Mapping a Decade of Growth in Language Services

We begin this week’s blog with a call to language services and technology providers to take the survey for our 17^th annual Global Market Study – before April 15^th. We trimmed the survey so it’s easier and quicker to complete.

Why do we expend so much effort on this survey and ask you to pitch in to provide your company’s data? Our main goal is to obtain financial and other company data from a valid representative sample of companies so that we can compare it against the total population of LSPs. CSA Research relies on the data from 550 or more LSPs to produce a reliable sizing of the language services and technology market. The comprehensive annual report that we produce, with its validated and verified rankings, is trusted by buyers of services and technology, investors, national governments and multilateral organizations, the mainstream and business media, educational institutions, and, of course, LSPs and langtech vendors themselves.

Reviewing the Last 10 Years of Market Analysis

CSA Research has conducted its Global Market Study powered by our comprehensive survey since 2010. It’s the progenitor of many such lists from trade publications and consultants. Let’s take a walk down Translation Memory Lane – with detours to interpreting, localization, and a host of specialized services and software that comprise the language services and technology market. Click on the  on any of the bars in this figure to read our blog for that year’s report. 

The blogs linked to the figure catalog the growth, providers, events, trends, and dynamics that have driven the language services and technology market for the last decade – all informed by the survey for our Global Market Study. Here are a few major topics that we address in our annual reports – and references to some of the many reports that evolved from that research: 

• Sustained growth. The language sector had seen consistent year-over-year growth through 2019 due to factors laid out in the “Demand” and “Future” chapters in our annual Language Services Market reports. Then came 2020 with the mid-year pandemic swoon followed by the fourth-quarter recovery and changing market dynamics that we analyze in “Sizing the Language Industry in 2020 and Beyond.”
   
• Multilingual, content, and data training services. Our annual reports underscore the dominance of written-language services over the years, but with a growing emphasis on conversational user interfaces, machine-to-machine communication, interpreting in various remote modes, and new data services for machine learning. Reports such as “The Future of Language Services” expand on some of these themes for supplier strategies and across a wide range of written and spoken content types.
   
• Specialized software. LSPs and langtech vendors have continued developing in-house and commercial language technology both to optimize human effort and replace it where machines make more sense, both for written and spoken content. Reports on augmented translation, intelligent content, small AI, neural MT, and lights-out project management analyze a few of these evolving technologies. Our report on “Remote Simultaneous Interpreting Platforms” explores the technology underlying the shift to remote modalities.
   
• Language operations at enormous scale. Language services require organizational structures, processes, and metrics to scale to the huge volumes that enterprise and government buyers demand. Reports like “Insights on LSP Maturity” build on data from our annual survey for the Global Market Study to benchmark LSPs on issues such as revenue, production, staffing, certifications, and other measures.

One last reminder: please take the survey and contribute to greater knowledge about the important industry that powers global communications, commerce, compliance, and compassion.

To thank you for taking the time to complete the survey, we will send you our insightful report on “Sizing the Language Industry in 2020 and Beyond.” This is a must-read for every LSP and langtech vendor – and any enterprise that buys language services or technology. Besides forecasts based on general economic trends during the pandemic, it also charts the impact of COVID-19 on major verticals.