|
Common Sense Advisory Blogs
|
|
|
|
Canadian Conservatives to Drive More Translation Spending?
|
|
|
|
Stephen Harper and his Conservative Party won Canadian national elections on 23 January, ending 13 years of Liberal rule and giving Canada a leader who is expected to move the country to the right on social and economic issues. This swing to the right brings smiles from conservatives to the south, so Canada is once again expected to enjoy a special warm relationship with Washington and Harper can expect an invitation to visit the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas for some barbeque and brush clearing.
Last week in a conversation with our friends at the Canadian Translation Bureau -- the CA$200 million group that serves Canadian federal departments, agencies, and houses of Parliament -- we got some insight into the importance of translation in that bilingual country. In digging a bit deeper we also found out that Conservative governments in Canada tend to spend less on social and artistic programs at the same time they increase spending on national security issues and the military.
This shift is good news for agencies that specialize in government content. While general market translations of user manuals, medical forms, and insurance information are easily outsourced to just about any LSP that can handle the language, military and intelligence translations often require security clearances, separate facilities and workflow, and other special contractual obligations to manage that hard-core work.
The bottom line always interests us. How much is this spending worth to government-focused translation agencies in Canada and the Translation Bureau itself? Our contact at the Bureau told us that every CA$1 billion in government spending generates CA$1 million in translation work. Being the ethnocentric analysts that we are, we wondered about the U.S. numbers. The same ratio for the U.S. 2005 US$2,472 billion (US$2.4T) budget would drive US$2.4 billion in U.S. government translation spending alone (versus the US$2.8 billion in government work last year worldwide). That level of spending would certainly see more owners of American LSPs driving S-Class Mercedes and living in pricey towns like Andover and La Jolla.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Link To This Page
|
|
Bookmark this page using the following link:http://www.commonsenseadvisory.com/Default.aspx?Contenttype=ArticleDetAD&tabID=63&Aid=325&moduleId=391
Do you have a website? You can place a link to this page by copying and pasting the code below.
|
|
|
Back
|
|
|
|
Keywords: Government market studies, Language policy, Translation |
|
|
|
|