Acknowledgements

As authors will usually tell you in their acknowledgements, books are collective endeavours, and this one is no different. This book and the research behind it were supported by organisations as well as countless individual acts of kindness. I have done my best to mention all of them here, but inevitably the list below is not exhaustive.

First, I would like to thank the Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIOL) as the project partner. Dom Hebblethwaite and John Worne have been knowledgeable interlocutors and invaluable collaborators. Thanks also go to Philip Harding-Esch for organising the parliamentary meetings where this project was discussed. Several other members of the CIOL team supported the publication and dissemination of the project’s preliminary report. I thank them all.

I was fortunate to be able to work with Paola Ruffo, whose rigorous fact-checking review added precision to my writing and to my use of sources. Her thoroughness made a material difference to this book. Thanks also go to Rebecca Atkinson for her extremely attentive copy-editing.

Several kind colleagues gave me helpful feedback at different points in the project. Lynne Bowker, James Ladyman, Minako O’Hagan and Carol O’Sullivan were part of the project’s advisory committee. I am grateful for their suggestions, including James’s reading of Chapter 2 and Lynne’s review of the project’s preliminary report. Mary Nurminen was the report’s other reviewer. She made several constructive comments for which I am profoundly grateful.

I have been on several discussion panels on the topic of AI translation and public services over the years. Thanks go to all colleagues on those panels for the lively conversations, including Sabine Braun, Olivia Cockburn, Federico Federici and Maarit Koponen.

At Cambridge University Press, Becky Taylor and Izzie Collins spoiled me with a highly effective editorial process. Becky appointed the five anonymous reviewers, whose insights significantly improved the manuscript – I thank her for believing in the book and the reviewers for their helpful and encouraging reports. At times I feared that making the book open access would be impossible. Izzie’s help was instrumental in making it happen.

I am grateful to Helen Bilton for her work on the index. Preparing the index myself would have been an entire new project. I felt lucky to be able to draw on Helen’s expertise.

Adam Calow was this book’s first reader. His suggestions made me see problems I had overlooked and appreciate passages I had previously disliked. I thank him for his thoughtful comments – and for looking after me. Obrigado também a Aladia Vieira e minha família pelo apoio e pelas risadas.

At different points when I needed to test my decisions or when trying to choose a title, I pestered Becky Kosick, Carolina Ferraz, Tristan Kay, Catherine Berry, Alex Dudgeon and Christine Jones for their opinions. Christine also helped to make the data collection instruments clearer. I am grateful to all of them.

I thank the Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust in London and the Health Equity and Access Team at Metro South Health in Queensland for allowing me to reproduce their materials. Philipp Angermeyer kindly approved the use of a photograph that originally appeared in one of his articles.

The project was funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council, UKRI grant AH/X006506/1. I thank the council for their support.

Several charities, trade unions and professional bodies asked social workers to contact me for my work on Chapter 6. I am indebted to these institutions, which I leave unnamed to protect the participants’ identities.

Finally, I am especially grateful to all the doctors, nurses, paramedics, healthcare assistants, receptionists, catering assistants, mental health advocates, social workers, solicitors, police officers, public administrators and other professionals who generously and vividly shared their stories with me. I hope to have done justice to their accounts.