All industries change and evolve over time but one woman who has seen her fair share of change is Wendy Smith, Senior Business Development Manager at Capita Translation and Interpreting. Wendy has recently celebrated her 5 year anniversary with Capita-TI and during that timeframe she has witnessed a series of technology shifts, new competitors and client expectations begin to broaden. This blog post is her story, highlighting her most important insights gained over the last 5 years and more significantly her vision for the future of the translation industry.
We Have To Adapt As Companies Open Their Eyes
It’s well documented that the translation industry has been growing for a number of years and will continue to so. Statistics from Common Sense Advisory show the global market for outsourced language services was worth £21 billion in 2012, which is combined with a compound annual growth rate of 12.17%. I truly find these statistics both remarkable and trustworthy and despite these levels of unprecedented growth, I personally think the majority of companies have only recently begun to open their eyes to the potential of the translation and localisation industry.
Over the last 12 months, I have seen more companies than ever take an active interest in our industry and I think commercial boards are now fully aware that targeting new markets abroad is an essential objective. Barriers to entry, technology restraints and costs have all been reduced and as more competitors invest in making their businesses multilingual we are going to see more firms playing catch-up. This maturity in company requirements has led to Capita-TI changing the way we operate. Gone are the days when a client wants a simple quote based upon the documents they supply us, they now require specialist consultancy to help their business grow in overseas markets. My job now requires me to understand client’s business models and harbour my experience of working in a range of markets to provide a solution to help businesses grow.
Technology Changes Everything
The technology we now have at our disposal has become extremely sophisticated which provides us with a sprawling range of opportunities and in some cases threats. For me the biggest development over the last 5 years has been our investment in Machine Translation (MT), which saves our clients time and capital through effectively using technology in our translation process. With MT we can now post-edit around 5,000 words each day for a client, rather than 2,000 words per day. This provides us with a much better platform to support global trade, as our translation process becomes leaner and more reliable. It’s my belief that clients benefit from working in a partnership with their translation agencies and it’s our investment in services and technology that is helping us work with clients on a long term basis.
Despite our own technological revolution, I have seen the number of direct competitors increase as technology has opened the door for companies like Google and Facebook. These firms have been able to diversify their service offering and are working towards a goal where people can automatically translate their content anywhere in the World, using their electronic devices. Whilst this is undoubtedly useful, I am by no means intimidated by our Silicon Valley Counterparts. Simply because our service now goes way beyond just translating content, we believe the process needs to be a personal one with real human input and our level of guidance and quality trumps uploading your content to a piece of software, every time.
Going The Extra Mile
Not only have I witnessed the translation market develop but I have also seen substantial changes within my own company. Capita-TI quickly understood how businesses expansion plans were changing and increased the scope of our offering to include a wider range of collaborative products. Now when a client comes to me with a relatively straightforward translation project, I am able to offer strategic advice on regional targeting, website launches and multilingual SEO. By broadening our services over the years, I have seen a real positive impact for our client base. More often than not a new client will come to us with a translation project and leave with cutting edge marketing advice, localisation research and the translated content for a range of file formats. Adding value to the translation process is our way of doing business and as the market continues to grow we’re hoping embracing change will help us remain the fastest growing Languages Service Provider for years to come!
Wendy is the Senior Business Development Manager at Capita and has been with the company 5 years. She enjoys travel and is a self-confessed blackbelt when it comes to global expansion projects. If you would like to get in contact please email Wendy at wendy.smith@capita-ti.com or call on 07860 734 778