These seven thoughts began to take shape last month during the papal conclave livestream on in the background. You’re probably surprised that an atheist and former protestant followed it. I’d become interested after reading BBC Pidgin coverage of the conclave. This itself was an exercise in trying to understand how it was reported in Africa, a continent mentioned frequently regarding potential papal candidates.
My “Always Be Curious” outlook means that I am still receptive to issues that do not tie in with my interests or personal beliefs. The same applies to issues that are unlikely to affect me. In this sense the issues facing higher education, in particular for language and translation degrees are not relevant for me. However, as a parent, I am fully aware of the challenges that Higher Education faces.
My gaze returned to translation and language degrees in light of a Substack newsletter containing the provocative statement “Everyone is cheating their way through college. ChatGPT has unraveled the entire academic project“. This eye-catching title appeared in the 5 May 2025 edition of the New York Magazine. During my recent trip to Birmingham with my family in April, I also discussed various issues dogging language degrees over a relaxed lunch with one of my former university tutors.
So here are my seven thoughts on language/translation degrees and the current brittle state of affairs in higher education.
- There is a fundamental supply and demand issue in the UK that is leading to language degrees disappearing. The grim picture is illustrated very well on this UCU page hosted at Queen Mary University of London. Putting it bluntly: higher education is shrinking. Language degrees often being targeted for the chop is unsurprising: after all many school pupils stop learning foreign languages at the age of 14.
Many pupils only study one language until 16, and seldom any language thereafter. Little surprise that admission levels have been dropping for language degree courses – from around 160,000 in 2003 (prior to the major language learning policy shift) to 75,000 in 2019. Schools that teach languages also may not offer as broad a range of languages as they once did: the number of schools offering German has constantly fallen over the last decades. German was my second modern foreign language at school, but has become my career language. More exotic languages degrees like Arabic may only be offered at a handful of institutions.
Looking closer to home, in Austria translation degrees are offered at the Universities of Vienna (ZTW), Innsbruck (INTRAWI), and Graz (ITAT). A new course on Multilingual Technologies is being offered by the FH Campus Wien in association with the ZTW. Sometimes the choice of language combinations for the “traditional” degrees may shape where you study in Austria. In other countries there are similar issues – in the Netherlands, there are practically no translation degrees into German. Countries bordering the countries that acceded to the EU in 2004 frequently do not offer translation degrees widely in the languages of their neighbours. - The cost of studying has become prohibitive. Language degrees suffer in particular due to paying an extra year in tuition and maintenance fees. Poor (and poorly paid!) job prospects are a decisive factor for whether (or probably not) to stump up for 4-5 years’ tuition fees instead of three.
This is desperately sad: my year abroad was a life-changing experience. I spent nine months of immersion in rural Austria as a Language Assistant, boosted my wage with lots of private tuition, discovered Central and Eastern Europe, and then spent a summer in Brussels working in French at an American telecoms company.
That experience paid about four times the UK minimum wage that my summer jobs might otherwise have attracted. The corporate experience meant that I negotiated to return to Brussels between my 4th and 5th years for another summer at the same company, and was due to return to it after graduation. Moreover, I had some professional experience under my belt. - Increased fees have also transformed students into paying customers. With it higher education establishments are fearful that their paying customers may sue if they don’t get the grade they wanted. The motives of students at university have definitely changed since my time at university.
I was in the last generation to study in a far more care-free era. Talking to my cousin’s children, one a recent graduate, the other midway through their degree, made me realise how different student life and concerns are in towards the end of the first quarter of the 21st century.
They have also suffered due to the effect of the pandemic on the learning process – the graduating class of 2026 are likely to have had their formal school exams disrupted by the pandemic, only to then have to return to post-pandemic (semi?) normality at university. - With tech hollowing out the Higher Education process, if you aren’t personally committed to the pursuit of academic excellence, possibilities exist to coast through your degree (providing you don’t get caught!). However, the financial commitment to a degree from the outset might make coasting less appetising.
My cohort’s study skills that stood us in good stead (e.g. note taking, summarising, solid skills in our foreign languages with restricted available resources). Possibly the fact that my cohort had to understand and digest accordingly, and no option to outsource this task to GenAI helped us.
