Common Sense Advisory

For this report, we analyzed 955 unique client profiles provided to us by translation salespeople at language service provider (LSP) organizations in order to identify patterns among buyer groups. Using this data, we carried out extensive statistical tests to identify relationships between numerous variables. These tests allowed us to spot relationships -- where they existed -- between items like vendor loyalty and geography, or between vertical market and annual translation budget. In this report, we detail the demographic and behavioral characteristics of translation buyers, and we track the significant links between these attributes.

When searching for appropriate linguistic equivalents, individuals sometimes rely on web-based forums ("fora" to Latin scholars). Online dictionary sites can be useful, but these resources are frequented by all types of users -- from senior certified translators to new language learners. How can users of these resources distinguish between valid advice and wild guesses? In this Quick Take, we share some suggestions.

What is the current state of the telephone interpretation (TI) market? And what will happen in the next five years? In this report, we answer these questions. We provide detailed market size estimates for both the total interpreting market as well as the phone-based portion – and we discuss the portion that corresponds to the United States and the rest of the world. We also offer insight into the methodology behind our numbers, the underlying drivers of the TI business, and the implications for the future.

Last year, Common Sense Advisory published the first-ever global ranking of telephone interpreting (TI) providers, as well as estimates for the whole interpretation market (see "Telephone Interpretation: The Supply Side," Jun08). Now, in our second annual TI supplier roster, we update those estimates.

Machine translation is technology that many organizations will find indispensable in removing the language obstacle for international operations or domestic multilingual applications. For this report, we interviewed 31 users of machine translation and eight LSPs offering MT to understand what drove them to the technology, how well it's met their needs, and what they plan to do next.

Public lexicons can be a bit like buried treasure. The right map can lead you to a wealth of data that you can feed into termbases and machine translation (MT) programs to statistically increase the number of entries and matches and refine output. When lexicons are well utilized, they augment productivity and consistency. In this Quick Take, we explain the differences between lexicons, bitexts, and termbases. We also list the largest public lexicons and describe the ways in which you can leverage the data for language processing purposes.

Website globalization practitioners often ask us which countries and languages they should target to maximize return on their translation spend. In July 2009, we released updated figures for total available audience (TAA) and online gross domestic product (e-GDP) for 30 top countries. In this Quick Take, we divulge the top 30 languages, as ranked by share of "world online wallet," or WOW factor -- a metric that every global brand manager should know.

We predicted earlier this year that the priorities of the Obama Administration would yield positive results for the language services industry ("Title VI Enforcement to Grow Under Obama," Jan09). How will H.R. 3200, "America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009," influence the business of interpretation and translation? We pored over the 1018-page document so that you wouldn't have to. This report highlights our top findings.

Language-related legislation is constantly on the table in multilingual societies, but many language service providers (LSPs) fail to take action in support of the legislation that promotes greater access to the services they sell, ultimately helping their businesses grow. This Quick Take shares ten ways LSPs can help contribute to the successful passage and implementation of laws that require the very translation and interpreting services that they provide.

The principle of a language competency continuum applies to all regions and countries serving as hubs for business process outsourcing. But translation buyers looking at offshore options in China, in particular, should determine what level of English (or other non-Chinese language) competency they can tolerate for client service, project management, and technical experts before issuing a request for proposal (RFP). This Quick Take offers buyers a typology of language service providers based on non-Chinese language competency at four different levels within the vendor company.

Historically, the price of translation has been remarkably stable. We saw this in May 2004 when we compared rates then with the historical record from 10 years prior. Last year, we observed a similar range of prices in comparison to 2004. Over the last two decades, even with the current global economic downturn, prices have stayed largely the same. This Quick Take reviews the state of pricing and the tactics that buyers use to lower the prices they pay for translation services.

As international migration continues and language policy bolsters the rights of linguistic minorities, the demand for language services in health care has grown more acute than ever before. Machine translation (MT), also called automatic translation, continues to attract attention, especially the free online variety. But what happens when doctors and nurses turn to automatic translation on the web in order to communicate with patients? In this Quick Take, we review what happened when we used one of the most popular machine translation tools to convert 30 common clinical phrases from English into Spanish. Then, we translated the Spanish output back to English.

Companies looking to focus budget on the most promising markets often ask Common Sense Advisory for assistance in prioritizing their localization spend. In this brief, we set out two ways to represent the potential value of localizing an online experience: total available audience and e-GDP. Tabular data is provided listing details for the top 30 countries, including share of WOW, or "world online wallet," for 2009-2010.

In the spring of 2009, we issued a call for participation to a select sampling of buyers of phone-based interpreting services in key geographic areas. We approached decision-makers at organizations in dozens of vertical markets, ranging from health care to consumer products. We also targeted purchasers in every major tier, from accounts with the largest volumes to smaller-scale users. In this report, we reveal what 144 telephone interpreting buyers had to say about how they make their purchasing decisions, what they are spending, and what they value most in their providers.

In June 2009, Clay Tablet Technologies announced immediate availability of its V2.5 product, introducing new features for synchronizing translation memory (TM) and terminology assets for multi-point translation management systems (TMSes) and content management systems (CMSes). In this Quick Take, we look at how this helps translation buyers construct meta-workflows to move content from disparate content sources to multiple TMSes.

Freelancers can trace their job title back to Sir Walter Scott, who introduced the term in his 1819 novel, "Ivanhoe." His "free-lance" characters were medieval mercenaries who pledged their loyalty (and weapons) to lords and kings, for a fee. They replaced or complemented a standing army. Today's equivalent offers his or her services to a firm that needs work done, but which prefers paying for discrete tasks on a piecemeal or contractual basis rather than on a full-time basis.

Since language services throughout the world are provided primarily by freelancers, we decided to take the pulse of the people who actually perform the translation and localization work that forms the base of the industry. We invited freelance translators and interpreters across the globe to participate and asked them to weigh in with their opinions of how -- if at all -- the global economic situation has affected them.

Remote language mediation is becoming more common than ever before. Telephone interpreting (TI) is already widespread. When, if ever, will video-based communication or interpreting (VI) take over? Everyone agrees that video interpreting is the way of the future. The mere mention of the topic provokes futuristic visions of projecting a Berber interpreter hologram from a mobile phone in the remotest sands of the Sahara. However, technology remains the greatest roadblock to widespread use of VI as a potential replacement for TI.

Since language services throughout the world are provided primarily by freelancers, we decided to take the pulse of the people who actually perform the translation and localization work that forms the base of the industry. We invited freelance translators and interpreters across the globe to participate and asked them to weigh in with their opinions of how -- if at all -- the global economic situation has affected them.

For this report, we revisited our interviews from "Buyer-Defined Translation Quality" (Sep08) and found two major obstacles to achieving good results when translating business content: 1) the usual practices of language service providers and the human translators they employ; and 2) what they themselves do, either organizationally or process-wise, that stands in the way of getting the best possible translation. This report continues our coverage of translation quality issues and describes ways in which buyers and language service providers (LSPs) can work toward overcoming these roadblocks.