The status of translators is not to be confused with how well anyone translates. It concerns the perception of a translator's value — what people think a particular translator can do, and how well or badly the translator is assumed to do it.

Seen as such, the question of status is extremely important because, almost by definition, someone who needs a translator cannot judge objectively how well that translator performs. Translations are among the products and services, perhaps along with used cars and legal services, where the buyer does not have direct knowledge of what they are buying — they have to rely on what people say, or on what the translator looks like, or on the translator's academic qualifications, or their membership of professional associations, or their official certification. That is, status is created by a set of social signals, which come in many shapes and sizes. Without those signals, the users of translations would be involved in an endless process of trial-and-error, as can indeed happen when buying a used car or trusting a lawyer.

These days the question of status is of particular importance because, with a website and business model, virtually anyone can start certifying translators. It is not excessively hard to supply novice translators with the external trappings of a profession: an official stamp, a place in an official-looking list, perhaps letterhead paper or a corporate email address.

Translation has received very little attention in economics. Existing contributions can first be arranged in two main categories as follows:

DESCRIPTIONS, backed up by more or less extensive quantitative data, of translation as an economic sector; the quantitative information, which is usually arranged by target language or by country, variously contains estimates of:

— the number of persons involved in the profession;

— the annual turnover of more or less narrowly defined translation services;

— the volume of output (words, pages, etc.).

Such descriptions are usually not produced by (academic) economists and are generally due to professional associations.

ANALYTICAL WORK providing theory-based explanations of some aspect or other of translation perceived as a “product” in the economic sense of the term. This work is more likely to be due to academic economists, although some contributions have come from scholars in sociology or in the language disciplines, who have adopted an economic perspective in their research on translation.

The expression “analytical work” should also be understood in a broad sense, encompassing both strictly theoretical work (usually in the form of algebraic modelling, with a focus on investigating the nature of the relationships between variables) and empirical work, in which statistical data are used to test the propositions generated by theoretical models.

Here we summarise the results corresponding to the following questions: 1) the status of translators in the various census, taxation and job-description systems. 2) the relative status of academic qualifications and training, 3) the status of sworn or authorised translators, and 4) the role of professional associations.

These results are followed by a series of case studies, where the four questions are answered in terms of more or less unified national signalling systems.

What is the Status of Translators in Official Categorisations?

General classifications of economic activities

In the “Statistical Classification of Economic Activities in the European Community” (NACE) we find “Translation and Interpretation” listed as a separate category (74.3), alongside “Specialised design activities”, “Photographic activities” and “Other professional, scientific and technical activities”. This classification is picked up in some of the national listings (in Croatia, Poland, Portugal and the United Kingdom, for example) and in principle should apply throughout the European Union.

The International Labour Organization has an International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-88) in which translators and interpreters are categorised in major group 2 “professionals”, sub-major group 24 “other professionals”, minor group 244 “social science and related professionals” and unit group 2444 “philologists, translators and interpreters”. This classification has been reported as being used in Austria.

The focus of this study is mainly on the more traditional signalling systems, the ones attached in some way to political states. It would be naive, however, to overlook the reasons why new systems are developing, notably through Internet technologies.

Informants in various countries, especially in central Europe, report that translators are receiving information and networking less through national associations and more through online sites. Some sites, like LinkedIn and Facebook, provide social networking. Other sites, however, provide an additional range of services for translators and basically function as marketplaces where clients can find translators. Here we review the way status is constructed in the main sites, presented in order of claimed number of translators.

ProZ

Founded in New York in 1999, ProZ.com claims to have “over 300,000 professional translators and translation companies” in 2011. Anyone can sign up for free, but full membership costs US$129 a year. Since the huge number of “translators” listed (i.e. everyone who has signed up for free) would seem to exceed market demands, there must be doubts that all the translators have the same professional status. ProZ has been particularly innovative in the development of signalling devices, which come with their own names-for-things. Members ask questions about translation problems, and when a member answers a question satisfactorily, they gain kudos (or KudoZ) points; the number of points accumulated thus signals relative expertise.

The basic recommendation is that attempts should be made to improve the mechanisms by which the status of translators is signalled, building on the work that has been done by the EMT and Optimale initiatives. This is in view of the many areas in which the current signals of status are not working optimally.

While it is not the task of this study to propose policy, any action in this field should pay some heed to the following criteria and desiderata:

1. 1. It should address the many paraprofessionals who are translating and interpreting many “immigrant” languages.

2. This implies that a certification system, for example, should have several different levels and types of certification, including a level for segments and languages where little training can be required because the demand far exceeds the supply of trained translators. Translation and interpreting services for the provision of justice in immigrant languages is an area where public policy is scandalously absent in the European Union.

