Our Analysts' Insights

In the streaming adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation sci-fi novels, Synnax became a water planet due to overmining of its volcanic vents. In Waterworld, the melting of the polar ice caps submerged most of planet Earth. In both cases, as sea levels rose, dry land came to be in ever shorter supply – as were food, potable water, biodiversity, and economic activity other than subsistence fishing and piracy. People migrated in search of life essentials or safer havens. Language, culture, and li...

As long as human beings have used spoken language, someone has needed to interpret when people with different tongues want to communicate. Whether in friendly situations or in times of strife; by trained and professional linguists or simply someone who happens to speak two or more languages, individuals, businesses, organizations, and the military rely on the human skill of hearing one language and speaking another.

Ask people working in the localization industry if the move to working from home affected them, and many will tell you that they were already “remote” – set up to work from home, due to the nature of their jobs. Language service provider have no physical products to ship, no warehouses to store goods, and no fleets of trucks or ships to coordinate for deliveries. Coordinating language services in this day and age is essentially an ebusiness. On the surface, the switch to working from home app...

During a time of uncertainty, hearing from peers and leaders helps and we have been sharing feedback from multiple constituents to help organizations focus on what really matters as well as find opportunities in the middle of a crisis and get ready for the re-entry phase and growth in the post Covid-19 economy. In this final post of 2020, we share analysts’ thoughts on the toughest year to date, and what to carry with us into 2021.

With no country’s economy able to predict accurately whether it’s entering a recession or cautiously rebounding, you might expect companies to be cutting back their translation and localization budgets. However, that doesn’t match our analysis based on virtual group meetings with Leadership Councils, interviews, and the results of a survey of 63 global enterprises in 19 countries that CSA Research conducted in mid-April 2020.

The last few months have been tough on everyone. After a couple months of indecision, many political leaders took the advice of epidemiologists and shut down all but essential businesses. With people ordered to shelter in place, LSPs around the world operated remotely with staff working from home. Our surveys over the last few months have shown the economic impact of the resulting decreased demand and uncertainty about how long they’d be shut down.

One of the most heartbreaking results of COVID-19 pandemic has been hearing about people falling ill, suffering, and too-often dying, without their family and loved ones around them. Imagine how much more terrible this must be if the patient – or family members – cannot easily communicate with caregivers, nor fully understand what they are told. Combine these challenges with statistics showing COVID-19 disproportionately affecting racial and ethnic minorities and the picture is grim.

Most people frown upon the idea of talking to machines, yet they are already encountering them in everyday conversations. For example, when you call a bank or utility company, you probably start the conversation with a bot that triages the request and escalates the conversation to a human call agent when it reaches the limits of its capabilities. There is no longer a need for a human to tell you your credit card balance. Likewise, there is no need for a human interpreter if a nurse checks on the...

No one can predict when the ripple effects of COVID-19 will end. However, the results of our survey of 63 global enterprises in 19 countries indicate strongly that now is the time for organizations to plan for the scenarios that they will have to handle, whether under conditions of a prolonged recession or a cautious rebound. The effects on regional and local economies are already playing out in different ways at different speeds. Teams should prepare for the competitive landscape to look substa...

In late April and early May, CSA Research partnered with the Institute of Language Services, Hebei Normal University for Nationalities to survey 135 language service providers in China about their experience during the period when COVID-19-related restrictions were in force and what has happened since they were relaxed. As the first country to have experienced stringent limitations on movement, social activity, and work – as well as the first to emerge from them – the experience of Chinese LSP...