EX:CHANGE 2026: Client engagement and risk management
A project manager you’ve worked with for years goes quiet. When you ask why, they explain that their Language Services Company (LSC) has moved online and automated their processes. In a new post-editing project, the brief directs you not to change anything unless clearly wrong; in other words, don’t do your best. You do the work. You don’t hear from her again. You’re not sorry to lose the work, though you miss the relationship.
A direct client offers interesting work at a rate you’d normally charge for review. You offer to use a customised machine translation engine and explain that their intellectual property will be secure. The client doesn’t care what tools you use, provided the final translation is yours and that the platform is secure. It’s the start of a productive relationship.
An LSC contact calls about a request for an established client that follows new processes: they explain that this is new territory for everyone, and they are looking for a trusted linguist to help them and the end client shape the best process to achieve reliable quality, assessing different AI solutions, and tweaking prompts to achieve high-quality output. You agree on an hourly rate. This is only a pilot; it is unclear if it will become regular, but you’re excited to be part of something new.
Same profession. Same skills. Three different relationships.
Our profession is undergoing radical disruption. The same is true for many of our clients. For all of us, new technology, specifically AI, is creating new pressures, new workflows and a need to explore, but it’s also leaving many unanswered questions. Budgets are getting tighter, timelines are shrinking. The role and positioning of professionals in the translation production loop are being redefined. Many old doors are closing. New opportunities are opening.
As translators and interpreters, we often feel that we’re at the bottom of a long chain, and that the other links – and the pressures on them – are invisible to us. But don’t we need to understand what’s happening to our clients so we can position ourselves to help them as the world changes?
As with reading, literacy gives us power. Being AI-literate equips you with the language and insight needed to shape client conversations and support your clients. It gives you confidence.
There will always be a place for purely human translation and interpreting, as with creative writing and handmade art and craft. If that’s where you want to be, what do you need to do to get there and stay there?
And if not, how do we keep up with the changes in technology and how it is used, to make the most of it in our work, and to have properly informed conversations with our clients?
Do you understand what pressures your clients face when they commission language services? Can you articulate where AI tools help them, and where those tools create risks they haven’t considered? Do you have an informed opinion about what your clients need?
When a procurement team treats translation as a commodity, do you have the vocabulary to explain why it isn’t, in terms that make sense to someone who sees language as a cost centre? How do we promote the value of the human in an increasingly AI world?
We’re bringing clients and professionals together to explore this uncomfortable territory. We want to create a sharing space to understand the pressures we are all navigating and to ask honestly whether we understand our own value well enough to articulate it.
Christophe Fricker will challenge us to reconsider what we even mean by ‘our industry’. A panel of clients from radically different sectors – an LSC CEO, a streaming platform localisation manager, a psychologist and director of a humanitarian charity – will share the pressures they are facing, the changes they are making and how they see the relationships with their linguists. Together, we will discuss and try to answer the difficult questions we all face.
The answers may be uncomfortable. But we’ll leave better informed. And so more powerful. We’re asking you to arrive ready to reflect and EX:CHANGE.