Market size of the language industry
According to recent data from Statista, the vast majority of language agencies are small firms offering only translation services, while usually the larger language companies are considered full-service providers. These services include, apart from translation, transcreation, localization, dubbing, voice-over, desktop publishing, consulting, and others. Often, they are supported by advanced softwares which add progress and innovation in the industry.
On the language service side of the market, transcreation is becoming more relevant than ever. Content that lives in the web needs to rank high in search engines. Even app content is now indexed and discoverable through searches. Mobile searches are growing year on year and voice searches are increasingly relevant. Content for translation needs to be adapted in a way that captures the multi-layered cultural nuances in each market, so app and web content localization is more important than ever.
A report from Cisco predicts online video comprising 80% of the Internet’s traffic by 2019. Which means, of course, a vastly increased demand for video content in a whole range of different languages. At the same time, e-learning platforms, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and YouTube are building muscle fast, driving a demand which in 2018 is likely to skyrocket.
Market size
In 2018, the global language services industry market size reached over USD$45 billion and is forecasted to rise to USD$56.2 billion by 2021. For comparison, in 2009 the figures were only USD$23.5 billion, and the growing was steady since.
- 2009: 23.5
- 2010: 26.3
- 2011: 28.3
- 2012: 33
- 2013: 34.8
- 2014: 37.2
- 2015: 38.2
- 2016: 40.3
- 2017: 43.1
- 2018: 46.5
- 2021: 56.2
In short, the language industry is healthy and growing worldwide.
By region, North America has held a 39.41% share of the global language services market in 2018. As of May 2017, California had the highest employment in interpreting and translating services in the United States.
The most spoken languages in the world
Statista reports that there are currently nearly 1.3 billion native Chinese speakers in the world.
Spanish is the second most spoken language globally, with 442 million native speakers. English is third, with 378 million native speakers, while Arabic reaches 315 million people. Hindi (260 million) comes in 4th place followed by Bengali with 243. Portuguese, Russian and Japanese are next with 223, 154 and 128, respectively.
The United States does not have an official language, but they use English, specifically American English, for legislation, regulation and other official pronouncements. This country is a land of immigrations and the languages spoken in the United States vary as a result of the multi-cultural population. The second most common language spoken in the US is Spanish - over 34,559,894 people speak Spanish at home. While 2,465,761 Chinese speakers, 1,122,014 German speakers and 1,1225,014 Russian speakers are counted.
