2020 and Beyond: Trends that Will Change the Translation Industry

What if 2019 was just the tip of the iceberg for the translation industry? Exciting times will ultimately lead to more exciting times in 2020. It’s a prime time for businesses that aim to expand their reach through promising technological transformations.

Besides, translation companies have begun to understand the vitality of broadmindedness. It is, after all, essential to remain at the top of the game in the coming years. What’s interesting is that most of the translation companies now want to offer localization services as part of their business strategy.

Moreover, the translation industry will continue to experience long-term growth until 2021. It's the period where the market can surpass more than $56 billion. It’s the kind of growth that will open up new possibilities in 2020. Keeping that in mind, here are some of the most significant trends that would inherently drive the change for language translation service industry:

The Growth and Integration of Artificial Intelligence

At this point, it’s clear that the utilization of artificial intelligence in translation will reach new heights in the foreseeable future. Primarily, the key benefit of AI in translation is that it allows businesses to instantly capture and contextualize language intricacies that would be difficult to achieve via different methods of machine translation (ML).

Consequently, prominent tools like virtual assistants will be available in a multitude of languages. Exciting AI changes are on the horizon as tech giants like Apple, Google, and Microsoft aim to break more technological barriers of artificial intelligence.

The Inevitable Increase of Video Localization

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that more than 80% of the online content consists of the video. As a result, video translation might take center stage as one of the leading trends for the translation industry in 2020 and beyond.

The idea for businesses is to use a language services agency to localize videos confidently and authentically. Video localization, for instance, has become essential for companies that want to expand in more competitive global markets successfully. The main uses of video localization will involve:

• Sending vital information to users about new products and upgrades.
• Convincing new customers in the form of follow up messages.
• Creating training videos for employees in different geographical locations.

The Utilization of Machine Translation for Post Editing Will Rise

In hindsight, neural machine translation (NMT) utilizes a neural network technology to get more reliable and contextually correct translations. Usually, it effectively and efficiently translates complicated languages through algorithms that understand language nuances and conventions.

And when companies use these machine translations along with human post-editing, translations turn out to be more culturally authentic. It's a trend that is gradually gaining attraction, and language service providers that focus on modern machine translation with human post-editing might sweep the market with high demand in 2020. 

More Accurate Video Translations and Subtitling

As per Cisco, more than 80% of Internet traffic will consist of videos by 2021. Most of the Facebook videos, for instance, are played back with no sound. Therefore, subtitles for the target language users will become more relevant.

When it comes to the video translation services, it is crucial to maintain the same timestamps of the original video and showcase the rendered video in the intended format. It means the value of better video subtitling tools will gain new meaning in the coming years.

Translation Companies Will Achieve Global Standard

Digital technology has become a force to help businesses grow globally. But this need to globalize will only increase in time for translation agencies. In fact, renowned translation service providers now intend to offer their services to foreign markets such as South America, Southeast Asia, and even the Middle East.

For example, China, South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Vietnam, and India are the top rising translation markets for 2020. And that’s because these markets have an annual growth rate of 4-5%. Thus, it makes sense for companies to include these regions as part of their primary globalization strategy.

Businesses Will Get Affordable Translation Services with Higher ROI

Speaking of embarking on a global journey, more companies now want to provide cost-efficient translation and localization services for different industries. Look no further than the cloud collaboration, which makes sure that single tasks in a translation process are quicker than, say, e-mail. And as team members get a notification about a particular job instantly, translation projects can switch back-and-forth or move on to the next stage effortlessly.

Conversely, computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools utilize a database that inputs and monitors repeated sentences and phrases for respective translations. Now, these translation memories facilitate translators to pinpoint terms that were used to translate different words. With the help of the automation process, CAT tools inherently save valuable time and money for businesses.