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In June 2020, CSA Research analyzed two futures for language service providers. The first was driven by COVID-19, “an extinction-level event (COVID-19) quite similar to the AI-driven doomsday predictions” of mainstream business media. The second offered a positive view of the opportunity driven by “innovation in…artificial intelligence in project management, natural language processing and understanding (NLP and NLU), and massive computing power – and the impact they will have on translation and interpreting.”
Three years later, the pandemic may have passed but our semi-annual LSP business confidence (the ninth in this series) and freelancer surveys (the seventh) have regularly tracked the Zeitgeist of the market over the last few years, with the mood varying but never approaching Henny Penny’s "the sky is falling" panic. On the other hand, there’s worldwide concern that the artificial intelligence epidemic has reached critical mass with the Generative AI strain of the technology.
Note: When reviewing this 2020 report for our upcoming CEO Leadership Council Summit in Paris this June, we realized that we could have updated the publication date simply by adding “Generative AI” to the report’s list of functions: 1) NLP such as machine transcription and named entity recognition; 2) NLU like dialogue agents, question answering, summarization; and 3) text-to-speech like automated speech recognition and text-to-speech. Many of these services presaged the arrival of today’s widely available GenAI offerings and can help LSPs differentiate themselves in the market.
Besides COVID-19, What Disrupted the Market in 2020?
In “The Future of Language Services” report, we exposed systemic vulnerabilities of the traditional LSP model that preceded and transcend the pandemic’s challenges. We analyzed major issues contributing to language sector disruptions including data-driven automation of process and linguistic functions; use of multimedia in a wider array of places and applications; regulatory compliance; and competition within and beyond the language services and technology sector.
The good news from our analysis was that innovative LSPs who invest in statistical and neural processing could transform themselves into more efficient providers competing in the market for strategic global data, content, and knowledge management. They could pivot their operations and resources around three investments: 1) AI-based automation that would decrease the need for human touches in many operations, freeing staff for more complex value-add services; 2) MT, NLP, and NLU solutions such as augmented translation, semantic enrichment, and conversational interfaces that could supercharge their offerings across written and spoken content; and 3) on-demand computing power would provide the fuel for these new technologies.
Competing for a Strategic Role in Global Operations
The mission for LSPs that sell to end-clients is to advance beyond today’s primarily language-focused offerings to more advanced content services that will escalate them to a more strategic role in the organizations they service. We expect LSPs to be at one of five future states: Traditionalists, Process Reengineers, Data Scientists, Knowledge Process Outsourcers, or Global Content Strategists.
The first two stages are table stakes for companies to perform in the classic LSP world delivering translation and interpreting services. However, to grow faster with increased profitability and competitiveness, they’ll have to stretch to the next level of automation as Data Scientists. Fewer will develop the capabilities and capacity to sustainably meet the requirements for Content Knowledge Process Outsourcers (C-KPOs) and Global Content Strategists (GCSPs).
We coined the GCSP term when we first described the evolution of the Global Content Service Provider stage in “The Language Services Market: 2017.” GCSPs provide an enterprise-wide array of content strategy, creation, management, and adaptation. Offerings include services to support broader client success goals that are tied to global initiatives in customer experience and digital transformation, both tied to ambitious plans for worldwide business growth by their clients. That means a persuasive portfolio of content creation, processing, management, analytics, and intelligence services. The most successful GCSPs may win contracts to oversee or even outsource all content operations for an enterprise.
The Road Ahead For Global Content Service Providers
Basic translation and interpreting capabilities alone won’t be enough for an increasing number of end-clients that expect their providers to take on much more responsibility for global and multilingual data, content, and knowledge management. Very few of the 27,000 LSPs in our database would have the ability to do so.
Generative AI offers many LSPs, big and small, the opportunity to improve their game. Without a doubt, those aspiring to C-KPO and GCSP status who build on their service offerings will rely on AI-based automation, NLP and NLU solutions powered by machine learning, and powerful computing resources in the cloud.