Recent trends in the translation industry in Slovenia

 

 
Figure 3: Market share in 2006

2.7. Market fluctuations

The data shows that Slovene translation companies have not been marginalised or forced out of the market either by large international translation companies or by outsourcing translations to lower-cost countries. Reasons for this are twofold: on the one hand, there are not many offshore translation companies who can provide large-scale, high-quality translations for Slovene. If clients were attracted by lower prices but were not satisfied with the quality of translations they received, they soon returned to local translation providers. Also, Slovene translation companies soon realised the price sensitivity of their services and were quick to adopt the latest technology to try to optimise their workflow, which not only helped them keep local clients by offering high quality local customer service, but also made them more competitive in the international market.

The data available to me do not show the share represented by projects for international clients. Nevertheless, I can guess that international clients do play a role in the Slovene translation market, because translation companies publish their affiliations with international translation institutions and translation service providers. A further indication that this is the case is the growing number of language combinations which Slovene translation companies offer. In addition, more and more freelance translators compete in the international job market by joining on-line translator directories (e.g. ProZ) or collaborate directly with translation agencies from abroad.

3. Working environment in the top ten companies

Social, economic and political factors that influence the dynamics of the translation market are closely intertwined and often cannot be observed in isolation. While it is true that the growing number of translation businesses and the rise in their turnover would not have been possible without favourable socio-political conditions, the first part of my research focuses mostly on the economic aspect of the Slovenian translation market. In the second part of the survey I give more attention to the nature of translation businesses, the services they provide, their workflow and the technology they use. This information has been obtained by analysing web pages of the ten translation businesses that have the greatest share in the market. These are: Amidas, Iolar, Ceformit, Star, Eurotranslate, Veris, Skrivanek, A3, Biro2000 and Thurn.

There are a number of differences among them; these could be divided into two main groups²: in the first, companies still offer very traditional translation and language editing services to local, technologically less demanding clients (Eurotranslate, A3, Thurn). The second group is larger and consists of more technically-oriented companies using the latest translation technology and carrying out complex, often multilingual, translation and localisation projects (Amidas, Iolar, Ceformit, Star, Veris, Skrvanek, Biro2000).

3.1. Type of organisation

Eight of the ten companies are limited liability companies (Amidas, Iolar, Ceformit, Star, Veris, Skrivanek, A3 and Biro2000), one is a sole proprietorship (Eurotranslate) and one a limited partnership (Thurn). This shows that a well-staffed and well-organised team is required to deal with complex translation projects.

3.2. Year of establishment

Nine companies are more than five years old, only one of the companies was established in 2006 (Thurn). It is interesting to observe that the youngest company is among the least developed as far as project management and translation technology are concerned. On the other hand, most of the oldest companies have developed clear translation workflows and have taken advantage of the translation technology available (Amidas, Iolar, Star, Biro 2000). This suggests that optimisation of the translation process and quality assurance standards are evolutionary processes that develop with the maturity of the company and are adapted to its current needs and abilities as discussed by Thomson-Wohlgemuth (2004).

3.3. Number of employees

According to the data obtained from the register, four companies in the top ten group have more than ten employees.  Iolar heads the list with 17 employees, followed by Ceformt (14), Veris (12) and Star (11). Four companies have more than three (Amidas, Skrivanek, A3 and Biro2000) and two companies have only one employee (Eurotranslate and Thurn). Naturally, these companies have more temporary in-house staff and use even more freelancers but the figures are still rather low, especially for a labour-intensive industry and a sector that has been experiencing steady growth for a number of years now. One of the reasons is perhaps the inflexible employment and tax legislation in Slovenia, that is not well suited to unpredictable and changeable circumstances in which translation companies have to survive. The other reason could be that the owners and managers of translation companies have yet to realise the true value of in-house know-how and experience. They do not see their staff as their main asset and a long-term investment but prefer to contract out most of the work and save costs on social security benefits, office space and equipment instead.

