The translation industry is undergoing rapid growth, and there are several forces driving this trend: With increasing internationalization and the rise of e-commerce and digital media, the demand for multilingual content to reach global audiences and increase brand recognition is also increasing. However, user preferences are changing as well, with customers looking for experiences that are more personalized and localized.
The development of artificial intelligence and machine translation has also revolutionized the translation industry, making it easier and more cost-effective to create translated content.
To meet all these requirements, companies need to increasingly rely on technology. This also means that it is necessary for translation management software vendors to innovate and adapt their products to the new reality.
In the following, we present five trends in the translation management market that either have taken hold already or that will be in need of (further) development in the future in order for companies to serve their customers in an optimal manner.
In the future, the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning will become ever more common in translation management, helping to optimize and automate manual processes in translation and localization. These new technologies range from automatic recognition of speech and neural machine translation to complex tools for post-editing and quality assurance.
Machine translation systems improved significantly in recent years and can already produce translations that require less post-editing to be ready for publication.
Speaking of post-editing: AI-powered tools can help translators improve the quality of machine-generated translations by automatically suggesting changes and corrections based on specific linguistic preferences and style specifications.
Cloud-based translation management systems are achieving greater popularity by offering scalable, flexible, and cost-efficient options for managing large-scale translation projects. Using cloud-based solutions, companies can access their translation projects from anywhere and collaborate with remote teams in real time.
One of the key advantages of cloud-based translation management systems (TMS) is their scalability. Companies can easily increase or decrease their translation capacity by adding or removing licenses as needed without having to invest in additional hardware or software. Such arrangements are ideal for fast-growing organizations and companies with translation needs that fluctuate, such as when there are seasonal peaks in incoming orders.
Another advantage of cloud-based solutions is how flexible they are. With cloud-based translation management systems, organizations can easily adapt their translation workflows and processes to their specific needs without having to take care of IT infrastructure. In this way, they can quickly respond to market changes and remain competitive.
Finally, compared to conventional on-premises solutions, cloud-based translation management systems are less expensive. It is not necessary for companies to incur high investment costs, and, as previously mentioned, they can easily scale their translation capacity as required, which reduces the cost of idle resources.
With increasing internationalization, organizations are recognizing how important it is to have localized content in order to better engage with their audiences. The translation industry is therefore putting greater and greater emphasis on localization, with the focus shifting to the adaptation of content to local cultural and linguistic characteristics.
Localization involves much more than mere translation of text. It also comprises adaptation of images, graphics, audio, and video content to local cultural and linguistic characteristics while also taking local laws and regulations into consideration. This makes it possible for companies to create content that is more relevant and engaging to the local audience.
More and more emphasis is also being placed on making localization processes leaner. Providers of translation management systems will need to respond to this demand by offering solutions that can handle the entire localization process. On this basis, companies will be able to save time and resources as well as improve the consistency and quality of their localized content.
A company that wants to successfully expand internationally will need to have its websites translated. However, this project often requires a significant amount of manual work in the real world. Extracting content for subsequent translation can be particularly tedious and prone to error.
For this reason, translation management systems are increasingly integrated with content management systems (CMS), in order to enable seamless management of multilingual content. Thanks to such integration, companies can manage their content, terminology databases, and translation memories all in one place.
For example, they can use CMS plugins or APIs to automatically send content to their translation management system for translation. The translated content can then be automatically imported back into the content management system, where it can be published or reviewed. The need for manual work steps and the risk of errors are reduced on this basis.
Due to the fact that audio and video content is becoming more and more popular, the demand for translation and localization services for this type of content is on the rise. However, producing high-quality audio and video content in multiple languages can be time-consuming, expensive, and challenging.
Such content generation goes far beyond the translation of text, requiring synchronization and dubbing of the translated content with the original audio and visual elements. Both linguistic expertise and technical skills are needed. Localization of audio and video content still requires a variety of tools from a wide range of providers.
In the future, translation management systems thus also need to focus on tools for the translation of audio and video content, including modules for transcription, subtitling, synchronization, and dubbing. The systems will need to make it possible for companies to reach a broader audience and increase engagement.
In a globalized world, the translation management market is undergoing a transformation driven by growing demand for multilingual content. The top five trends will help companies improve the efficiency and quality of their multilingual content creation processes. These trends will also create new opportunities for companies to better address audiences in local markets and expand their reach in international markets. As the demand for translation grows, it is very likely that these and other trends will continue to shake up the market in the years to come.
