Our Analysts' Insights

Finding, qualifying, and testing translators and interpreters represents a sizable investment for most language service providers (LSPs). That challenge is even greater for the fast-growing ones, any venturing into new markets, and those starting new service lines. For most LSPs, that means adding or enhancing the vendor management function to locate, vet, and retain linguists and other specialists. Providers typically introduce vendor manager positions by Stage 2 of the LSP Metrix, CSA Research...

CSA Research's 13th annual market study sizes the language services industry and calculates a variety of business measures. One is the growth rate for the industry overall, another is the performance of hundreds of individual suppliers that provide detailed revenue data to our survey (see figure). In this year's analysis, we estimated that the market will turn over US$43.08 billion in 2017, a rise of 6.97% over the last year. You can download a description of our quantitative research an...

Blockchain is a method for concatenating blocks of transactions, which are stored securely using encryption in a distributed system that prevents bad actors from unlawfully changing records. Most media reports focus on blockchain’s use in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, where it originated. However, the language industry will be more directly affected by the advent of smart contracts, where blockchain methods allow applications to automatically negotiate and enforce transactions; for exampl...

Are you making a case to add new languages, expand the number of content types, or launch a full-blown, enterprise-wide globalization strategy? CSA Research has been very busy this year analyzing and publishing hard data to enable you to position your initiatives as investment proposals to support global growth.

What return on investment should you expect from engaging with customers in their own language? Ever since our first report in 2002 on the benefits of localizing the user experience, CSA Research has found that demonstrating the ROI for localization is a challenging exercise. Localization managers spend an inordinate amount of their time working with colleagues in other departments to make the business case for international and domestic multicultural marketing, sales, and support activities. I...

For many years now, localization managers at enterprises have known how they should create content tailored for particular markets, even if they haven't actually done it. Instead, the model that evolved in the 1990s invested in optimizing existing content for translation.

Based on press coverage of recent advances in machine translation (MT), it may seem as if all the major developments happen in the United States. However, since the 1980s, much of the basic research in this area has either happened in European projects or been headed by alumni of groups in the region such as the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), University of Aachen, and the University of Edinburgh.

The Indian e-commerce market continues to grow as the government there encourages its expansion and works to ensure that the country’s local languages are integrated into its Digital India and Make in India programs. Unlike its neighbor to the east – China – the Indian playing field is open to international companies, as the ongoing competition between Amazon and Flipkart and Uber and Ola Cabs demonstrates. Apple, Amazon, and Google have announced billions of dollars in additional investment ...

One of the most frequent questions that CSA Research analysts are asked is how a translation team can help the rest of the company do a better job marketing to, selling to, and caring for local markets around the globe as well as multicultural ones in their home country. After all, it's usually not their mandated responsibility to support enterprise-wide business process globalization. However, if they don't take it on, they often find that they can't meet their own objectives for de...

Big changes are afoot in cyberspace. In recent years, populations in Africa, Asia, and Oceania surged online with the aid of cheap data plans and government investments. In Myanmar, for example, the mobile grid went up in 2014 and a total population of 53 million now shows 33 million subscriptions, with 80% smartphone penetration and over 50% with active data plans. China initiatives, such as Belt and Road, Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, are bring...