Access Business Analytics
CSA Research has consistently relied on an annual representative sample and statistical methods to size the market. As of May 2024, we are still in the process of collecting and validating this year’s data.
Starting in 2021 and due to economic uncertainties, we started to update our market sizing with quarterly confidence surveys and incorporate IMF macroeconomic data in our market sizing.
Based on the latest macroeconomic trends and CSA Research’s business confidence data from January 2024, we forecast that the outsourced language services and technology market will experience weak growth
in 2024 after contracting in 2023.
CSA Research relies on a statistical methodology (read more here), and a representative sample of LSPs from CSA Research’s supplier population of 27,000 LSPs, and accounts for double and triple counting to size the language market.
Each year we combine the annual baseline with our annual Global Market Study, quarterly confidence surveys, and macro-economic data to produced three possible predictions.
This blend of annual in-depth data collection, quarterly confidence surveys and IMF data ensures our sizing model remains robust and reflective of the real-world conditions on a quarterly basis.
To estimate the market size, we rely on our own database of 27,000 LSPs and a statistically representative sample with a 95% confidence level.
Given the uncertainty tied to the AI pause and the unpredictable economic conditions, even the most reliable statistical forecasting models done on an annual basis have been undermined.
Therefore, we decided to dive deeper into the numbers and estimate future outcomes using scenario modeling.
In addition to our quarterly confidence surveys , we incorporated scenario modeling to evaluate three models in a sequence of increasing likelihood. Together, these three scenarios define the range of possibilities derived from our 2023 and 2024 Global Market Surveys data, macroeconomic trends, and 4,296 responses to a series of surveys.
Sizing the market based solely on the Top 100 or even the Top 200 or 250 LSPs (CSA Research's ranking of the top 100 LSPs globally plus the top regional LSPs) is statistically incorrect and misleading.
The graphic below clearly shows that since 2015 the Top 100 LSPs have had highly variable growth rates, with an average growth that does not predict the performance of the rest of the market. CSA Research data shows that smaller LSPs experienced significantly greater volatility during uncertainties.
The weak correlation between the growth rates of the top LSPs and the rest of the market makes it impossible to generalize from one segment to the remainder.
Sizing the market without a representative sample, and considering factors such as double and triple counting is inaccurate.
The April update relies on the most recent survey data we collected in Q1 2024 as well as current macro-economic forecasts.
Get an overview of the size of the language service market on our blog.