Predictions for the Translation Business 2007

I met a very nice and well-informed man at the ATC conference in September - Renato Beninatto - who has his finger on the pulse of the big companies in the globalisation, localisation and translation world. Today he sent me his predictions for movements in the industry in 2007 -some of which could potentially affect European freelancers like us:

The Good News

Companies like Alchemy, Lingotek and MultiCorpora and other new players are expected to challenge SDL-Trados market dominance on TM - could this mean cheaper software for us?

The Translator Profile Exchange (TPX) initiative will allow Language Service Providers (LSPs) to receive automatic updates on translator profiles and work records - no more sending out endless CVs to agencies every time you add skills and experience (perhaps). Though this would only be for those large companies who subscribe to the scheme - the others will still have their separate databases.

Mash-ups are on their way - for instance Googlemaps and estate agents can now combine to show properties on a map - Renato believes we may see directory services tied to Googlemaps which send SMS messages to interpreters near the location needing language help....

The Bad News

Google, IBM, Language Weaver and Microsoft will be looking further into statistics-based automated translation applications, these will produce better automatic translations based on corpora of texts - this one will be interesting to watch.

India's National Knowledge Commission expects 500,000 jobs to be created in the Indian translation industry (Cisco, Microsoft and EMC are already there).

China has loads of foreign currency and salaries of US$600 per year for an editor, they are expected to build a powerful language and translation sector both for internal minorities and their export activities - watch this space!

BUT!

Before all this sets our hearts-a-fluttering we must remember that good quality output of any complexity can only be produced by human translators well-versed in the details of the real world - culture, genre, professional and local usage and the like.

One over-riding message from the ATC conference in September was that all the key players are desperate for listings of good, reliable, professional translators - many buy-outs of smaller companies are based almost exceptionally on the aquisition of good databases.

And remember, the big boys of the sector may be profit motivated and margin dominated, but they cannot provide adequate quality products for the high-end of the market without the likes of you and me.

For up to date information on developments amongst the big boys (albeit with a bit of a US bias) see:

www.commonsenseadvisory.com