Translators against the Machine: a call to arm ourselves against precarity, technological tyranny and obsolescence
Do you feel lost, lonely and exploited at the mercy of powerful market forces in the translation industry?
Do you miss having your creative qualities and choices recognized and appreciated?
Come and join an emerging, globally distributed network of translators, editors, copywriters and other professionals in the translation sector! Quit roaming the inhospitable desert of the translation industry, laptop in hand, and feel welcomed into the global digital oasis that we want to build with like-minded individuals and organizations, a distributed platform cooperative for translators against the machine and all the potential futures this might unblock: collaboration across nodes on revolutionary projects, cross-pollination within a resilient network, a real systemic alternative to corporativist and extractivist models.
What machine? The exploitative system that has our profession, like so many others, under its thumb, forcing us to use technology that devalues our work and reduces our income as the clock ticks mercilessly.
What do we offer? The chance to work together to build a place where you can bring your whole self and work for a better world while receiving a fair salary and looking after each other.
Impossible? Naive? Risky?
We have been doing it for 10 years (yes, this year is our 10th anniversary), and we are well aware of the challenges we face as freelancers in a ruthless environment.
This is a global call to cooperate and defend the value of our own skills, use technology in ways that enhance our uniqueness and humanity and build a distributed digital organisation that purveys linguistic delicacies, recognises the often invisibilized care work that goes into our job, and contributes to the global knowledge commons by translating self-curated pieces as part of our pro bono mission.
This is a call to action, to unite and join forces to rescue the translation profession from the claws of a market that aims to make us irrelevant and expendable.
This is an open call for individuals and groups that work in the industry and believe that things can be done differently, that work can be performed and remuneration distributed differently. For people that want to feel they belong t0 something bigger, share the risk and the profit, and support each other through thick and thin.
Against precarity, for the cause and for a free, fair and alive future.
Do you feel it? That feeling in your body telling you this is right? Well, it’s only common sense.
Get involved. Sign up here to express interest. We will get back to you with a proposal for the next steps within a month of closing the call on December 31st. Because we are ready to transform. How about you?
See you on the other side.
The Guerrilla Media Collective Team