Nimdzi has recently published its language services industry analysis. It’s a good source to see where your current LSP you’re working with is going or who will be the prospecting players in language services industry in the coming years. Very useful information inside like market size and growth for 2019.
Comments about this article
France
Local time: 08:34
French to English
hmph you first have to sign up before you can read it.
Local time: 03:34
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hmph you first have to sign up before you can read it.
Hi Kay,
The list is public, but I did get a huge pop-up to subscribe when I landed on the page that covered my whole screen. If you close that out, you can see the list.
Jared
Germany
Local time: 08:34
Member (2007)
German to Croatian
+ ...
Very useful info and insight into our industry.
France
Local time: 08:34
French to English
Hi Kay,
The list is public, but I did get a huge pop-up to subscribe when I landed on the page that covered my whole screen. If you close that out, you can see the list.
Jared
Thanks Jared. So I went back to try again and this time got straight in, they'd already given up on me apparently!
Portugal
Local time: 07:34
Member (2007)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
Very useful information for a non risk-taker...
United States
Local time: 02:34
Spanish to English
+ ...
Very useful information for a non risk-taker...
It should be pointed out that the rankings in question are based on revenue only, and reflect nothing (one way or the other) about the ethical and professional practices of the agencies in question, or whether most established translators residing in particular regions of planet Earth would consider the rates they typically offer for a given language pair to be attractive (or even minimally viable).
[Edited at 2019-05-16 17:18 GMT]
Germany
Local time: 08:34
Member (2016)
English to German
Lots of interesting stats and other useful info.
Ukraine
English to Russian
+ ...
At first I thought it was unfair to call "agencies" best LSPs because they are but middlemen having little to do with translation, yet checking one of the leaders I found it is--surprise!--closely associated with WordFast.
However, even declared "average" rates speak the sad truth...
Greece
Local time: 09:34
Greek to English
It should be pointed out that the rankings in question are based on revenue only, and reflect nothing (one way or the other) about the ethical and professional practices of the agencies in question
Indeed. Three of the top four are agencies I decided long ago never to work with, largely because of their payment policies.
Portugal
Local time: 07:34
Member (2007)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
Very useful information for a non risk-taker...
It should be pointed out that the rankings in question are based on revenue only, and reflect nothing (one way or the other) about the ethical and professional practices of the agencies in question, or whether most established translators residing in particular regions of planet Earth would consider the rates they typically offer for a given language pair to be attractive (or even minimally viable).
[Edited at 2019-05-16 17:18 GMT]
It was kind of an innocent private joke between me and Jared on account of another thread (yesterday's quick poll).
Spain
Local time: 08:34
Member
English to French
And why do I get the impression that a good portion of those who have contacted me over the years (about 1/3) just wanted to rip me off?
Anyway, it's not that we can no longer choose who to work with: the first 100 LSPs seem to cover less than 15% of the global ... See more
And why do I get the impression that a good portion of those who have contacted me over the years (about 1/3) just wanted to rip me off?
Anyway, it's not that we can no longer choose who to work with: the first 100 LSPs seem to cover less than 15% of the global market despite their consolidation efforts with massive M&A coups and their buying power for advertising.
Philippe ▲ Collapse
Germany
Local time: 08:34
Member (2009)
English to German
+ ...
Especially the newly arrived agencies. The list is apparently based on generated revenue/profit. And one of the new agencies will pretty soon be No. 1 because they just recently cut the rates they're paying the translators by up to 75%, thus increasing their profits tremendously.
This list is definitely to be taken with a grain of salt.
Netherlands
Local time: 08:34
English to Dutch
+ ...
Especially the newly arrived agencies. The list is apparently based on generated revenue/profit. And one of the new agencies will pretty soon be No. 1 because they just recently cut the rates they're paying the translators by up to 75%, thus increasing their profits tremendously.
This list is definitely to be taken with a grain of salt.
The list is only based on revenue, so the rates they pay their subcontractors are not a factor.
In fact, the report is rather shallow, focussing only on size and revenue, implying that industry consolidation is a good thing (again only because the combined companies have a higher turnover) and completely ignoring profitability. As an independent translator, the only takeaway is that the amount of work for translators is still growing, which is a good thing.
P.S. I didn’t know there were agencies that set the rates for their translators? In my experience it is always the other way around. I would certainly never accept a cut, but they are free to send me less work if they think I’m too expensive.
United States
Local time: 23:34
French to English
+ ...
Interesting information and comments on the data.
The following figure of 75% is alarming, but good to know.
[quote]Thayenga wrote:
And one of the new agencies will pretty soon be No. 1 because they just recently cut the rates they're paying the translators by up to 75%, thus increasing their profits tremendously.
Germany
Local time: 08:34
Member (2009)
English to German
+ ...
P.S. I didn’t know there were agencies that set the rates for their translators? In my experience it is always the other way around. I would certainly never accept a cut, but they are free to send me less work if they think I’m too expensive.
Too many agencies believe that they can dictate the rates, and just as many translators are forced to accept these low rates or go without work. Best example, discounts for repetitions, fuzzy matches and the like.
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