The ATA Chronicle - May/June 2018 - 15

profession is impossible to quantify. But
that doesn't mean the problem is any
less real. At least not judging by the
increasing number of social media posts
discussing the issue, where comments
such as the ones below abound.5
■■ "Expenses go up, but rates have
remained stagnant or decreased.
It doesn't take a genius to see that
translation is slowly becoming a
sideline industry rather than a fulltime profession."
■■

"Some business economists claim
that translation is a growth industry.
The problem is that the growth is in
volume, not rates."

■■

"Our industry has been growing, but
average wages are going down. This
means that cheap service is growing
faster than quality."

Back in 2010, Common Sense
Advisory, a market research company
specializing in translation and
globalization, started discussing
technology- and globalization-induced
rate stagnation and analyzing potential
causes.6 Now, almost 10 years later,
let's take another look at what created
the crisis many freelance translators are
facing today.

A LONG LIST OF
INTERCONNECTED FACTORS
The causes leading to technology- and
globalization-induced rate stagnation
are so interconnected that it's difficult
to think of each one separately.
Nevertheless, each deserves a spot on
the following list.
1. Global Competition and the Rise
of "Supply": Globalization, internet
technology, and the growth of demand
for translation services naturally
resulted in a rise of the "supply." In
other words, an increasing number of
people started offering their services as
translators. Today, like all professionals
affected by global competition, most
freelance translators in the U.S.,
Canada, Australia, and Western Europe
find themselves competing against a
virtually infinite pool of translators
www.atanet.org

Even though the demand
for translation has been
increasing steadily over the
past few years, many experienced
freelance translators don't seem
to be benefitting.

who live in countries where the cost of
living is much cheaper and are able to
offer much lower rates. Whether those
translators are genuine professional
translators or opportunists selling
machine translation to unsuspecting
clients is almost immaterial. As the
law of supply and demand dictates,
when supply exceeds demand, prices
generally fall.
2. The Sheer Number of Language
Services Providers and the Business/
Competition Model: The increase
in global demand has also lead to an
increase in the number of language
services providers (LSPs) entering the
market. Today, there are seemingly
thousands of translation agencies in
a market dominated by top players.7
Forced to keep prices down and invest
in advertising and sales to maintain
their competitiveness, many agencies
give themselves limited options to keep
profits up-the most obvious being to
cut direct costs (i.e., lower rates paid
to translators). Whether those agencies
make a substantial profit each year (or
know anything about translation itself)
is beside the point. There are many LSPs
out there that follow a business model
that is simply not designed to serve
the interests of freelance translators.
Interestingly enough, competing against
each other on the basis of price alone
doesn't seem to be serving their interests
either, as it forces many LSPs into a selfdefeating, downward spiral of dropping
prices. As Luigi Muzii, an author,
translator, terminologist, teacher, and
entrepreneur who has been working in
the industry for over 30 years, puts it:

"The industry as a whole behaves
as if the market were extremely
limited. It's as if survival depended on
open warfare [...] by outright price
competition. Constantly pushing
the price down is clearly not a
sustainable strategy in the longterm interests of the professional
translation community."8
3. The Unregulated State of the
Profession: In many countries,
including the U.S., translation is a
widely unregulated profession with
low barriers to entry. There is also not
a standardized career path stipulating
the minimum level of training,
experience, or credentials required.
Despite the existence of ISO standards
and certifications from professional
associations around the globe, as long
as the profession (and membership
to many professional associations)
remains open to anyone and everyone,
competition will remain exaggeratedly
and unnaturally high, keeping prices
low or, worse, driving them down.
4. Technology and Technological
"Improvements": From the internet
to computer-assisted translation
(CAT) tools to machine translation,
technology may not be directly related
to technology- and globalizationinduced rate stagnation, but there's no
denying it's connected. The internet is
what makes global communication and
competition possible. CAT tools have
improved efficiency so much in some
areas that most clients have learned to
expect three-tier pricing in all areas.
Machine translation is what's allowing
amateurs to pass as professionals and
driving the post-editing-of-machinetranslation business that more and
more LSPs rely on today. Whether
machine translation produces quality
translations, whether the post-editing
of machine translation is time efficient,
and whether "fuzzy matches" require
less work than new content are all
irrelevant questions, at least as things
stand today. As long as technologies that
improve (or claim to improve) efficiency
exist, end clients will keep expecting
prices to reflect those "improvements."
American Translators Association

15
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The ATA Chronicle - May/June 2018
