Translation and Localization Predictions for 2014

If you are wondering what translation and language industry is going to be in the year 2014, you have come to the right place. Read on to gain insights revealing what to expect in the coming year.

Globalization: The Call of Coming Times

The rise of globalization is showing no sign of slowing down, and the trend will continue through 2014, possibly faster than ever before. In the coming future, almost half of the world’s population will join the online community. With geographical distances getting shorter through the web; ‘Global Localization’ is all set to find its roots in our society. The increased flow of online traffic from around the world is the bread and butter for the online companies, as these people can target new potential customers that were unreachable previously. However, different people speak different languages, which bring in the translation industry into picture. Be prepared to see a swell in the demand for translation services from companies who want to re-write their web content in different local languages.

Content Boom

Content has been king for online businesses, and the bond between websites and content writing is inseparable. Thanks to the ever increasing number of internet users, and Google’s constantly changing rules for ranking the websites, the content market is set to explode. The expansion will not only take place in one place, as the demand for translation of websites and blogs, as well as Social Media feeds, will see on an upward trend. Multilingual sites with quality content are predicted to be embraced wholeheartedly by the internet world in this year.

Localized Revenue Generation

The long ignored local market is finally getting its due share of attention. In turn, the translation industry has been given a chance to really grow. This ultimately gives hope to investors who optimistically predicted profits in those markets and that it can be reached with the help of translators. Any company which still doubt or question the effectiveness of translating into different languages, will gradually realize the true potential of the current opportunity. On the other hand, companies with an eye to the future, consider crossing language boundaries as a way to add value and generate traffic by reaching broader demographics. The Multi-National Corporations will expand their workforce deep down to the regional level, where English is not widely spoken, and will work to provide products and services in a locally understood language.

Automated Translation

Thanks to automated service providers like ‘Google Translate’, the futurist vision for machine translation seems to be getting more and more popular. Not to worry, this is not a complete death sentence to the human translation industry. For documents to be perfectly translated with their true meaning, human interference is required. The reasoning skills and puns in documents are still alien to the translation machines. If there is any logical error in the original document, it is unlikely that machine can pick it up; however, if there is a human interference, those errors can be easily detected and corrected. That does not mean automated technology is destined for failure, as it comes very handy in case of time-critical assignments.

If the world is moving into a machine-age, the machine translation is here to stay. In coming times, we will most likely see innovative modifications in automated translation technology. It will most likely be enough to give the human technical translators a run for their money. Technical translators can potentially find jobs as ‘Machine Translation’ advisers, opening up an opportunity for providing better quality service to the customers.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that the translation industry is here to stay in 2014 and beyond. Not only will those in the translation industry see profits, but businesses and local markets will also witness a major impact. The translation industry is predicted to greatly contribute to the growth of the world-wide economy, globalization and localized revenue generation.