3.4. Services

Companies provide a different range of services. The less technically oriented ones provide translation, interpreting and language editing, while those with a more technical orientation also add localisation, web content translation, subtitling and desktop publishing to the list. Iolar and Ceformt work only with three or four languages; others offer services in all major world languages. The two branches of international translation companies send jobs in the languages they cannot provide in Slovenia to be translated locally by other branches of the same company.

There were only three companies that specialise in a niche market (Iolar, Ceformt and Star), the rest try to cater for every possible client. Perhaps translation companies in Slovenia should pay more attention to knowing their limitations and offering the services they are most qualified for.

3.5. Translators

Ceformt, Iolar and Star do their work only with in-house translators. Veris, Amidas and Skrivanek use both in-house and external translators while Eurotranslate, Biro2000, A3 and Thurn only use external translators for their jobs. They report a network of 50 to 600 freelance translators in Slovenia and abroad. Companies with in-house translators resemble translation departments in big companies. They are more specialised and regularly provide training and plenty of technical support for their translators. On the other hand, companies that mostly rely on freelance translators act more as intermediaries in the translation cycle and therefore only employ project managers and administrative staff who take care of the financial and organisational aspect of projects, the rest being contracted out to freelancers. They hire translators according to their immediate needs and are less motivated to invest in their training or to provide technical support. They have developed sophisticated translation workflows and use project management software to help them with their every-day distribution of work and communication with their translators.

3.6. Clients

Three of the companies carry out large-scale projects for their long-term regular clients (e.g. multinational companies from automobile, mobile phone and software industries), while others combine big projects with smaller one-off jobs as well. This is another important difference between the companies because the nature of their work varies greatly. On the one hand, there is the need to commit fully to the user's needs and requirements in long-term large-scale projects, in many cases highly-specialised staff are required or have to be trained, the dynamics of incoming translations is predictable and quality assurance is constant. On the other hand, companies that perform mainly one-off translations for smaller clients and do not specialise need translators with very different profiles, cannot plan the volume of work over a longer period of time and need different quality assurance strategies for different kinds of jobs. One of the advantages for these companies might be that they do not rely on a single client and will be less affected when the project ends.

3.7. Technology

The three companies that provide less technically oriented translations do not report on the use of any technology on their webpage. The rest of the companies all use CAT tools for translation memory and terminology management (mostly Trados), two of them have server-based licences (Iolar, Ceformt). In addition, Veris, Skrivanek and Biro2000 accept on-line orders, Iolar and Star automate their workflow with a content management and a project management system. Iolar also provides security in terms of hardware solutions as well as non-disclosure agreements. There is no doubt that translation service providers in Slovenia have realised that the increase in efficiency needed to deal with the growing demand for translations can only be achieved by the use of the latest translation technology at each step in the translation process.

3.8. Quality assurance

Most companies assure quality by using professional language editors to revise translations. In addition, five companies ensure consistency throughout a given project by using a translation memory and terminology database (Iolar, Ceformt, Biro2000, Skrivanek and Star). Iolar and Star have automatic document quality checking in place, Ceformt has its internal style guide and Star has adopted the ISO 9001 2000 and DIN 2345 standards. Although quality assurance is dealt with very differently by these companies, the fact that most of them see it as a crucial part of the service they provide is a clear indication of their efforts to reassure their clients that they will receive a quality product. According to Thomson-Wohlgemuth (2004), the commitment to work to industrial standards is instrumental in demonstrating a translation company's dedication to quality. However, such process-based standards are regarded by many as inappropriate for translation businesses. One common criticism is their failure to emphasise the role of people both in the definition of the processes and in their implementation. They are also expensive to obtain and follow. This is perhaps why they have not yet been adopted by more translation companies in Slovenia. The analysis of translation companies' websites shows that, at least among the key players in the translation market in Slovenia, industrialisation and technologisation are already well on its way (Baer and Koby 2003). A large majority of the companies I have considered deal with bigger and more complex translation jobs which can be tackled only by teams and with the help of IT. Also, the working environment of translators in Slovenia is evolving towards decentralised global teams, which is why efficient project management has become an important feature of the larger translation companies.

