Our Analysts' Insights

Delivering an integrated customer experience wherever an organization operates means more than translating your website, setting up a few servers outside your borders, and offering extended hours for customer care. It involves reviewing an array of business requirements that begin with the age-old IT mandates of reliability, availability, scalability, and security – or RAS2 for short. Enter localization teams, LSPs, and translation management vendors. Their experience pulling and pushing conten...

CSA Research recently released our list of the 100 largest LSPs and langtech providers, along with eight regional lists that add more than 80 firms. The rankings are based on our annual survey of more than 450 companies around the globe with revenue and business data supplied by the companies themselves and validated by their executives. Here’s a map of CSA Research’s 10 largest LSPs for 2021 – follow the lines to see the journeys of these companies over 17 years to their current positions. B...

We begin this week’s blog with a call to language services and technology providers to take the survey for our 17th annual Global Market Study – before April 15th. We trimmed the survey so it’s easier and quicker to complete. But you might ask why do we expend so much effort on this survey and ask you to pitch in to provide your company’s data? Read on to find out more about this annual project.

In the first episode of an iconic sci-fi television series, a NASA test pilot was seriously injured in the crash of an experimental aircraft. The emergency medical team replaced three of his four limbs and one eye with nuclear-powered bionic implants, while a voiceover intoned, “We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was. Better...stronger...faster." The resulting six-million-dollar-man worked as a secret agent, using his now superhuman powers to battle ...

To understand the effect of the pandemic on the language industry, CSA Research began quarterly surveys of the CEOs of LSPs in March 2020 and expanded regular primary research to LSPs in China, freelancers, langtech vendors, and enterprises. Here we present datapoints to close out 2020 and identify what to expect in 2021.

For the first time since 2005, CSA Research did not release our 2020 Global Market Study sizing and forecasts when we ranked the largest LSPs in the world in June. We just published “Sizing the Language Industry in 2020 and Beyond,” our comprehensive data-based guidance for 2020 through 2025.

TELUS International announced that it would buy Lionbridge’s artificial intelligence business unit in a deal worth US$935 million that is expected to close by December 31st. Let’s first explain what Lionbridge AI does, review the deal, analyze what it means to the language services and technology sector, and show what it represents to investors.

In a recent blog we updated the changing M&A landscape for 2020. We also noted that respondents to CSA Research’s annual Global Market Study (GMS) have shown consistent interest over the years in buying, selling, or merging in response to the question, “How important will the following actions related to merger and acquisitions be in 2020?” Of the 356 respondents from the representative sample of 462, 29% said they wanted to sell, 34% would like to buy, and 30% preferred a merger.

2020 started out with great financial momentum. The MSCI All Country World Index of large-, mid-, and small-cap stocks across 23 developed and 26 developing markets had risen almost 24% over 2018, an ounce of gold was worth 18% more than 12 months prior, and private equity groups had accumulated US$1.5 trillion in funds to invest. Businesses were primed for a stellar 2020, but by March, COVID-19 pushed most of the world to shelter in place. Companies shut down, employees were furloughed, and lif...

On September 21st Paris-based Acolad Group announced that it would acquire Luxembourg-based Amplexor. While the firms did not disclose the terms, their deal combines the 12th- (Amplexor) and 13th-ranked (Acolad Group) companies on CSA Research’s list of 100 largest language service providers. Following the acquisition, Acolad nouveau will have a combined US$307 million based on 2019 revenue (after subtracting about US$41 million in Amplexor revenue that will not be included in the sale). The me...