3. 2. It should involve more than the official languages of the European Union.

4. This concerns not just “immigrant” and “non-territorial” languages, but also the languages of the major trading partners.

5. 3. In principle, it should be as lean as possible and paid for by the main direct beneficiaries.

6. This implies recognising that status is a commodity, with a market value. Public funds should be invested only to the extent that public administrations are themselves long-term beneficiaries.

7. 4. It should seek to ensure cross-border recognition of qualifications and certifications.

8. […]

European monetary integration rests on a convergence of views across different countries related to the virtues of stable money and sound finances. This convergence has operated under many different justifications. It was the logical response to the liberalization of international financial markets; it was the price for German participation; and it was the hegemony of neo-liberalism in the battle of ideas. No matter how they explained it, most observers agreed on the existence of a Brussels–Frankfurt consensus underpinning Europe's single currency.

Then the consensus began to falter. The first cracks appeared during the crisis surrounding the stability and growth pact (SGP) in the early 2000s. The tensions mounted with the widening divergence in inflation rates across Eurozone countries and the increasingly volatile euro–dollar exchange rate during the middle of the decade. The consensus shattered completely as the ECB struggled first to manage the global economic and financial crisis and then was found to be responsible for the stabilization of European sovereign-debt markets. Now, the German economics community is openly discontent with the ECB; the ECB and the European Commission are promoting different agendas; and the member states are clearly divided as to what should be the solution.

This chapter explains the collapse of the Brussels–Frankfurt consensus. The argument echoes the main themes of this volume. To the extent that it existed, the ideational consensus underpinning Europe’s single currency was always more rhetoric than reality. The main economic actors couched their policies in the language of sound money and stable finances (or free markets and neutral states); however, they actually behaved more pragmatically than ideologically, and they showed a remarkable willingness to break their own rules.

Introduction

One of the most significant developments in economic theory in recent decades is the emergence of a neo-liberal approach to governing the firm, which has become commonly known as the ‘shareholder’ or the ‘shareholder-value’ model. This approach, which is based on the conceptionalization of the firm as a set of contracts between ‘principals’ and ‘agents’, has achieved a dominant position in academic thinking and policy making in the field of corporate governance at the EU level. Most advocates of this approach do not explicitly identify themselves as neo-liberals; nevertheless, the tenets of this approach clearly fit the definition of neo-liberalism offered in the first chapter of this book. The shareholder model is based on a strong faith in the efficiency of markets because it claims that a properly functioning stock market can best measure the value of firms and efficiently allocate capital to the most profitable investment projects. Furthermore, the stock market is a key element in creating a ‘market for corporate control’, which allows ownership and management of underperforming firms to be transferred – if necessary, against the will of incumbent managers and employees – to actors that will restructure the firm to increase efficiency. The shareholder model of governance, it is argued, has positive welfare effects for stakeholders in the firm (including employees) and, therefore, for society as a whole.

In contrast with laissez-faire approaches to corporate governance, the shareholder model accepts the need for a strong state role in setting and enforcing rules to enable the stock market to function properly. In particular, so-called minority shareholders (i.e., those shareholders holding relatively small proportions of stock in a company) must be protected from a host of actors that might exploit information or power advantages to extract value from the firm in their own interests. The shareholder model also contrasts with the broad class of ‘stakeholder’ theories, which value worker participation, state-led industrial policy, and (more recently) environmental protection.

When Keynes wrote these lines, he certainly had in mind the influence of the ideas of laissez-faire economic liberalism, which he held responsible for the great boom and bust of the 1920s that led to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Today, another form of economic liberalism, neo-liberalism, has supplanted Keynes's own ideas, which had gained dominance in the postwar era. Our task, in this theoretical essay, is to explain how and why the ideas of neo-liberal economists and political philosophers obtained and retained their power in European policy debates and political discourse during the past three or four decades.

We define ‘neo-liberalism’, at its essence, as involving a commitment to certain core principles focused on market competition and a limited state. Our purpose is to explain the resilience of these core neo-liberal ideas, meaning their ability to endure, recur, or adapt over time; to predominate against rivals; and to survive despite their own many failures. We offer five lines of analysis as potential explanations for such resilience: first, the generality, flexibility, and mutability of neo-liberal ideas themselves; second, the gap between neo-liberal rhetoric and a reality in which they are not implemented; third, their advantages in policy debates and political discourse compared with alternatives; fourth, the power of interested actors who strategically adopt and promote neo-liberal ideas; and, fifth, the force of the institutions in which neo-liberal ideas are embedded.