Abstract
This chapter critically surveys the intersection of translation technologies and digital capitalism, painting with a deliberately broad brush to place the discussion in the wider context of ideological and socioeconomic shifts. It provides a holistic critique of the wider ethical and environmental implications wrought by industrial extractivism and technological automation. The chapter highlights the pervasive commodification of language and translation in the global digital economy, emphasising the ideological undercurrents of instrumental reason, technological determinism, and data colonialism. The argument draws on insights from political economy and interrogates the exploitative dynamics underpinning the translation industry, with a focus on algorithmic governance and the platformisation of translation labour. By connecting the digitisation of (crowdsourced) translation workflows to broader ideological, political, and socioeconomic trends, it challenges prevailing neoliberal and profit-driven paradigms, advocating for a transformative rethinking of translation technologies as common goods that are embedded in collectively shared and ecologically sustainable practices. The chapter envisions an alternative trajectory for the translation profession within a globally inclusive and cooperative digital multitude. This contribution, ultimately, underscores the need to reframe translation technologies as potential catalysts for ethically sound, sustainable, and equitable transcultural mediation in a rapidly digitising, increasingly interconnected, and arguably “posthumanist” world.