Market concentration in the language services industry and working conditions for translators

Abstract

Translators are facing worsening working conditions that are compromising their ability to make a living in the language industry. This situation has been attributed to different economic, technological, and professional reasons. An important factor that has not been considered to date which might explain this situation is a possible scenario of market concentration in the language services industry. To assess the validity of this assumption, a dataset on the top 100 language service providers’ revenue, market share, relative size, and mergers and acquisition operations for the 2011–2020 period has been compiled and analyzed. The results point to a situation of market concentration and dominance by a few players in the top 100 language services providers segment, while the business landscape for the whole language services industry remains hard to characterize, with only circumstantial data pointing to a possible situation of market concentration and dominance, that would require access to further, more granular data to be determined.