‘You can book an interpreter the same way you order your Uber': (re)interpreting work and digital labour platforms

ABSTRACT

The gig economy, encompassing on-demand work via platforms, has grown exponentially with significant consequences for the interpreting industry. Arguing that this tendency of the interpreting industry towards gig work reflects wider shifts in both labour-capital relations and the role of technology in the economy, this study explores ‘gig’ interpreting work from a labour process theory perspective. Leveraging a qualitative case study of three platforms in Northwestern Europe, as well as interviews with platform companies’ managers and interpreters, the study indicates that platformisation is impacting business models, organisation, and intermediation of interpreting work, with implications for interpreters’ working conditions. The study finds that engaging in platform work exposes interpreters to risks related to monetary factors, algorithmic control, individualisation of employment relations, on-demand availability, and subjugation to a digital form of supply-demand intermediation. In contrast, platform companies push towards maximising interests of profit and flexibility, harnessing the potential of gig work as the natural, entrepreneurial extension of interpreters’ self-employment status. The study contributes to interpreting and sociological studies on workplace developments in digital capitalism, suggesting that the configuration of interpreting in platform-mediated production lubricates an exploitative labour-capital relationship.

KEYWORDS:

• Gig economy
• platform work
• interpreters
• digitalisation
• technology
• labour process theory

Acknowledgements

A previous version of this paper was presented at the Faculty and Community Seminar on Interpreting Studies and Practice of the College of Humanities & Fine Arts at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and at the 6th International Conference on Non-Professional Interpreting and Translation at the University of Cyprus. The author would like to thank the organisers and participants for their thought-provoking questions and constructive discussions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This information was shared by organisational informants and cross-checked for reliability against available market reports.

2 See for instance https://translationandinterpreting.com/interpreting-rates-and-interpreter-salary/

Additional information

Funding

This study was partly supported by the Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek – Vlaanderen (FWO, Research Foundation – Flanders) through an outgoing mobility grant (ID K214422N).

Notes on contributors

Deborah Giustini

Deborah Giustini holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Manchester. She is Assistant Professor in Intercultural Communication at HBKU, as well as Research Fellow in Interpreting Studies and member of the Centre for Translation Studies at KU Leuven. As a social theorist, her work focusses on labour, tech-induced tensions, and forms of inequality in knowledge-intensive sectors such as interpreting and the language industry. She is currently investigating the workplace dynamics of multilingual communication and intercultural cooperation in organisational and digital settings. She is an executive council member of the International Association of Translation and Intercultural Studies and member of the Practice Theory Consortium at Lancaster University. She is on the editorial boards of Interpreting and Society; Sociology; Sociological Research Online, and the British Journal of Sociology. Her research has appeared in outlets such as Work, Employment and Society; Qualitative Research; and the Journal of Internationalisation and Localisation.