You are invited to help rebuild translation professions!

This project is a collaboration with FIT Europe, which is a “meta-association” of translation professions: It brings together 58 European associations of translators, terminologists, and interpreters. Together, they represent roughly 40,000 professionals. 

Translation professions have suffered from AI adoption consequences more than most. The impacts started with machine translation, long before the generative AI boom, but now the situation has worsened drastically. It is to the point that many are considering leaving the profession, and those who stay face severe economic pressure, loss of agency over their own work, and heightened levels of stress and anxiety, among other impacts.

Our project is about creating a way forward. We are helping the boards of translation professions associations (FIT Europe's members) understand how to use AI to build a new future for their professions with their communities and empower their individual members. We aim to create a shift in translation professions as a whole through the trickling down of this effort. 

We have already taken the first steps:

Starting from December 2025, I gave a series of workshops to the FIT Europe board. The goal was to expand their perspective about AI and work through learning my Chef Approach to AI, which centers on thinking critically about AI, strategic focus on future work, ethics, and learning how to build AI tools.

Our conversations surfaced a nuanced understanding of the devastating impact of AI on their professions. Yet, despite the grim circumstances, the board members who participated said it changed their thinking on AI, leaving them feeling more empowered to wield it to rebuild their professions. So the next natural step is to expand.

We are now writing a position paper to bring out a first draft of our conclusions and vision. This will be the foundation for a small expert group from FIT Europe that will build AI tools to implement the vision. In addition, our final findings will be presented at the FIT Europe’s annual meeting in Madrid (November 2026).

We are opening the process to everyone because we believe rebuilding translation will take a village.

In this workshop:

We will share the first draft of our position paper and invite you to improve it:

• We will go over our conclusions and vision.

• There will be dedicated time to comment on the draft.

• There will also be dedicated time for discussion.

• All contributors will be acknowledged when we publish. 

• We will also publish a companion document for contributions that couldn't fit in the main paper, such as examples, expansions, and dissenting views.

  
  

The feedback you give us will be the foundation of the rest of the process.

Anyone welcome!

We are very much interested in perspectives from other professions!

What is happening to the translation professions is not unique to them. We want an outside perspective, and we think many of our insights are applicable to a broad range of professions so you will probably learn insights applicable to your domain.

To read more:

• Read here [LINK] about the rest of the project and my approach to the future of work and AI

• Board members in FIT Europe organizations are welcome to apply to participate in the expert group here

We look forward to seeing you at the workshop!