She has been researching and writing about translation and social media for over fifteen years and has published on the subject in a number of other outlets, including The Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Pragmatics, and in a special issue of Translation Studies on “Social Translation”. Her most recent work, which has been funded institutionally and nationally, examines translation in the creator, influencer, and gig economies. She currently holds two national research grants from the Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada: an Insight grant for a project titled: TikTokers, Instagrammers, Podcasters, Livestreamers – and Translators: Translation in the Creator Economy, and a Connection grant as a team member for the LINET, a francophone research group focused on translator education, translation pedagogy, and new technology.

The Social Relevance of Translation: from reach and engagement to life and death

A mega-influencer wanted to increase their reach and engagement and decided the solution was to create an in-house dubbing company (Wyndham 2023). A language professional viewed professional coaching as a viable option to increase their professional visibility on social media and increase content monetization (Desjardins, forthcoming). A small business owner and content creator, conflicted as to whether to use machine or AI translation, opted for human translation upon understanding that automated output could not do their product or brand justice (Desjardins, forthcoming). News no longer travels primarily through legacy channels; increasingly, journalists and content creators have turned to creating multilingual and subtitled news content, upending many long-held paradigms (Lorenz 2025). Reporting and research that took place both during and after the pandemic indicated that a lack of multilingual communication exacerbated an early Covid-19 outbreak (Baum et al. 2020) and contributed to confusion and inequitable access to key public health information in some Canadian provinces throughout the pandemic (Desjardins 2022; Desjardins and Laczko, forthcoming). In late spring and early summer 2025, wildfires raged through the Canadian Prairie provinces, displacing many citizens and leaving lasting effects ecological effects in their wake (Durrani 2025; CBC News 2025). Crisis communication during the wildfire crisis, notably in Manitoba, was, perhaps unsurprisingly, primarily in English (Radio-Canada 2025).

These are all real events that took place over the last five years or that are still occurring at the time of writing. While they all speak to translation’s invisibility or visibility to varying degrees, I argue that the visible/invisible binary – which has been rightly critiqued and nuanced (Freeth and Treviño 2024) – does not adequately describe what it is I believe most TS researchers and language professionals are actually advocating for, i.e. translation’s social relevance. In this presentation, I will present each of the previous examples and show how, when taken together, they demonstrate how relevant and necessary translation and multilingual communication are and continue to be for society. I will further argue that this relevance is not just disciplinary, abstract, or academic: it can be a matter of literal life or death, which echoes the work of various crisis translation researchers over the years (O’Brien 2016; Federici and O’Brien 2019; Lee and Wang 2022; Declercq and Kerremans 2024; Córdoba Serrano 2025).

Perhaps it is time to reconsider how we talk about translation’s (in)visibility, particularly beyond our discipline and beyond our campuses. The issue with visibility is that, in some cases, it centres translators, the language industry, translation programmes. This is justifiable and understandable, especially given the fact that we have had to face cyclical threats (including artificial intelligence, most recently) and have had to continuously justify our raison d’être as some argue for our obsolescence. However, what if we flipped the script? What if, instead of insisting on visibility, we

opted to show citizens, who are taxpayers, the social (and economic) relevance of translation? And, not just of translation, but of humane translation more specifically (Desjardins and Florentin 2022; 2024)? This, I believe, shifts the discourse from translation as a sort of victim (“we need more visibility”) to translation as socially, culturally, linguistically, and equitably essential for society at large.

In the final part of the talk, I will share some knowledge mobilization ideas that we as Translation and Interpreting Studies researchers, language professionals, trainers and educators can implement to engage citizens in continued multilingual advocacy.

Selected references: 

Baum, K.B., Tait, C., and Grant, T. (2020, May 3). How Cargill became the site of Canada’s largest single outbreak of COVID-19. The Globe and Mail.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-how-cargill-became-the-site-of-canadas-largest-single-outbreak-of/

CBC News. (2025, June 4). Here’s what you need to know about the Manitoba wildfires. CBC. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/wildfire-evacuation-status-manitoba-communities-1.7551968

Córdoba Serrano, M.S (2025). No one is safe until everyone is safe: Direction régionale de santé publique de Montréal’s risk-based approach to multilingual crisis communication. Revista de Llengua i Dret, Journal of Language and Law, 83, 213-232.
https://doi.org/10.58992/rld.i83.2025.4296

Declercq, C. and Kerremans, K. (Eds). (2024). The Routledge Handbook of Translation, Interpreting and Crisis. Routledge.

Desjardins, R. (Forthcoming). Social Media, the Translation Industry, and the Influencer Economy. In Lambert, J. and Walker, C. (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Translation Industry. London: Routledge.

Desjardins, R. (2022). Hello/Bonjour won’t cut it in a health crisis: an analysis of language policy and translation strategy across Manitoban websites and social media during COVID-19. Dans Lee, T.K. & Wang, D. (2022), Translation and Social Media Communication in the Age of the Pandemic. London & New York: Routledge.Federici, F.M. and O’Brien, S. (Eds). (2019). Translation in Cascading Crises. Routledge.

Desjardins, R. et Florentin, V. (2024). Social Justice and Translator Training and Education in a time of (non)equitable tech. LANS-TTS. 2024(23).
https://lans-tts.uantwerpen.be/index.php/LANS-TTS/article/view/786/685

Desjardins, R. et Florentin, V. (2022). L’enseignement de la traduction au Canada: réflexions à la suite de leçons tirées de la pandémie, de la justice sociale et des changements en milieux universitaires. TTR: Traduction, terminologie, rédaction.
https://doi.org/10.7202/1093026ar

Desjardins, R., Laczko, M. (Forthcoming). *Translation and pandemic communication on Instagram: an analysis of three Manitoban accounts. In Giannakopoulou, V. and Sütiste, E. (Eds.), Transmedia in Translation and Transculturation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Durrani, T. (2025, May 31). Manitoba evacuates hundreds more and Saskatchewan requests help from U.S. as wildfires rage.

Freeth, P.J. and Treviño, R. (Eds). (2024). Beyond the translator’s invisibility: critical reflections and new perspectives. Leuven University Press.

Lee, T.K. and Wang, D. (Eds). (2022). Translation and Social Media Communication in the Age of the Pandemic. Routledge.

Lorenz, T. (2025). The global influencer era is upon us. UserMag. Retrieved May 10, 2025.
https://www.usermag.co/p/were-entering-the-era-of-the-global.

O’Brien, S. (2016). Training translators for crisis communication: Translators without borders as an example, in F.M. Federici (Ed.), Mediating Emergencies and Conflicts: Frontline Translating and Interpreting, 85-111. Palgrave Macmillan.

Radio-Canada/Le téléjournal Manitoba. (2025, June 5). Pourquoi émettre une alerte d’urgence seulement en anglais?. Radio-Canada.
https://ici.radio-canada.ca/tele/le-telejournal-manitoba/site/segments/reportage/2089461/pourquoi-emettre-une-alerte-durgence-seulement-en

Wyndham, A. (2025, Feb. 24). Why MrBeast is Launching a Dubbing Company. Slator.
https://slator.com/why-mrbeast-is-launching-a-dubbing-company/

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