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Take care to avoid mediocre quality in translation
A study published this week by the European Union reveals that one of the problems in the translation sector is the fact that there are almost no barriers to entry into the profession. As a result, under-qualified and unscrupulous individuals are able to enter the market, offering significantly lower prices and mediocre levels of quality.
The new certification standard EN 15038, which Multilingues has implemented in full, is becoming increasingly common across Europe, but the standard itself only partially addresses the issue of quality. The report thus draws attention to one of the issues that companies must take into account, which is the need to take care with the services they contract in order to avoid acquiring poor quality products.
This study, conducted during the first half of the year for the European Commission Directorate-General for Translation, sought to take the pulse of the language industry in the European Union and predict how it would develop in the future. To this end, studies were conducted regarding translation and interpretation, software adaptation and website globalisation, the development of language technology tools, language teaching, language consultancy and the organisation of international conferences with multilingual requirements. The study gleaned over 1,000 responses from the 27 EU member states. In Portugal, Multilingues was one of the survey participants.
During 2008, the language industry in EU member states was worth approximately €8.4 billion.
The activity is predicted to grow at a rate of at least 10% over the next few years, which points towards a minimum of €16.5 billion in 2015. Although these figures require confirmation through more detailed studies, it is estimated that the industry could even be worth in excess of €20 billion by 2015, since the language industry seems to be the least affected by the global financial crisis.
The importance of the industry has slowly started to be appreciated by companies, as demonstrated by the growing interest that investment firms are showing in purchasing shares in companies involved in activities linked to languages.
In the case of translation and interpretation, which is the area that is of concern to us, during 2008 the sector (which includes software adaptation and website globalisation) was worth €5.7 billion, a large slice of the overall value of the language industry in the European Union. The trend for translation and interpretation is towards market consolidation, a trend which is likely to continue into the future.
The most used languages continue to be English, German, Spanish, French and Italian, with growth in regional uses of these.
Parallel studies show that the language industry has the largest growth rate of all European industries.
Despite the study’s limitations in terms of the time period covered, the participation of companies and organizations in the member states and long response times that significantly reduced the time allocated for analysis, the report reveals an unparalleled growth trend in the language industry, particularly in the translation industry.
The information presented in the report is a real asset and will serve as a foundation for more extensive, far-reaching and detailed studies which should allow us, in the near future, to paint a more reliable picture of the real size of the language industry in the European Union.
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