The language industry is the sector of activity dedicated to facilitating multilingual communication, both oral and written. According to the European Commission's Directorate-General of Translation, the language industry comprises following activities: translation, interpreting, subtitling, dubbing, software and website globalisation, language technology tools development, international conference organisation, language teaching and linguistic consultancy. According to the Canadian Language Industry Association, this sector comprises translation (as seen in interpreting, subtitling and localisation), language training and language technologies. The European Language Industry Association limits the sector to translation, localisation, internationalisation and globalisation. An older, perhaps outdated view confines the language industry to computerised language processing and places it within the information technology industry. An emerging view expands this sector to include

editing Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written language, written, Image editing, visual, Audio engineer, audible, or Film editing, cinematic material used by a person or an entity to convey a message or information. The editing p ...

for authors who write in a second language, especially English, for international communication.

Services

The scope of services in the industry includes: *

Translation Translation is the communication of the semantics, meaning of a #Source and target languages, source-language text by means of an Dynamic and formal equivalence, equivalent #Source and target languages, target-language text. The English la ...

Editing Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written language, written, Image editing, visual, Audio engineer, audible, or Film editing, cinematic material used by a person or an entity to convey a message or information. The editing p ...

for authors: author editing *

for publishers, e.g.

copy editing Copy editing (also known as copyediting and manuscript editing) is the process of revising written material (" copy") to improve quality and readability, as well as ensuring that a text is free of errors in grammar, style, and accuracy. '' The C ...

, proofreading (including computer-assisted reviewing), developmental editing *

Language interpretation Interpreting is translation from a spoken or signed language into another language, usually in real time to facilitate live communication. It is distinguished from the translation of a written text, which can be more deliberative and make use o ...

Language education Language education refers to the processes and practices of teaching a second language, second or foreign language. Its study reflects interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary approaches, usually including some applied linguistics. There are f ...

* Computer-assisted translation tools development *

Terminology extraction Terminology extraction (also known as term extraction, glossary extraction, term recognition, or terminology mining) is a subtask of information extraction. The goal of terminology extraction is to automatically extract relevant terms from a gi ...

Language localisation Language localisation (or language localization) is the process of adapting a product's translation to a specific country or region. It is the second phase of a larger process of product translation and cultural adaptation (for specific countries ...

* Software localisation * Machine translation The persons who facilitate multilingual communication by offering individualized services—translation, interpreting, editing or language teaching—are called language professionals.

Evolution

Translation (and interpretation) as actcivities, have existed since mankind started developing

trade Trade involves the transfer of goods and services from one person or entity to another, often in exchange for money. Economists refer to a system or network that allows trade as a market. Traders generally negotiate through a medium of cr ...

. That is to say that the origins of language industry are older than those of

written language A written language is the representation of a language by means of writing. This involves the use of visual symbols, known as graphemes, to represent linguistic units such as phonemes, syllables, morphemes, or words. However, written language is ...

. The communication industry has developed rapidly following availability of the

internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

. Achievements of the industry include the ability to quickly translate long texts into many languages. This has created new challenges as compared with the traditional activity of translators, such as that of quality assurance. There are various quality standards such as the

International Organization for Standardization The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ; ; ) is an independent, non-governmental, international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. M ...

's ISO 17100 (used in Europe), the CAN CGSB 131.10-2017 in Canada and ASTM F2575-14 in the US. A study commissioned by the European Commission's Directorate-General for Translation estimated the language industry in European member states to be worth 8.4 billion euro in 2008. The largest portion, 5.7 billion euros, was ascribed to the activities of translation, interpreting, software localisation and website globalisation. Editing was not taken into consideration. The study projected an annual growth rate of 10% for the language industry. At the time the study was published, in 2009, the language industry was less affected by the economic crisis than other industry sectors. One field of research in the industry includes the possibility of machine translation fully replacing human translation.

Controversies

Rates for translation services had become a big discussion nowadays as several translation outsourcers allegedly go in search of cheap labor. Professional associations like the International Association of Professional Translators and Interpreters have in the past try to put a stop to this development. Currency fluctuation is yet another important factor. Apart from this, other phenomena such as

crowdsourcing Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digit ...

appear in large-scale translations. US President

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...

drew criticism after a 2009 White House white paper proposed incentives for automatic translation.Letter from ATA to President Obama

References

External links

(1991-1995)
CAN CGSB 131.10
{{Industries Translation companies Service industries