The freelance translation machine: Algorithmic culture and the invisible industry

Much of the work performed by the global translation industry is handled by freelance labor. This segment of the industry has seen a radical structural transformation that has accompanied a radical transformation in the media environment that supports its work. The emergence of online freelance translation marketplaces has married the logics of standardization, automation, and protocol to casual labor, motivated by incremental profit and lubricated by entrepreneurialism. Customs and practices native to contemporary internet culture generate a freelance translation machine made of equal parts flesh and silicon that manages skilled labor algorithmically. In parallel with the specific case of freelance translation practices, this article develops and deploys a notion of algorithmic culture that accounts for the integration of human cognition in computational processes. Consequently, the possibility emerges that users instrumentalize algorithms even as algorithms instrumentalize users.