Understanding the challenges and seeking a way forward
Over the last few weeks I've heard many examples of members who are finding it genuinely hard to maintain their translation businesses. The once-steady stream of regular translation work has slowed; the downward pressure on rates continues to be a source of worry. And there are some ITI members who are wondering whether the profession they care about still has a future. Some have concluded that it does not. I don't dismiss this view, but I personally believe that there will still be a need for highly skilled professional translators who have the knowledge and experience required to work in specialist fields.
However, widespread concerns about the future are genuine and they are shared by Board members and the staff team. And, sadly, they are not new, nor are they simply the result of the rise of generative AI. The downward pressure on rates has been building for years, driven by a structural shift in how language services are bought and sold. What has accelerated that shift – and made it feel more acute – is the growing conviction among some clients that machine translation tools can deliver the same standard of output as a skilled human professional, only faster and at a fraction of the cost.
All linguists know that this conviction is, in most contexts that matter, simply wrong. But knowing that AI output is inadequate for high-stakes work doesn't matter if your clients do not know it, or have not experienced the consequences of getting it wrong. The errors in a mistranslated legal document or medical instruction tend to surface quietly, and well after the commissioning decision has been made. In the meantime, the professional who could have done the job properly has been passed over. The Guardian's recent analysis of the situation facing Europe's translators is worth reading for anyone who wants to understand why:
We are acutely aware of this and so we continue to explore different ways of responding to these complex challenges. We seek out opportunities to advocate for the value of human translators and interpreters and we engage in policy discussions with stakeholders to try to build a greater awareness of the need for machine translation literacy. We have also added more business skills topics to our training offer and are working to add further useful resources to our website.
The recognition that the needs of the profession are evolving is also the reason why the board agreed that we needed to think differently about our 2026 conference — EX:CHANGE 2026, which takes place at Unity Place in Milton Keynes in July. We deliberately moved away from the familiar format and have worked with the conference advisory committee to create a participative structure designed to generate outcomes rather than just discussion, supported by a broad range of invited speakers and panellists.
The conference is constructed around three themes that have become central to building a successful career in the industry as it is today. The format is deliberately participative because we recognise that we don't have all the answers, and we want to create a space where the community can work towards solutions together. The aim is to generate practical takeaways and commitments to action, and we intend the conversations to continue well beyond the event.
The first theme is engaging with clients. This is not simply about communication skills. It is about the harder question of how professional translators and interpreters articulate their value in a market that has been told, repeatedly, that their work can be done more cheaply by a machine. The session brings clients and practitioners into the same room for an honest conversation about what each side needs, and how both can gain when the working relationship functions properly. Speakers include Jennifer Vela-Valido, Global Language Quality Programme Manager at Spotify, and Dr Samuel Läubli, CEO of Supertext, alongside a keynote from Christophe Fricker, who will challenge some of the assumptions professional translators hold about the way they present themselves to clients.
The second theme is entrepreneurship and business development. There is no denying that the traditional agency model has changed significantly, and for many self-employed translators the pipeline and the workflows look very different from how they did even five years ago. This session will be intentionally practical, addressing the question of how you build a sustainable practice in the current environment. How do you find and keep direct clients, market your expertise effectively, and make sound decisions about where to focus your energy? Dr Sonia Koller, whose research sits at the intersection of entrepreneurship and psychology, will open the session, and will be joined by a panel that includes our local NatWest Business Accelerator Manager and an entrepreneur who has built one of the Nordic region's leading language service companies.
The third theme is ethical practice. This is not a comfortable topic, and the session is not designed to be comfortable. Ethics in translation and interpreting, including professional standards, the question of how far to accommodate client pressure, and the ecological and social dimensions of the choices we make, has never been more complex. The session will be facilitated by three academics who bring research expertise in translation technology, sustainability, and professional practice, and is structured to give participants space for honest reflection on how to navigate competing pressures.
EX:CHANGE 2026 is open to the language services community in the broadest sense: translators, interpreters, localisers, transcreators, project managers, language service companies and anyone else who works across languages. In our 40th anniversary year, we want to mark more than a milestone. We want to bring people together to think seriously about the future of the profession — what it looks like, what it could look like, and what we might collectively do to shape it. We don't have a ready-made answer to that question but we are inviting people to come together to see what can be done.