4. A case study of project management in a large translation company

Pérez (2001) claims that the link between technology on the one hand and project management on the other is of key importance to translation project management because the translation industry can only respond to market requirements with a set of good tools. She divides project management into three levels:
(1) business management (cost accounting and invoicing);
(2) process management (translation workflow, file transfer and internet collaboration);
(3) language management (translation memory and terminology).

An experienced and resourceful manager is crucial for any project but a good project management system should be helpful at all three levels. In this case study, the project management system of Biro2000 is presented. This company was selected because its translation company has seen the biggest increase in turnover in the past three years. Such an expansion of business could not be feasible without an efficient project management and IT support, which is why I was interested in their solution. Their approach is standard from the technological point of view, and it does not introduce any novel ideas as far as project management theory is concerned. However, the realisation that such a system is needed and the willingness to make a substantial investment in its development and maintenance is still quite rare in the Slovene environment and can therefore be seen as a sign of the maturity of the company and as an indication of future trends in the Slovene translation industry.

4.1. Technical aspects of the system

Although there are many commercial project management systems available on the market today (e.g. across Language Server, Advanced International Translations Projetex, SDL Trados Synergy), the translation company I visited and interviewed had automated parts of the business process (such as invoicing and accounting) before, and wanted to leverage their previous investment, which is why they opted for a tailor-made system.

The on-line system is hosted on an external server, is written in PHP language and uses the MySQL relational database. The development and testing phase lasted for about six months and the company started using it in November 2006. The main components of the system are two databases. One is a database of translators who work for the company and the other contains all the information about the company's clients. Translators who are interested in working with the company fill in the translator's profile and are added to the database. When their profile is processed, they receive a test translation. If they pass, their status changes from pending to active, which means from this point on they will be considered for the jobs that match their profile (e.g. language combinations, areas of specialisation, daily translation capacity). Their database currently contains about 600 translators. The database of clients and jobs is maintained by project managers.

Most efforts have been invested in the first two levels of project management while the third, language management, is currently carried out by an external commercial application. The system speeds up business management by the automatic creation and sending of contracts, purchase orders and invoicing. At process management level, the system can be used to search automatically for the most suitable translator/language editor for the job. The person is then contacted by the system and able to confirm or reject the offer. File handling and communication by e-mail are automated as well. The system also enables automatic job tracking and reporting. When the project is finally confirmed by the project manager, the client is automatically notified. In addition, the system supports the reporting of any problems that may occur during the project. In this way problems can be analysed and solved systematically, and the workflow can be improved if necessary. Language management is currently not integrated in the project management system. The company is using Trados Synergy 2007 floating licenses and plans to upgrade to SDL TM Server in the future.

4.2. The system at work

The project management system the company has developed has been in use for a year. During this time they have collected 600 translator's profiles and have entered over 500 clients into their database. In one year the system was used to manage about 6,000 projects in 35 languages and 139 language combinations. Over 12,000 pages were translated within these projects and 932 hours were spent on various jobs that charged by the hour (e.g. proofreading, glossary maintenance, PDF checking). Overall, the most frequent language combinations for translations are: English-Slovenian (9,500 pages), Slovenian-English (3,000 pages) and German-Slovenian (2,400 pages). The most frequent language combinations for translation jobs charged by the hour were English-Slovenian (280 hours), English-Macedonian (90 hours) and Slovenian-English (70 hours). It must be noted here that Macedonian is not one of the major working languages for translators in Slovenia in general. The translation company presented in the case study happened to have a large client in need of this language combination.

As far as editing is concerned, the top three languages in the past year were Slovene (5,800 pages), English (1,700 pages) and Croatian (500 pages). Similar to translations, the language editing of Slovene texts charged by the hour amounted to 100 hours, with 50 hours for Croatian texts and to 18 hours for Macedonian texts.

