Our Analysts' Insights

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.

CSOFT (#22 on our global list of the 100 largest LSPs) has banked on mobile being a driving force behind language needs. In December 2015, the company released Stepes (pronounced /'steps/), a human-powered mobile translation app designed to mobilize professional translators and Uberize the world’s bilingual population in the process. Last year, the company broadened the offering to support on-demand social media and image translation, again harnessing the power of the crowd. However, 2017 w...

Imagine yourself in a café in Paris or on a beach in Cancún, running into some gorgeous human specimen you just can’t help but approach. You walk up to the person, offer them a hearing device, and point for them to put it in their ear while you pop one in yourself. Then you launch an app on your smartphone and start communicating via the help of machine interpreting, hoping the app will accurately translate your best pick-up line.

Situations where individuals don’t speak the same language abound. Settings for interpreting range from courts, to health care, immigration, public safety, tourism, and trade. CSA Research tracks interpreting technologies that support the coordination and delivery of interpreting services. Changes are happening rapidly in this growing market sector, with new offerings constantly modifying the technology landscape. Let’s look at four developments that are paving the way.

Users of interpreting services don’t like gambling with unproven talent. It’s a lot easier – and a lot less risky – to rely on resources that you already trust rather than try out new ones. This aversion to risk makes it really hard for recent graduates of interpreting programs to break into the profession. Recognizing its own challenges with newbies, one language service provider is trying a new approach with it “Cadence Cares Fellowship.”

While linguists may not be as popular as doctors or lawyers on the big screen, they make a regular appearance in a supporting role. Occasionally, they even land the lead role with big-name stars like Amy Adams in the recently-released “The Arrival” or Nicole Kidman in “The Interpreter.”

Are you wasting sales and marketing resources going after the wrong leads? Many language service providers (LSPs) aren’t sure which prospects to pursue, so they market to a broad spectrum of buyers, with little in common, and which cross company sizes, industries, geographies, and countless other attributes. The more LSPs struggle to grow in a predictable fashion, the more they talk about hiring additional salespeople, redesigning incentive plans, and going after any prospect – good or bad.

Recent technological advances have led to an explosion of interpreting delivery platform (IDP) options that enable remote, video, telephone, and even machine interpretation. In theory, first-movers should occupy a prominent position in the market. However, many products haven’t moved much past the starting line due to poor go-to-market strategies, limited marketing budgets, and insufficient experience in selling to desirable verticals and audiences. Through in-depth research and 45 interviews a...

Like a leaky faucet, a process that creates losses here and there can amount to a big bill at the end. Yet, most language service providers pay very little attention to subtle waste, even when they abide by quality management systems such as ISO 9001. To achieve operational excellence, LSPs must systematically identify waste and strive to eliminate or reduce it.

Interpreting technology has traditionally taken a back seat to translation automation. That situation is changing as developers focus on this next frontier in multilingual communication. This fast-growing sector is vibrant with new solutions, which move some interpreting revenue around, broaden language access, and create fresh sources of income for spoken-language service providers.