(Boston, Massachusetts and Brussels, Belgium) – November 25, 2009 – Which European countries offer the largest opportunities for multilingual services? A new report from market research firm Common Sense Advisory finds that three nations, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, top the list.  The report details the estimated amount of language services business for these and 43 other European nations.

“Businesses in Europe are increasingly using language services to achieve global success with their services and products,” points out Tahar Bouhafs, Chief Executive Officer of Common Sense Advisory. “Expansion into new markets is a critical piece of any business’s growth plan -- translation, localization, and interpreting services are the tools that make it possible.”

To compute the amount of translation, localization, and interpreting business in each market, the firm developed an algorithm that takes into account multiple market drivers, such as gross domestic product (GDP), export volumes, and levels of immigration.

“Europe is already home to some of the most progressive attitudes toward multilingualism in the world, and the European Union has gone to great lengths to promote the development of language services technologies, such as translation memory and machine translation,” commented Nataly Kelly, lead researcher for the report. “The next developments on the horizon in Europe include community-based translation and translation into diverse output formats -- essentials in the age of Web 3.0.”

Kelly will present preliminary findings from Common Sense Advisory’s research into the European market for language services on Friday, November 27, 2009 in Brussels, Belgium, at “Study on the Size of the Language Industry in the EU” conference, which is sponsored by the European Commission Directorate-General for Translation. The presentations will broadcast via a live web feed at the European Commission webTV portal: http://webcast.ec.europa.eu/eutv/portal/index.html.