Might be a bit tardy, but we thought to report that Europe’s translation providers and other language teaching services generated $12bn in 2008, according to a study commissioned by the EU’s translation service.
The language industry is growing faster than any other sector in Europe, the report found. Expansion is expected to continue at a rate of 10%, writes The Guardian.
Other highlights of the report:
- Investment companies are showing interest in the sector, as shown by evidence in Eastern Europe, where there are a few players that are dominating translation services.
- Machine translation is becoming more ubiquitous, catalyzed by improved accuracy of computer-assisted translation and a shortage of human translators relative to growing demand.
- Translation and interpreting ($8bn) trumped language teaching ($2.3bn) in terms of sheer revenue.
Because the language industry is so diverse, with services ranging from technical document translation to audio/video subtitling to software localization, its overall impact is often overlooked, the researchers observed.