4.3. Plans for further improvements

Improvements of the system involve allowing clients to track their projects down and have access to all project materials. In this way, an archive of translations will be made available to clients and dealing with complaints will be improved. Eventually, the client's profile could evolve into a fully automated web service requiring little input from project managers who could devote more of their time to intellectual tasks that cannot be automated. Such services are already in use by large international translation companies, such as SDL's Click2Translate. Despite the development and maintenance costs, the company is very satisfied with the system they have integrated into their workflow and believe it has contributed significantly towards the greater capacity, better organisation and higher quality of their service. Freelance translators and language editors who have to use the system on a daily basis have also expressed very positive opinions about their experience and have gained confidence in both the company and their work. It will be interesting to see how other translation companies address the issue in the future.

5. Conclusions and outlook

The survey of the private translation sector I conducted in Slovene translation companies officially registered as businesses in the official business register of Slovene companies and by the analysis of the web pages of the biggest Slovene translation companies, shows that Slovenia has experienced a high degree of professionalisation and regulation of the translation sector compared to the situation of professional translators in the first years of Slovene independence (Omerza 1997). The translation market in Slovenia is smaller than in most other European countries. But when their trends are compared, Slovenia displays similar growth in volume and turnover to Greece, Italy, Holland and Hungary, countries that have seen 5-7% growth between 2004 and 2006. In line with the situation in other countries, one of the most important factors in securing large translation projects in Slovenia is the size of a translation company in terms of productivity, the services and the number of language combinations it can provide.

This is why translation workflow in the biggest translation companies has changed and has become more technology-driven as predicted by Austermühl (2001). As a consequence, several aspects of the translation process are affected: the communication with clients and other translators, the speed and amount of information that can be retrieved and the way texts are created and handled (Pym 2003).

In this setting, translators are required to acquire new skills to remain competitive in the market. This need is already being addressed by the redesigned university syllabuses (e.g. Gabr 2001; Biau Gil 2006; Jaatinen and Jääskeläinen 2006; Li 2000) but there is considerably less support for other language-related professions that have proliferated, most notably that of project manager (Shreve 2000). The future of the translation industry will continue to be strongly influenced by advances in technology. The Internet bandwidth will increase, hardware costs will continue to fall while performance increases and subscription to server-based software will make translation tools accessible to an even broader audience. According to Zydron (2006), all this will give rise to borderless virtual translation companies. Web services that will fully automate quoting and file handling will reduce the project management burden, allowing more resources for quality assurance. This leaves us just a step away from what Zydron calls direct web translation in which translators will no longer be sent any files, they will just log on to a web application and translate directly from the web with full support of the required tools, such as spell checking, concordances, automatic terminology detection, and translation memories. The analysis presented in this paper shows that the major translation companies in Slovenia seem to be aware of this fact and are responding to the changed needs of the market which is following the trends observable in other European markets.

