Article by Sarah Hickey.
The language services industry is a shadow industry that is driving the growth of all global brands. It is a transformation business that does not create anything from scratch but transforms content from all other industries. This makes the market incredibly resilient because it is not reliant on what happens in one sector. Yet, it is fair to say that in times of economic ups and downs, businesses in the language services industry will be impacted in the same proportion as the industries they serve — both negatively and positively.
That being said, the language services market tends to outpace the global economy because whether times are good or times are bad, wherever there is a need for communication, there is always a need for language services.
For buyers of language services, it makes sense to select a provider with the appropriate portfolio size in their vertical. Those companies will speak the business language and know the challenges of that sector. Also, they will have resources such as specialized translators, translation memories, domain machine translation engines, glossaries and training materials.
In 2019, we created a graph that shows the estimated market split per vertical, and also lists the segment leaders in each of those. A lot has happened since so it was time to update this estimate and the companies highlighted in each segment.
The percentages are based on our overall estimate of the global market size for all language services. We estimate that the language services industry reached USD 64.7 billion in 2022 and should grow to USD 69.3 billion in 2023.
Download print version
Download Print Version (4.7 mb)How to read this chart
- The chart provides an estimated market split by vertical based on revenues from language services per segment. These totals were then weighed up against our overall market size for the global language services industry.
- Our chart groups verticals on two levels. For example:
Regulated > Life Sciences - Companies with larger portfolios are listed first in each vertical.
The chart is based on data obtained via responses to The Nimdzi 100 survey earlier this year and on annual reports of publicly-traded firms.
This article was prepared by Nimdzi's VP of Research, Sarah Hickey. If you wish to learn more, reach out to Sarah at [email protected].
