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The Growth of the Translation Industry
A related danger is that the top companies have gotten to where they are through tumultuous periods of consolidation. With so many companies and freelancers present in a huge global market that expects consistent growth, consolidation should be a good thing. The problem is that companies are slow to unify and huge business ventures tend to confuse and intimidate potential customers. This is a market driven by demand for efficiency, technological development, and linguistic accuracy on a global scale, yet the industry seems to be stuck in a rut of fragmentation. Future clients and customers are looking for more successful, streamlined consolidation. As it stands, it’s difficult to predict what the landscape will be like. For the moment, a few large firms stand out, but it’s unclear whether they will move to consolidate the industry. The door remains open to smaller but more aggressive companies, newer agencies breaking into the industry, and other newcomers backed by venture capitalists with an eye on a vastly expanding and globally warranted business sector.
Assuming that the future holds more unified industry standards for LSPs, one element of the business that will prove fruitful will be the further development of technologies. Computers and the Internet have certainly played roles in shaping the language services industry to date. The late 1990’s, with its World Wide Web boom, saw a bolstered demand for language services with the deployment of global websites. However, the first Internet bubble burst in 2001, dashing many dreams of online LSP services, and, in turn, sinking a handful of the then-leading language service companies.
However, since 2004, LSP industry growth has gotten back on track along with technological advances. A breakdown of overall translation services goes like this: if total translation services worldwide equals $16 billion, then human translation makes up $9 billion of that; followed by software localization at $5 billion; website localization at $1 billion; and machine translation (MT) at $0.5 billion. Apparently, technology-based language services make up almost half of the industry already, and are surely going to gain on human counterpart services over time. Whether this is a good thing for providers and customers alike remains to be seen, but will play out over time. One thing’s for sure, the course of the LSP industry will be of interest to an entire global economy. | Back
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