References

• Austermühl, Frank (2001). Electronic Tools for Translators. Translation Practices Explained. Manchester, UK: St. Jerome Publishing.
• Baer, Brian James and Geoffrey S. Koby (eds) (2003). Beyond the Ivory Tower. Rethinking translation pedagogy. American Translators Association Scholarly Monograph Series XII. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
• Beninatto, Renato and Donald A. DePalma (2007). Ranking of Top 20 Translation Companies. On line at: http://www.commonsenseadvisory.com/members/res_cgi.php/070502_Q_Top_20.php (consulted 01.11. 2007)
• Biau Gil, José Ramón (2006). "Teaching electronic tools for translators online. Anthony Pym, Alexander Perekrestenko, and Bram Starink (Eds) (2006). Translation Technology and its Teaching. Tarragona: Servei de Publicacions, 89-96.
• Boucau, Fernand (2006). "The European translation markets. Updated facts and figures 2006 – 2010. Paper presented at the 2nd international conference of the European Union of Associations of Translation Companies (EUATC, 9 November 2006). On line at: http://www.euatc.org/conferences/pdfs/2006/Boucau_FactsAndFigures.pdf (consulted 01.11. 2007)
• Bowker, Lynne (2002). Computer-Aided Translation Technology. A Practical Introduction Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press.
• Fišer, Darja (2005). "Jezikovne tehnologije od študija do zaposlitve. Jezik in slovstvo, 5 1), 101-16.
• Fišer, Darja and Vintar, Špela (2004). "Uvajanje prevajalskega namizja Trados v delovno okolje prevajalske agencije. (Introduction of Trados workbench in the work environment of a translation agency). Tomaž Erjavec and Jerneja Žganec Gros (Eds). Proceedings of the 4th Slovenian conference on language technologies. (Jozef Stefan Institute, 8-10 October 2004), 64-71.
• Fountoukidis, Kevin (2006). "How Eastern Europe fits into the European Translation Market. On line at: http://www.lisa.org/globalizationinsider/2006/03/how_eastern_eur.html (consulted 01.11. 2007)
• Fulford, Heather and Granell-Zafra, Joaquin (2005). "Translation and Technology: a Study of UK Freelance Translators. The Journal of Specialised Translation (4), 2-17.
• Gabr, Moustafa (2001). "Program Evaluation: A Missing Critical Link in Translator Training. Translation Journal 5(1). On line at: http://accurapid.com/journal/15training.htm (consulted 01.11. 2007)
• Jaatinen, Hannu and Jääskeläinen, Riitta (2006). "Introducing IT in translator training: Experiences from the COLC project. Anthony Pym, Alexander Perekrestenko, and Bram Starink (Eds). Translation Technology and its Teaching. Tarragona: Servei de Publicacions), 83-88.
• Li, Defeng (2000). "Tailoring Translation Programs to Social Needs: A Survey of Professional Translators. Target. International Journal on Translation Studies. 12(1), 127-149.
• Omerza, Tone (1997). "V kakšnih razmerah delujejo slovenski strokovni prevajalci. Mostovi 1997 (1).
• Pérez, Celia Rico (2001). "From Novelty to Ubiquity: Computers and Translation at the Close of the Industrial Age. Translation Journal, 5 (1). On line at: http://www.accurapid.com/journal/15mt2.htm (consulted 01.11. 2007)
• Pym, Anthony, et al. (Eds) (2003). Innovation and E-Learning in Translator Training. Tarragona: Intercultural Studies Group. On line at   http://isg.urv.es/publicity/isg/publications/innovation_2003/index.htm (consulted    01.11. 2007)
• Sager, Juan C. (1993). Language Engineering and Translation: Consequences of Automation. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
• Shreve, Gregory (2000). "Translation at the millennium: Prospects for the evolution of a profession. Peter A. Schmitt (Ed.) Paradigmenwechsel in der Translation. Festschrift für Albrecht Neubert zum 70 Geburtstag. Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 217-234.
• Thomson-Wohlgemuth, Gaby and Ian Thomson (2004). "Acquiring capabilities in translation: Towards a model of translation businesses. Target. International Journal on Translation Studies, 16(2), 253-287.
• Zydron, Andrzej (2006). "Future of the Translation Industry: Preparing for automated language processing. Paper presented at the 2nd international conference of the European Union of Associations of Translation Companies (EUATC, 9 November 2006). On line at: http://www.euatc.org/conferences/pdfs/2006/Andrej_Zydron.pdf (consulted 01.11. 2007)

List of web sites (consulted on 01.11. 2007)

• http://www.ajpes.si
• http://www.commonsenseadvisory.com/
• http://www.proz.com/
• http://across.net/en/1332.html
• http://www.translation3000.com/
• http://www.sdl.com/en/products/products-index/sdl-trados-synergy/
• http://www.sdl.com/en/products/products-index/sdl-translation-memory-server.asp
• http://www.click2translate.com/

Biography

Darja Fišer graduated from the Department of Translation Studies at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia in 2004 with a thesis on the introduction of Trados into a workflow of a translation agency that received the faculty award for best thesis. She now teaches courses on translation tools as an assistant in the same department, participates in national and international projects in the field of human language technologies, and is working towards her PhD in computational lexical semantics.

E-mail: darja.fiser@guest.arnes.si