I remember having to live, eat, breathe (and drink) the cultures of the languages I learned. There was no gamification of language learning, and no silly DuoLingo streaks. I would put my academic performance down to good preparation: I purchased all the books I needed from the outgoing year ahead before the start of the summer. While working in French in Brussels, I also read a lot of my German texts on tram and train rides to and from my office in Brussels.
I scythed through Buddenbrooks lying on my bed in my “Kot” with pots of tea after finding an edition at a bookstore at de Brouckère. Nowadays it would be on my tablet, Kindle or even smartphone in seconds. Research is disseminated online and piped to whichever electronic device is within reach: answers have become far easier to access. - For those studying translation, such online resources can make a mockery of traditional methods of continuous assessment. Machine translation tools might get students by in continuous assessment tasks conducted outside of controlled conditions, but how do students then do under controlled conditions? Do they really have the depth of language skills of previous generations?
Do ubiquitous online resources necessitate a return to high stakes finals under closed conditions? You could argue that such resources help “level the playing field”. That is surely questionable in light of the fact that in a similar way to state schools sold off their playing fields in the 1980s and 1990s. Language learning playing fields have been sloped firmly in favour of the private schools for over 20 years.
At the same time, the glacial pace of innovation in higher education prevents language degrees from advancing, reinventing, or making the anywhere near the lightning speed advances made by technology-based solutions. Good courses are naturally crafted by passionate lecturers. How do you keep academics motivated, researching and bringing through the next generation? They are not well remunerated and face their own existential issues, given the decline in language degrees.
Last but not least there is also the issue of finding the correct balance between the language side and the technology side, in a degree course. This is essential to send well-rounded graduates out into the world. Hopefully the FH Campus Wien course is leading the way in this regard. - Teaching translation studies and linguistics follow very prescriptive and theoretical approaches. As a fresh graduate, plunged into translation to survive in a foreign country, my “Aha-Erlebnis” was seeing how theory went out the window. The reality of submitting a translation for a fee by a fixed deadline is a different story.
The only similarity for me was more a takeaway from study skills. I quickly worked out how to organise myself to deliver with a small buffer before the deadline, to factor in revision cycles by other translators, to discuss terminology and apply it consistently across the entire text.
However, for all the translation methodology I had learned about, there was little attention to interpersonal and soft skills. Translation degrees also do not necessarily prepare students for the heavy cognitive load of real life. In the heady days of all-in self-employment I delivered 700,000-800,000 words of translation a year (albeit with relatively small and fresh translation memories). The constant workload left me exhausted. Now, my workload is only sustainable with mature translation memories and high quality alignments. The stakes are also higher, but I have job security instead of constantly worrying about all the “Kleinkramm” of self-employment that goes with the job. I am able to focus on my real job. - Sectoral experience and specialisation in industry quickly outstrips the academic approach to translation. As strong as tutors may be on the theoretical side of translation, what is the depth of their subject matter expertise like? This could change if more specialist translators were to take on academic teaching. The question remains of whether such an approach could ensure the profession for a new generation coming through is uncertain. Also the best subject matter specialists may not be the best lecturers and vice versa.
My early career was shaped by telecoms expertise from working for pan-European telecoms players. I knew how the industry worked, about how it was liberalising in Europe, about the underlying technologies and infrastructures. During my final year at university, not only was I doing the formal side of my studies to complete my degree, but I was actively following the telecom industry in three languages, ahead of a scheduled return to Brussels after graduation. “Keeping the motor running” in this way proved essential for my early agency work in Vienna, where frequently there were no specialists in the field, just experienced generalists.
The problem with generalists is that they are most at threat from the GenAI and NMT revolution. With “good enough” seemingly being the requirement as a dumping rate price, the generalists are struggling to command top rates. The reality is that translators leave the profession when it ceases to pay the bills. The “good enough” approach also makes you wonder about past customer experiences with human translators. If their experiences had been good, clients would have been able to bat away any internal views of “translation only being a cost centre” and to also quantify the added value of professional translation.
Post-script: as I finished writing this piece, I read that Michael Loughridge, my Translation Methodology lecturer in German at St Andrews, and a very skilled and respected translator in his own right, died in late 2024. Other St Andrews contemporaries who are active as translators undoubtedly benefited from the course he helped to develop in German at the university. Many of us who were taught by him recently reached or are about to reach 25 years as translators.