How is the mood in the European translation sector?

Language Industry Survey 2020How's the mood? We can answer this question in different ways. With hard figures on turnover, profit and investment, of course, but also by gaugeing expectations for turnover, profit and investment in the sector. 

How can we listen to the expectations and concerns that live in the sector. By asking questions about what is important to the sector: human resources, recruitment, outsourcing, the relationship between the different actors in the market (freelance translators and translation companies, for example), cooperation with education, technological developments, of course, also.

Well, that's exactly what the annual Language Industry Survey has been doing since 2013: by means of a survey, trying to understand the sentiment in the European translation sector and the trends that matter for the sector. In other words, by trying to figure out how much confidence does the European translation sector have in itself?

Are you active in the translation segment of the European language sector (as a provider, buyer or training institution), fill out the survey and determine the mood of your industry.

 

Unlike previous editions, this year's survey includes subsets of questions that are adapted to different types of respondents: translation companies, freelance translation professionals, translation departments in companies and other organisations, translation courses, purchasers of translation services. Once in the survey, you'll automatically navigate to the right subset.

At the beginning of April you will receive the answer to the question of what the mood in the European translation sector is like. On one condition: that there are sufficient respondents like you participating in the survey. You can participate until February 22, 2020.

Your perception counts: click here to start thesurvey.


Cooperation

This survey, which in 2013 was a joint initiative of the Translation Department of the European Commission (DGT, Directorate-General for Translation) and the European Umbrella of Federations of Translation Companies EUATC (European Union of Associations of Translation Companies), is now also supported by the other European network of translation companies (European Language Industry Association), by GALA (Globalization and Localization Association) and by FIT Europe (the European branch of the European branch of the international federation of translators / Fédération Internationale des Traducteurs).

DGT is involved in the survey through two own initiatives: the European Masters' in Translation network (EMT), a network and quality label for academic translation courses with more than 80 members, and LIND, an expert platform with the aim of collect as many facts and figures as possible on the European translation sector.


This was the vote in the European translation sector in 2019

In 2019, the vote was positive, but a little more cautious ly positive than in 2017 and 2018. The sector was still expecting growth, but expectations were more subdued, especially among independent translators.

Investment sentiment remained convincingly positive, and expectations in the field of recruitment also indicated strong confidence in the sector.

Across the sector, price pressures and machine translation were mentioned as the main concerns in 2019. At the same time and ironically, translation companies also called the machine translation the most positive trend. Because less than half of the approx. 1,500 respondents reported that they use translation machines on a regular basis, we can't consider the translation machine as a mainstream tool. Maybe in 2020?


See the results of the latest Language Industry Survey (2019, in English) on DGT's LIND platform.

The Language Industry Survey (2020) is only available in English.

 


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Author: Dries Debackere

Machine translation: SDL Machine Translation (previously SDL BeGlobal)

Post-editing: No post-editing

Source language: Nederlands (nl)


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