Tag: language services
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Back up and running
It’s hard for me to believe that my last post here was May 2019. So much has happened. Apart from the obvious (i.e., pandemic), the language services market finds itself in the midst of major transition, as it adapts to the widespread use and acceptance of artificial intelligence, large language models, and ever-improving machine translation.…
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Why Can’t I Raise My Rates?
An Introduction to the Economics of Language Services* For millennia, humans have struggled with the concept of value. Why are some things more valuable than others? Who decides? Why, Plato pondered, are rare things so valuable, when others, like water, are not? Scottish philosopher Adam Smith, in his seminal work, Wealth of Nations, formalized this…
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Thoughts on Presenting an ATA Webinar
The American Translators Association (ATA) hosts an ongoing series of webinars on a range of issues related to language services. Participants either watch live presentations online, with Q&A sessions, or can click on a link to the webinar at any time afterward. ATA recently asked me to prepare and present a webinar on a subject…
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Convergence in Language Services
The average person tends to think of translation and interpreting as essentially the same thing. If you can speak, read, and write in two languages, you should be able to translate as well as you interpret, and vice versa. Those of us in the language-service industry know better. We understand how different these professions can…
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Do Translators compete against Translation Agencies?
I recently came across a thoughtful, impassioned article* written and presented at the 1st NYU Translation Day Symposium by Kenneth Kronenberg, a long-time German-English translator. I don’t know Mr. Kronenberg, but after reading his piece, it became clear to me that he truly cares about translation and translators. His words reveal a genuine concern for…
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A land of fire and ice and…language service professionals?
Tourism in Iceland has skyrocketed over the past 15 years, in part because so many movies and TV series have recently been shot there (e.g. Interstellar, Game of Thrones, Flags of our Fathers, Prometheus, Oblivion, Batman Begins, etc.). The number of visitors now far outpaces the local population. Source: Wikipedia In 2015, Americans and Brits…
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An hourly rate for translation?
A few articles have recently been published on the possibility of changes to fee structures in the language service industry. The time-honored way in which freelance translators charge out for their work has been per word, while freelance interpreters generally charge out per hour or day. Now, however, there is talk of translators charging out…
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Translation and Technology
Mike Collins and I recently gave a presentation at Duke University on the state of technology in the language-services industry. Our focus was on the changing nature of the translator’s role in our business. We are no longer just multilingual wordsmiths. We must now be technologically savvy and proficient, staying ahead of the curve in…
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The State of Languages Services in 2015
Fifteen years into the 21st century is a good time to take stock of where we are as both an industry and a profession. Language services have come a long way. In the not-so-distant past, translators and interpreters toiled away in relative obscurity, for little, or at times, no pay. Global travel and migratory flows…
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Bulk vs. Premium
“Bulk versus premium”: this was one of the constant refrains at this year’s ATA Conference in Chicago. The market for language services appears to be shifting into this dichotomy, with freelance translators and interpreters caught in the middle. The bulk market is understood to mean services rendered in large quantities, over short time frames, and…
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$25 million Invested in Language Service Technology
I saw this story a couple of months ago. What struck me was the fact that venture capitalists were willing to put up $25 million for what they perceive as the future of language services, namely some type of hybrid software-and-human service such as the one being touted in the story. When people ask what…
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Why Can’t I Raise My Rates? The Wrap-up
This series of posts has laid the foundation for answering a question that confounds many freelance professionals. They know that they have some control over the prices that they charge, and yet, there are clearly forces working against them, limiting their ability to raise their rates. The market for language services (and translations, in particular)…
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Why Can’t I Raise My Rates? Productivity
Freelancers who feel constrained by market-imposed limitations are not completely helpless. As mentioned in my previous post, the first step to improving income potential involves differentiation; i.e. making yourself stand out from the crowd. But let’s assume that you have taken that first step. You have carved out your niche. You have made it clear…
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Why Can’t I Raise My Rates? Differentiation
My posts up to this point have mostly been descriptive. In other words, they have sought to describe the market as it is (or appears to be). With this post, we turn to a more prescriptive discussion, focusing on what, if anything, can be done in light of this reality. In a fairly competitive market,…
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Why Can’t I Raise My Rates? Market Equilibrium
Now that we’ve laid out the individual foundations of supply and demand in the translation market, we can bring these two concepts together to discuss another theoretical construct that helps understand translations rates: market equilibrium. Without delving into mathematical details, the basic idea is that the price on any market is the result of the…
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Why Can’t I Raise My Rates? Variables Affecting Supply
In my previous post, I discussed scarcity and introduced the role that supply and demand play in determining rates in the language-service market. We looked at an example or two and noted that language professionals (i.e. translators) make up the supply, while businesses, hospitals, law firms, governments, individuals, etc. comprise the demand. In this post,…
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Why Can’t I Raise My Rates? The role of scarcity
The first post in this series introduced the economic concept of elasticity as a way of understanding the limitations that freelancers face when attempting to raise the rates that they charge. Two extremes were discussed: a monopoly, where one translator dominates the market and faces no competition; and a highly competitive market, where thousands of…
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Why Can’t I Raise My Rates?*
Many language-service providers work on a freelance basis. They do not have a steady job with steady pay and benefits. Instead, they are constantly hustling, looking for the next client, the next project, the next paycheck. There is a whole host of reasons to explain how the industry got this way, but I’ll leave that…
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Welcome
Welcome, bem-vindo and bienvenido to the Translating Economist, a blog dedicated to parsing the business and economics of the language-service industry. I’m an economist and a certified translator. These two fields are my lifelong passion, and for some time now, I’ve had it in my head to sit down and share my ideas on the…