Our Analysts' Insights

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...

It was the memo heard around the world, the one that led Google’s CEO to cut short his vacation to deal with a firestorm of criticism, and the one that reignited the perennial and fiery debate about sexism, women’s role in the tech industry, and political correctness.

The explosion of enthusiasm for MT that followed Google’s announcements about neural machine translation (NMT) last year shows no signs of abating.

Buyers of language services crave the ability to measure translation quality in an objective way, get easy-to-digest reports on how it is tracking over time, and be able to drill down as needed for process improvement. However, quality control remains a mostly human-driven process – even when supported by QA technology – because humans have to sift through the reports these tools produce. What if there was another way to approach quality?

It has taken social and mobile – plus the empowerment of consumers to influence the message – for content to finally grab the undistracted attention of executives. But they’re not only wrestling with content in its simplest forms controlled by employees. They must also take into account material created “in the wild” – outside of their organizations – where it morphs into assorted flavors through local languages, dialects, and cultures.

Two years ago, CSA Research determined that the language sector faced a perfect storm as industry players incrementally improved efficiency, innovated services and processes built on newer technology and streamlined practices, and confronted disruptive intrinsic and external changes that were transforming the market.

In the last year, CSA Research has been covering a new paradigm for translator productivity, one we call “augmented translation.” The term comes from “augmented reality”: applications that overlay images of the world with relevant information.

Language service providers (LSPs) – in particular small and mid-sized ones – often ask, “How can we increase sales? Where do we start? How can we build the best sales team?” The smaller ones often have a negative experience as they start formalizing the sales function. Sales training programs, including our own in the past, were just steps in the process – either planning, hiring, cold calling, objection handling, or account management.

Note: This blog post is not intended to provide legal advice. For clarification of your legal obligations and rights, please consult with qualified legal counsel.

Today CSA Research released the first in a series of reports that examine gender and family issues in the language industry. Based on our survey of 2,195 professionals who work with language services, this free report provides insights into the role gender and family plays in the field. We developed this pro bono research with the support of GALA and Women and Localization in order to understand how language workers compare to other industries. The report shines light on topics ranging from pay ...