Behind the Curtain in the Translation Industry: Things that change and things that don't.
(June 1, 2025)
Executive Summary: Most translation is sold by companies serving as brokers that have no translation capability themselves to speak of. The introduction of MT, AI-driven or otherwise, makes things worse, furthering the fantasy that brokers themselves can translate. Agencies calling themselves language service providers and, recently, even "language solutions integrators" doesn't make any substantive change.
Behind the CurtainThe unseen, unspoken reality
Traditionally, most commercial translation has been sold by agencies that have little or no translation capability themselves and only act as purchasers and resellers (brokers) of translations produced by translation practitioners (aka, translators), which they very seldom have as employees. When the translations they purchase from practitioners need to be edited, the brokers most often purchase (outsource) those editing services as well, also from people not in their employ.
This situation is not realized or understood by many translation clients, who are treated to translation agency websites that boast of an agency's "team" of thousands of expert translators, implying that the agency is doing translation work, although it rarely is. And, of course, brokers will do nothing to correct this misconception of how things are done in the translation industry.
But who takes responsibility for the translations purchased and resold by these brokers? If a client requires a declaration of accuracy for a translation, for example, the practitioner (translator) who sold the translation to the broker might be asked to create such a document to affix to a translation.
But often the translation process might be one of a broker having an initial, poorly done translation repaired and certified by yet another non-employee translator who was not involved in the translation process. And if a problem is discovered with a translation after delivery, since they don't have the ability to be involved in that conversation, the broker will most likely need to purchase services to handle the problem from outside as well.
This is clearly not an optimal system to ensure quality and trust, but it remains hidden behind the smoke and mirrors of brokers that promote "their" thousands of translators and subject-matter experts.
Enter Machine TranslationSynthetic translations made by collections of software commands
A rapidly increasing number of translation agencies that formerly could act as only brokers—while allowing clients to think that they translate documents—are now using machine translation, with or without the overhyped AI buzzword or the underlying technology, thereby eliminating their need to even purchase the translations they sell. They can produce artificial translations in-house using a faceless, nameless collection of software commands called AI.
So, who is responsible for those synthetic translations? Perhaps it is a hapless translator who agrees to check and repair the AI translation output who might need to take responsibility. Is this something that highly skilled professionals would like to—or should—do? Most professionals think not.
Should the task of synthetic AI translation repair be given to a translator who could have executed the original translator from scratch or a translator (or even non-translator) who has just submitted to the demand by a broker for repair work? Because professionals realize the greatly diminished professional rewards from repair work, more and more it will be the latter demographic—a subset of translators and non-translators incapable of surviving on their own as translators, but who have reasons to settle for much less, which is precisely what such brokers are essentially asking their clients to do.
Translation Sellers on the Renaming TreadmillRepackaging doesn't change much.
In the past, most translation brokers were content to pass themselves off as translation agencies. In more recent years, most have replaced that name with LSP (language service provider), and recently some language service providers are looking to repackage themselves as linguistic solutions integrators. A broker by any other name, however, smells the same.
Naming silliness aside, however, these current trends in the translation industry are to the benefit of neither translation practitioners nor the unknowing clients of translation sellers, and it behooves clients to make efforts to learn just what goes on behind the curtain in the translation industry. It might not be as difficult as it seems. Ask the translation company you use just who is executing and taking responsibility for the translations you purchase. If you don't get a reply indicating a real translator with a real, verifiable name, it is safe to assume that you are being gamed by an entity that, realizing that it is not adding much value, cannot risk a client learning who is actually executing the translations they sell. Is this what you signed up for? We think not.