Post by Fardous Bahbouh

I want to share my appreciation for IA-lerte générale for translating my article about translators' intensifying financial insecurities into French, making it accessible to a wider audience of translators, interpreters, researchers, and practitioners. The translated piece focuses on the UK and explores the structural reasons why translators and interpreters are often poorly paid. The article argues that the persistent underpayment of translators and interpreters is not caused by individual failings or simple market forces, but by structural and institutional systems that actively produce low pay and precarity. It identifies several interconnected drivers: - Corporate practices in the translation industry treat translators as cost variables rather than workers, prioritising price minimisation over fair compensation. This is reinforced by workflows that commodify linguistic labour. - Weak legal protections and contractor status exclude translators from basic employment rights such as minimum wage guarantees, sick pay, and holiday entitlement, shifting financial and professional risk onto individuals. - Outsourcing structures fragment responsibility across multiple layers of agencies and institutions, making accountability for pay and working conditions difficult to locate and allowing cost pressure to cascade down to freelancers. - Broader inequality (including gender, migration status, and socio-economic factors) limits alternatives for many translators, reinforcing acceptance of low-paid work and weakening collective resistance. - Technological change (AI and machine translation) is often wrongly framed as the cause of declining pay, when responsibility lies instead with organisations that choose how to deploy these technologies to reduce costs and reshape labour. - Institutional and academic narratives often emphasise adaptability, skills development, and client relationships, while underplaying structural issues such as pay, power, and working conditions—thereby shifting responsibility onto individual translators. I am particularly grateful for the care taken in translating the article and for the decision to make it available to a French-speaking audience. This kind of work helps extend the conversation beyond national and linguistic boundaries, which is especially important in a field where many practitioners experience similar structural pressures but may not always have access to the same discussions. I am pleased to see the translated version being shared and hope it contributes to ongoing reflection and discussion about the conditions under which translation and interpreting work is commissioned and valued. The original article, Why Translators and Interpreters Are Often Poorly Paid: Corporate Power and Displaced Responsibility, is available in English here: