Our Analysts' Insights

Pundits predict that AI and its neural machine translation (NMT) spawn will obsolete an entire industry and put hundreds of thousands of people out of work. That could happen – but only if we postulate a future where the language sector stands by and does nothing. Inaction will result in the wholesale annihilation of many providers, but CSA Research has observed enough tech-enabled LSPs where it’s not business as usual to be more optimistic.

Do you ever get the sense that your progress toward best practices in localization takes a step forward, only to be followed by two steps back? You’re not alone in this shuffle. One problem that we see in our localization maturity assessments is that some companies abandon their hard-won best practices and return to an earlier, less evolved level of expertise and technology. Some companies even reverse direction, going from wise old localization sage to naïve infant as did Brad Pitt in the titl...

CEOs in every kind of company often observe that they have the loneliest job. Shared experiences with people who work for them are limited because of internal politics and because they must deal with issues that no one else in their organizations face. CEOs periodically meet with their boards of directors or management, but those sessions often reinforce the singular position that the CEO occupies. In esoteric sectors like language services, CEOs must manage an array of process, technology, and ...

When you clicked on the link that brought you here, you might have thought that someone spoofed Common Sense Advisory’s newsletter and hijacked you away from our blog. No worries. You are indeed at CSA Research, the company formerly known as Common Sense Advisory. This is part of our total redevelopment of our advanced research platform, brand identity, and corporate website.

With M&A a more frequent occurrence in the language sector, the type of ownership is changing. Traditionally four types have dominated the language services market: 1) privately-held agencies, many of them owner-operator; 2) firms owned by private equity groups (PEG); 3) publicly-traded LSPs; and 4) divisions of larger corporations, all of them with the majority of their revenue originating outside the language sector. With acquisitions in the language sector a regular occurrence, we can expect ...

In Ernest Hemingway's novel The Sun Also Rises, Bill asks, "How did you go bankrupt?" Mike answers, "Gradually and then suddenly." Both buyers and suppliers of language services and technology have had a similar experience with the evolution of artificial intelligence. After decades of science-fiction depictions of AI and fits and stops in the actual science, the last few years have seen a rapid move toward incorporating artificial intelligence in a broad range of process...

In January, the World Bank observed that, "for the first time since the global financial crisis, all major regions of the world are experiencing an uptick in economic growth." CSA Research's 14th annual study of the language services and technology market demonstrated that the language sector has benefited from that good fortune. It grew at 7.99% over the past year to reach a projected US$46.52 billion in revenue for 2018. Read about our survey and research process here.

Business is looking good in the language sector. CSA Research’s business confidence survey of the CEOs of the largest language service providers found 2017 to be a growth year, and respondents optimistically entered 2018. Sector revenue and language output continue to rise as the content and code that power economies are becoming more global. Our annual survey will give a more complete picture of the market as we collect and analyze the data.

In "The Language Services Market: 2017," CSA Research estimated that the language services and technology sector would turn over US$43 billion for the year, growing 6.97% over 2016. We also forecast that the market would continue its growth over the next four years, driven by increasing demands for multilingual information in written and spoken form, app and product localization, and emerging content services.

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...