Interpreting

This year, the ninth Nordic Translation Industry Forum (NTIF) was hosted in Gothenburg, Sweden, from November 24 to 26. Over 170 attendees from more than 26 countries traveled to the largest non-capital city in the Nordics to exchange ideas and engage in lively debate and friendly competition. Nimdzi Insights was among the mingling crowd too.

In most countries, the government is the largest buyer of interpreting services because, as the below graph illustrates, the public sector is the dominant market in most countries.

From November 6-8, LocWorld returned to Silicon Valley for the sixth time since the conference series first launched in 2003. Given the theme of the 2019 conferences — Go global, be global! — the location was particularly apt.

In every country, the level of centralization of government contracts has a huge impact on the interpreting market. We found that there is a Centralization Goldilocks Zone in which the markets flourish best.

The interpreting market is a diverse and complex sector within the language industry. There are different modes — consecutive, simultaneous, and whispered interpreting — and different modalities, i.e. onsite, over-the-phone (OPI), and video-remote interpreting (VRI). There are different types of interpreting, like medical, legal, community, and conference interpreting and all of them come with their own requirements.

At the moment, we count 75 virtual interpreting technologies (VIT) on the market. Some are meant to be used at conferences, some by end-users traveling abroad, some are only suitable for web conferencing.

The United States is the largest interpreting market in the world. Almost half of the interpreting providers on our ranking of top players in the world are from the US and have a combined revenue of USD 932.4 million.

The Paris Peace Conference in 1919 was a historic moment in many ways. The Treaty of Versailles marked the official end of World War I and if that wasn’t enough, it also established the League of Nations (later the United Nations) and the International Labour Office (ILO).

The UK market is the second largest localization and interpreting market in the world. It is defined by several large language service companies, a handful of mid-sized players and over a thousand smaller or specialist companies competing to meet client needs. Nimdzi and the Association of Translation Companies (ATC) have combined their efforts to provide a comprehensive overview of the language industry in the United Kingdom. 

We estimate the market for interpreting services in 2019 at USD 7.6 billion. This includes core services such as onsite interpreting, over-the-phone interpreting (OPI), video remote interpreting (VRI), video relay services (VRS), sign language interpreting, conference interpreting, equipment rental for interpreting, and related services.