How can larger Language Service Providers grow their own industry? That question has been going around our office recently and, yet again, we’ve come to a conclusion you won’t get from another LSP.
As outlined routinely by our CEO, Gavin Wheeldon, the language services sector generates £7.5bn profit a year and is dominated by the bigger players. The market landscape isn’t completely overshadowed by these larger companies, as there is also a sizeable army of smaller companies and ‘one man bands’ – of course, no single company can do all the translation of the industry.
Lacking in the language services industry!
That last statement directly conflicts with the ambitions of my CEO, but for good reason.
I shall proceed with this post anyway. I digress.
Now, these “smaller” companies would be more than willing to process larger projects if they could access some of the same linguists and tools of their larger counterparts – but they often have to refuse work.
Similarly, with short notice, high-volume projects, larger companies can and have refused work because the supply chain is too complex and quality (reputation) might be needlessly compromised as a result.
This paints a bad picture of companies in our industry. Typically, smaller providers seem “too small” and the larger ones are too rigid because they have contracted agreements in place that simply don’t bend to short-term requirements and their binding SLAs.
We then debated this question: “Why don’t the bigger players increase everyone’s piece of the pie, by providing an attractive pricing matrix to other LSP’s with opportunities to take on larger projects?” This would increase turnover and boost growth in the sector, so why not?
The answer is simple – we don’t know.
Something which goes hand in hand with these opportunities is the turnaround time – bigger companies have 24/7hr coverage, a bigger pool of linguists and suppliers which increases capability. So, in true ALS fashion, we’ll find the solution instead.
As a Business Development Manager, developing markets for Applied Language Solutions in the Legal & Finance sectors, I’ve also recently started to work closely with market research and consultancy firms, enabling them to increase their target market through localization.
This has gives us the opportunity to look at working with other LSPs – effectively bolting on our normal services, at pre-agreed rates as “their” capabilities.
So, if you are an LSP and you have a request that exceeds your typical requirements, you can take on projects that you normally wouldn’t have the resources for, so next time you can answer “yes, we can provide this much in that space of time”.
Contact Oliver Hetherington on 0845 888 7198 for more information.
There are, of course, much more serious examples in the real world of why we should professional interpreters, such as the story of eight year-old Victoria Climbié, who moved from the Ivory Coast to the UK in 1998 – she was abused and murdered by her great Aunt and her partner in 2000.
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The general media has gone mad over Google’s announcement that, in a few years, they hope to be-able to translate speech instantly.
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