The Translator

Thinking differently about impact.

A few weeks ago, I was at a conference celebrating the impact of research. As is the way of these things, everyone agreed that impact is vital for research and our wider society, but there was also a frustration that the journey was so difficult. And this got me thinking about one major part of that journey that we all know is important, but is, at best, awkwardly supported in the current system: the role of the system-straddling translator.

There is a particular kind of meeting that anyone who has spent time around research and innovation will recognise. The language is familiar; impact is important, collaboration matters. The right people are in the room, or close enough to count. There is energy, and a sense, at least initially, that something useful might come of it.

And yet, as the conversation unfolds, a quiet drift sets in. People are agreeing with each other, but not quite about the same thing. The words travel, but their meanings do not arrive entirely intact. What looks, on the surface, like alignment begins to feel more like parallel movement. By the end, there are actions, perhaps even outputs, but a lingering sense that something essential has not quite connected.

This is rarely a failure of intent. Nor is it a failure of intelligence, or even effort. Most of the people in these rooms are highly capable, and many are deeply committed to the idea that research should make a difference beyond the academy. The problem sits somewhere else, in the space between those commitments and the worlds they are meant to reach.

Impact, as it turns out, does not travel particularly well. It moves across boundaries that were not designed for it: between disciplines, between institutions, between ways of knowing and acting that have their own internal logics. What counts as a compelling research question does not always map neatly onto what a policymaker needs to decide, or what a practitioner can realistically deliver. Even when the intention is shared, the translation between those worlds is rarely straightforward.

In most systems, this work happens anyway. There are people who, often without being named as such, take on the task of making ideas legible across contexts. They listen for what is being said, and what is not. They reframe questions so that they can be acted on. They adjust the shape of an intervention so that it can survive contact with procurement, or with the realities of service delivery. They sit, sometimes uncomfortably, between different sets of expectations and try to hold them long enough for something coherent to emerge.

These are, for want of a better term, translators.

They are not necessarily found in any one role. Some sit within universities, often in knowledge exchange or impact-focused positions. Others are embedded in policy teams, or in delivery organisations that have learned, through necessity, how to work across boundaries. Occasionally, they are academics themselves, though rarely in ways that are straightforwardly rewarded by the systems they inhabit.

When this work is present, things tend to hold together in ways that are not always visible from the outside. A research programme produces not just outputs, but decisions. A partnership moves beyond polite engagement into something more durable. An idea, which might otherwise have stalled, finds a form that can be taken up and used.

When it is absent, the pattern is equally familiar. Well-designed projects produce reports that are read and then set aside. Stakeholders engage constructively, but without anything quite taking root. The machinery of impact turns, but without much traction.

Even where translators do exist, they are often working against the grain. The incentives that shape academic careers tend to prioritise publication, grant income, and disciplinary contribution. The incentives that shape policy and delivery environments tend to reward clarity, speed, and accountability within defined parameters. The work of translation, which is iterative, relational, and often ambiguous, sits awkwardly within both worlds.

I was reminded of this recently while chairing a panel at an impact conference. Two early career researchers were speaking about their work, both recipients of a national prize recognising the real-world difference their research had made. Their projects had informed policy, shaped practice, and reached well beyond the usual academic audiences. By any reasonable definition, this was impact of a high order.

And yet, when the conversation turned to their careers, a different picture emerged. One had been fortunate enough to find a home in an institute that explicitly values policy and impact work, providing a degree of stability and recognition that is still relatively rare. The other had struggled to translate that same impact into the markers that the academic system recognises. Publications had been harder to secure, not because the work lacked substance, but because it did not fit neatly into established disciplinary frames.

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the very work that makes impact possible can, in some cases, make a conventional academic career harder to sustain.

There is a tendency, at this point, to frame the solution in terms of skills. If only we could train more people to translate between research and practice, the problem might begin to resolve itself. There is some truth in this, but it risks placing too much weight on individuals, and too little on the systems they are asked to operate within.

The issue is not simply that we lack translators. It is that we have not been particularly good at creating environments in which this kind of work can be done well.

Where translation does happen effectively, it is often because certain conditions have been put in place, either by design or accident. There is space for ideas to be reshaped without being treated as a loss of rigour. There is time for relationships to develop beyond initial contact. There is a degree of permission to revisit assumptions, to ask different questions, and to allow the direction of travel to shift as understanding deepens.

I saw something of this in the Innovation and Research Caucus, a programme designed to bring together academic research and the needs of the UK’s research and innovation system. At its best, it did more than commission and disseminate research. It created a space in which questions could be worked on jointly, where the boundaries between supply and demand were not fixed in advance, and where the task of making research usable was shared rather than assumed.

What mattered was not just the presence of individuals who could translate, but the fact that the programme itself made that work possible. It recognised that impact is less about the linear transfer of knowledge and more about the ongoing negotiation of meaning across different contexts.

Some of the most effective work I have been involved in has followed a similar pattern. Not because I was translating directly, although that has been part of it, but because the work was structured in a way that allowed translation to happen. Conversations were sequenced so that different perspectives could surface without being forced into premature agreement. The framing of the problem was treated as something to be developed, rather than settled too early. This created legitimacy for interpretive work that might otherwise be seen as peripheral.

This work is not always visible, and it does not always map neatly onto roles or outputs. But without it, much of what we describe as impact remains just out of reach.

If we take impact seriously, then the question is not simply how to produce more translators, or how to equip individuals with better tools. It is how to create environments that attract and sustain the people who can do this work well, and to recognise the conditions under which their work becomes possible.

This brings us back to that meeting. The agreement was real. The intent was there. Nothing essential was missing, except perhaps the space in which meaning could be worked on, rather than assumed.

Impact does not fail for lack of effort. It fails because what needs to be translated is never quite allowed to settle into a form that can move. Without that, even the best ideas tend to stay where they started.