The state of the translation industry
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The last few decades have marked a significantly increased move to globalization. The narrow person in 1980-90 couldn't imagine that in the nearest future, people would easily communicate and collaborate in real-time, being in opposite parts of the world. In 1993 only 1% of all the information was shared by the telecommunications networks. In 2000 this percentage rose to 51% and up to 97% in 2007.
As a result, nowadays, businesses can easily communicate with employees and customers worldwide without a physical presence. This trend became especially popular during the Covid pandemic when tech giants and other IT companies started switching to remote work. Moreover, people are used to buying online/from home, which affects the e-commerce industry. Consequently, e-commerce shares increased from 10.3% in 2019 to 14.9%. In 2021, e-commerce made up 19.1% of all retail sales.
Due to the mentioned factors, translation services have become increasingly essential. Globalization requires talking with customers in the same language (40% of customers are unwilling to buy on websites not in their native language). Product localization is integral to successful client communication and part of the new markets' expansion. In this article, we will discuss how the translation industry has evolved over time due to market demands and explore predictions for its future development. We'll start with global figures and then move on to data from freelancers and top market players by world region so you can get a complete picture. Enjoy reading!
The global translation industry
The global language services market has grown significantly in the past decade, reaching $67.2 billion in 2022, with the prediction to raise $96.21 billion in 2032.
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Technologies like machine translation, artificial intelligence (AI), and CAT significantly change the entire industry and support the rise of speeding up and quality (23% of translators mentioned they use CAT tools from time to time, and 56% use CAT tools frequently.)
Furthermore, we should remember the markets with rising economies like China, India, and Brazil. Businesses are interested in reaching them and being first in the niche. Translating services vendors' got more tools to speed up the process and provide qualitative results.
Based on 2020, the most significant by providing language services regions were:
- Europe - $26.9 million
- North America - $18.7 million
- Asia - $8.1 million
When discussing translation services, it's important to remember about the independent translators who are an important part of this industry.
Freelance translators market worldwide
Freelance translators play a crucial role in the global language market as they provide cultural expertise from various parts of the world to support businesses. With the availability of freelance translators, companies can easily hire individuals for global tasks and be confident that the translations will sound native.
Based on the Freelance translator survey, most specialists cover 3-4 areas (43%) or 1-2 areas (34%), and the prevalent industries are:
- Law - 22%
- Advertising - 17%
- Business - 16%
- Medicine - 16%
- Travel and Tourism - 13%
To understand better what's happening inside the freelance translation industry, let's overview the most significant regions - North America and Europe.
North America
In North America, the USA is an undisputed leader (the top 5 companies are located there.) In 2022, over 52,000 interpreters and translators were employed in the USA with an average wage of around $30 per hour.
Based on the research in the USA market, female translators constitute the predominant with the following ratio - 67.5% female and 32.5% male. At the same time, for each $1 earned by men, the women make 93¢.
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European market
Europe has the most significant translating market share in the world. Regarding freelancers, based on 2018, the appropriate number of translators and interpreters in the European Union was 180 000.
The average salaries (per year) in European countries for the translators are:
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The top 10 LSP by revenue 2022
The translating industry heavily relies on Language Service Providers (LSPs), who offer businesses and individuals worldwide comprehensive language solutions. LSPs provide various language-related services, such as translation, interpretation, and localization, to cater to client's diverse needs across multiple industries. We reviewed the recent Nimdzi report to highlight the top 10 LSPs globally based on their revenue.
- TransPerfect. Revenue (in millions) — $1,161.3
- RWS. Revenue (in millions) — $923.8
- LanguageLine Solutions. Revenue (in millions) — $836.0
- Sorenson Communications. Revenue (in millions) — $825.0
- Keyword Studios. Revenue (in millions) — $709.8
- LionBridge. Revenue (in millions) — $575.0
- iyuno. Revenue (in millions) — $501.0
- Appen. Revenue (in millions) — 388.5
- translate plus. Revenue (in millions) — 355.3
- Acolad Group. Revenue (in millions) — $333.3
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The top 5 largest language service providers by world regions
As previously stated, we have identified the top language services regions. Now, let's overview the companies representing leaders in the following regions - North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America & the Caribbean.
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As we can see, the USA and UK are industry leaders in the most developed language service-providing regions.
Lingohub as a part of the translation industry
Lingohub has provided a translation management system for clients worldwide for over a decade. During all this time, we continuously develop the product by including new trending features to deliver the best user experience.
Our team, based in Linz, Austria, works tirelessly every day to improve the software, and we are proud of the success our customers reach by using our product. Being part of globalization inspires us to achieve new heights to help businesses contact customers worldwide.
Let's examine how the translation management system with included tools can support translation/localization.
CAT tools
Translators widely use CAT tools, with 79% incorporating them into their work. Of those users, 83% believe that CAT tools promote translation consistency, and 65% agree that they save time during translation.
Take a look at the main reasons for using CAT tools based on feedback from translators:
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Machine translation
Machine translation plays a crucial role in the localization process, which involves adapting content to suit a specific target market or audience's linguistic, cultural, and functional requirements. On average, it can increase productivity by up to 36% compared with translating from scratch. This figure can differ based on the language pair - for the common language pairs like English-German, the result will be better than for English-Chinese.
Based on the high impact of MT on the linguistic industry, it is continuously growing and, by 2024, as predicted, can reach more than $1.500 million market size.
At Lingohub, we use the combined power of Google Translate, Amazon Translate and DeepL, allowing us to translate wide languages precisely.
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Conclusion
The translation industry is a continuous development area, with the predicted rise of almost two times by the start of the next decade. The most prominent regions - Europe and North America occupy nearly the entire market, with the USA and UK leading. Trending technologies like machine translation are also growing and moving the industry forward. At Lingohub, we consistently implement best practices into our products to provide high-quality results for the customers. Book a demo call with our team and get more info about it.