The Linguist

Chartered Institute of Linguists SPRING 2026 The Linguist 33 OPINION & COMMENT Why we need to stop using the misleading phrase 'just translation': one translator's plea to the industry DEBBIE GARRICK "We tried 'just translation' and didn't get the results." Really? What kind of 'just translation'? Where did you source your translators? How much did you pay them? What were the constraints? All those questions and several more ran through my brain as I heard that phrase in a marketing webinar recently. It's one that appears increasingly on social media, in conversations on internationalisation and by localisation experts, and it points to a broader issue in our profession. 'Just translation' makes translation sound like less than it is; using this phrase is actively damaging the perception of translators. What we do is so much more than a linguistic task. 'Just translation' is a constructed category, a concept that was invented for differentiation. I believe it comes from the increasing reliance on machine translation and post- editing. As we know, raw machine output does not consider all the factors a human translator would. As machine translation post- editing (MTPE) became commonplace, it drove down prices and the focus shifted from quality to quantity and speed. Once the limitations of MTPE came to light, it was easier to blame 'just translation' than look at the failings of the machines and processes. Over time, translators and language service providers (LSPs) had to find a way to differentiate their services, so translation was positioned as the 'other' – something we should distance ourselves from. Translation came to mean MTPE or a sort of linguistic swap performed by a large language model (LLM) that potentially ignored creativity, localisation and all the other factors a human translator would consider. The translation and localisation industry needed to say 'we do more than that', so translation was relegated to the role of 'just translation'. Only this week on LinkedIn, I saw 'just translation' described as a linguistic task and localisation as 'a user experience (UX) strategy'. While localisation does involve more than the words on the page, I would love to find a translator who doesn't see localisation as part of their role. Translators have always considered that, for example, the shipping details on a website might need to be altered to match the country they are writing for, or the size guides for clothing, or the currency. Transcreation is another discipline that feeds the 'just translation' craze. Transcreation acknowledges that it has very little to do with the words on a page and everything to do with the meaning and intent. Pricing transcreation per word makes no sense; you could spend hours on a four-word slogan, so it's only natural some differentiation came into play. I'm certainly not arguing against transcreation as a practice; I offer it myself and I know the amount of work that goes into it. I appreciate that not every text requires the same amount of creativity and I know that not all translators feel comfortable – or have the skills – to offer transcreation, in the same way that not all translators can offer technical translation. I believe there is a place for it, I simply wish it wasn't set up in opposition to translation. If you work on any kind of marketing or creative text, there will always be some creative adaptation involved. Going back to the foundations of our profession, anyone who has ever studied translation knows that it is far from simple word replacement. Scholars and students have argued for different levels of faithfulness to the source text for eons. There is no 'one size Why 'just' isn't just © SHUTTERSTOCK

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