includes articles I have written on the topics of equality and labour rights for interpreters and translators, including empirical research, policy analysis, and critical commentary. They are grouped by theme rather than method, and some contributions appear in multiple categories. The importance of justice and fairness extends beyond the translation industry. As economist…
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Are You Procuring Translation and Interpreting Services Through Agencies and Platforms? Here’s What You Need to Know
When organisations procure translation and interpreting services, decisions often focus on practical considerations: cost, availability, turnaround times, scalability, and administrative convenience. I do not deny that these factors matter. However, language services are not simply interchangeable products moving through a supply chain. They are delivered by human beings. Behind every translated document, interpreted meeting, healthcare…
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It Could Have Been Me, or Any One of Us: I Continue Writing to Challenge the Scripts of Power
Over the past three years, my anger at the multiple levels of unfairness surrounding public service interpreting has been building. I often feel like a member of the audience in a Forum Theatre performance, watching a scripted show unfold before me. I can see the harm. I can see problematic power dynamics and absence of…
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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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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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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 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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Should university translation departments belong to the same club as interest groups
This critique reflects the author’s independent analysis and should not be understood as representing any institutional position. It is not connected to, commissioned by, or endorsed by the University at which the author is currently completing doctoral studies. My interest in this question arises from a broader concern about knowledge creation, academic independence, and the…
