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Defining ‘labour’ and ‘work’ on translation crowdsourcing platforms via motivational and affective theory

A theoretical-conceptual framework

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Abstract
To date, relatively little effort has been put into establishing clear definitions of ‘labour’ and ‘work’ in Translation Studies. The two concepts are, however, gaining more attention in the context of the precarisation of the translation profession brought about by neural machine translation specifically and (generative) artificial intelligence more generally. There is no better illustration of this precarisation than the platforms offering paid translation crowdsourcing and using machine translation and AI. This article examines whether translators working on these platforms consider these activities labour or work based on their motivation and affective states. Its key objective is to develop a theoretical-conceptual framework for such an investigation and to attempt to apply that framework to the few existing empirical studies undertaken among translators working in the translation platform industry.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Setting the scene: An introduction to paid translation crowdsourcing platforms
  • 3.The theoretical-conceptual framework: Labour and work
    • 3.1Labour and work from a Marxist perspective
    • 3.2Labour, work, and action: A philosophical perspective
  • 4.The theoretical-conceptual framework: Motivation
  • 5.Bringing labour, work, and motivation together
  • 6.Affects as a glue
  • 7.The translator’s perspective
    • 7.1Fırat (2021)
    • 7.2Gough et al. (2023) and Gough and Temizöz (2023)
    • 7.3Cukur (2025)
  • 8.Discussion and conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
References (46)
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