Chartered Institute
of Linguists
NEWS & VOICES
By Callum Darragh
On Friday 16 April 2026, I had the pleasure of attending the 2026 annual conference of the Chartered Institute of Linguists. As it was my first conference with CIOL, I genuinely didn’t know what to expect. I had been a student member during my Master’s degree in 2020, but only got around to renewing my membership in January of this year. As...
By Marion Sadoux - Director of the Language Centre at the University of Oxford
The strategic importance of language education in the UK has been powerfully reaffirmed in The strategic case for languages in UK higher education (January 2026), a report by the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI), the Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIOL) and the Association of...
If you've been weighing up whether taking the CIOL Qualifications Level 7 Diploma in Translation is worth it, the answer might be clearer than you think.
Proof positive of your excellent translation skills
Maybe you've been translating professionally for a while. Maybe people have been relying on your language skills for years - clients, co-workers,...
By Mariam Aboelezz, CIOL Vice Chair
Artificial intelligence is not an abstract or distant prospect for translators and interpreters. It is already embedded in the tools we use, the workflows we are asked to adopt, and the expectations many clients now bring to the table. Machine translation is here, it will remain here, and it will continue to evolve. The...
By Kaori Myatt
Recently, I have noticed something interesting… Many professionals who once proudly described themselves as ‘translators’ are now calling themselves ‘localisation specialists’, ‘linguists’, ‘language strategists’, ‘content specialists’, ‘SEO writers’, and even ‘AI language experts’ and ‘AI annotators’. Of course, rebranding is not inherently...
by Celeste Rodriguez Louro
I remember the first time I attended a linguistics lecture as an undergraduate in Argentina. The lecturer asked a simple question: where does language come from? My instinctive answer was: books.
After four decades researching language and linguistics, that response now seems almost absurd. But it reflects a common...
By Uwe Muegge, translation technology expert
Just a few days ago, OpenAI launched GPT-5.4, its most capable language model yet. With GPT-5.4, translation professionals using ChatGPT have access to stronger functions for translation-oriented terminology and style management, and automated post-editing. Below are my top tips for translation professionals who...
Avaloq, an NEC company based in Edinburgh, UK, has an opening for a full-time, permanent in-house linguist in their Edinburgh office.
The role will focus on UX writing in English for banking software and project management of localization into other languages. However, they are looking for a qualified translator with solid experience in banking/finance and/or...
By Dom Hebblethwaite, CIOL Head of Membership
Our latest snap poll asked members a deceptively simple question: will AI and technology reduce or increase the importance of high-level language skills? The results tell a more optimistic story than the headlines about AI might suggest, though the picture is far from uniform.
The numbers...
In an age of AI, professional judgement matters more than ever
Long before machine translation, cloud tools or AI entered the arena, the Diploma in Translation (DipTrans) established a simple truth: professional translation is a discipline of judgement.
Today, as machines translate faster than any human ever could, that truth matters more than ever.
AI-...