Our Analysts' Insights

In our early-in-the-pandemic call for action by company leaders, CSA Research recommended that companies “learn from this experience and get ready now for when the crisis ends.” We echoed that advice in our report on the future of language services. Over the last few weeks we’ve been briefed by several LSPs and translation technology vendors about how they have used the slowdown to push new initiatives and projects and, as we suggested, develop new products. They said that the pandemic’s dis...

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...

The language services industry is in disarray. Engrained ways of providing interpreting services became obsolete in a matter of days due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Organizations that use interpreting services, language service providers, technology vendors, and interpreters are struggling to comprehend the new reality and adapt to it.

The glory days of globetrotting for simultaneous interpreters are slowly fading. First, remote simultaneous interpreting (RSI) eliminated some of their frequent flyer miles. The next technological disruption to the conference interpreting market – real-time on-demand language access powered by machine interpreting – will be even more momentous. The first solutions are now available for conferences and have the potential to start picking up revenue from conference organizers.

In October 2017, the heads of six interpreting delivery platforms (IDPs) met on the sidelines of the 6th InterpretAmerica Summit in Washington, D.C. They were determined to address a bottleneck in the development of the IDP market that had been identified over a year earlier in a CSA Research report on the subject – that is, applications designed to support the delivery of spoken-word language services were experiencing vibrant innovation but suffered from a mismatch between product solutions a...

Interpreters have historically used a variety to tools to prepare themselves for interpreting assignments. However, their technology choices have been limited to an interpreter console, interpreting delivery platform, or glossary. That’s about to change with the emergence of full-fledged computer-aided interpreting (CAI).

CSOFT (#22 on our global list of the 100 largest LSPs) has banked on mobile being a driving force behind language needs. In December 2015, the company released Stepes (pronounced /'steps/), a human-powered mobile translation app designed to mobilize professional translators and Uberize the world’s bilingual population in the process. Last year, the company broadened the offering to support on-demand social media and image translation, again harnessing the power of the crowd. However, 2017 w...

Imagine yourself in a café in Paris or on a beach in Cancún, running into some gorgeous human specimen you just can’t help but approach. You walk up to the person, offer them a hearing device, and point for them to put it in their ear while you pop one in yourself. Then you launch an app on your smartphone and start communicating via the help of machine interpreting, hoping the app will accurately translate your best pick-up line.

Situations where individuals don’t speak the same language abound. Settings for interpreting range from courts, to health care, immigration, public safety, tourism, and trade. CSA Research tracks interpreting technologies that support the coordination and delivery of interpreting services. Changes are happening rapidly in this growing market sector, with new offerings constantly modifying the technology landscape. Let’s look at four developments that are paving the way.

Users of interpreting services don’t like gambling with unproven talent. It’s a lot easier – and a lot less risky – to rely on resources that you already trust rather than try out new ones. This aversion to risk makes it really hard for recent graduates of interpreting programs to break into the profession. Recognizing its own challenges with newbies, one language service provider is trying a new approach with it “Cadence Cares Fellowship.”