ELIS survey

Expectations and Concerns of the European Language Industry – survey of the language industry 2019.

The European Language Industry Association ELIA together with EMT, EUATC, FIT Europe, GALA and LIND in 2019 conducted another survey on Expectations and Concerns of the European Language Industry. The survey has been organized annually since 2013. In 2019, 1,404 translation agencies from 55 countries took part. Bulgaria was represented by 3 companies. It is considered the most successful of all studies to date.

Survey objective

This survey analyses the trends in Europe, rather than in individual countries. It aims not so much to present quantitative data as to show the attitudes in the industry. In this sense, it does not replace other local, regional or global studies of the language industry, but rather adds important dimensions of perception and trust that strongly determine the actions of translation agency owners.

The survey includes important questions such as what clients want, what are the agencies’ operational actions and plans, activities and sales, prices, staff hiring, investments and certification plans, technology used, investment in translation software, internships, training, challenges and other. We gained relevant experience to many of the topics and included questions in our Questionnaire, which we believe correspond to the current state of affairs in the Bulgarian translation industry.

Everything about the Top 100 Translation Agencies in Bulgaria survey can be found on the official website.

Results and facts

An interesting fact is that the survey sets apart the companies with revenues of up to EUR 250,000 as start-ups.

The results of the survey paint a more realistic picture in contrast to the firmly positive ones of the survey from 2018. Participants still expect growth for both the industry as a whole and their companies in particular.

The wish to invest is decidedly positive, and so are the expectations for hiring new staff, which shows strong confidence in the industry.

The open questions regarding trends however continue to show the same concerns as in previous years – price pressure (usually attributed to lowcost, low-quality and the inroads that machine translation is making) and post-machine editing.

Ironically, language service companies name that same machine translation as the most positive trend and put it without discussion at first place in terms of operational trends, with process automation as a strong runner up.

When looking at real usage however, machine translation has still a long way to go before it will be considered as a mainstream tool, since only a minority of the respondents – including translation companies – report that they use it on a regular basis.

You can read more about the ELIA 2019 survey here:

https://elia-association.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/2019-Language-Industry-Survey-Report-1.pdf

You can read more about the ELIA 2020 survey here:

https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/2020_language_industry_survey_report.pdf

If you are a translation service provider and want to take part in the survey in Bulgaria, you can fill in the Questionnaire here.