The other day, I was at a fast food restaurant to... get food, fast. I noticed that their value menu, formerly their dollar menu, had changed since the last time I had been there. The main thing that I noticed, since a side benefit to fast food is also that it's cheap, is that one of my favorite sandwiches, that had been $1.00 for years, had gone up by about $0.30.
Now, like just about everyone, I'd rather not pay more for something. I do understand, though. Inflation. Cost of ingredients. Making money. (As a side note, I find it very odd when someone complains that all a business or employee wants to do is make money. To a degree, that's true for every business, every profession. It may not be their only goal, but if they didn't make money, they would go out of business).
What do my food cravings have to do with localization? Well, it's not just the food service industry that follows this trend. No matter the business, and whether it deals in goods, services, or both, prices go up with the times. People bemoan the rising price of gas. Others probably compare the price of a haircut now to what it was when they were young. Sure, everyone wants to pay less, but the reality of economy is that things tend to get more expensive.
Enter the localization industry. Like every industry, they want to make money. That's no secret. As I mentioned in my side note above, everyone does. Unlike other industries, though, and this is according to what I've observed in several companies and not one in particular, they have a funny way of showing it. Clients who want translation or localization done, who don't understand what a mentally taxing job translation can be, who don't seem to understand sometimes that translation isn't just writing something down in another language, demand better, faster, cheaper translations. Who can blame them? I want cheaper gas. I want a cheaper fast food sandwich (and I wouldn't mind if it were better or came faster, either). Unlike other industries, though, where eventually prices rise, prices have fallen. Deadlines have gotten shorter. Quality expectations have gone up. It sounds pretty good from a client's perspective.
Enter the translators. They, like everyone else, want to make money. They don't mind (to a point past which it becomes practically impossible) to give you better quality faster, but they want more money for their work. Who can blame them? Inflation. Higher levels of stress and mental taxation. All valid reasons to ask for a higher rate.
Enter the language service providers. They are the middle men, and absolutely necessary in the world of translation and localization. They may hire full-time translators, but most of what they do is see that your translation gets done. They usually have a vast network of freelance translators that they turn to, so that you, as the client, don't have to find an individual translator for each language every time. They maintain glossaries and translation memories, to help make the work more efficient and consistent in quality.
And they want to make money. They need to charge more than their freelance translator charges. They need to cover their costs and keep their employees happy. And they have a lot of pressure coming from both sides. I'm sure that this happens in more industries than translation and localization, but this is what I know. The clients want more, better, faster, cheaper. The translator can, to a point, give you more, better, faster, but they want more money for it. The client threatens to go to someone else if you can't give them a better price. The translator does the same. The middle man tries to manage the expectations of both, but eventually gives, raising the rates for the translator, and lowering them for the client.
How do they survive? By juicing every bit of efficiency out of existing technologies. Translation memories can eventually provide big savings. Once you've translated a sentence, you don't need to translate it again. Machine translation is the way of the future, they say, and it can provide some time and money savings if used correctly. (More on machine translation, how it works, and what its limitations are, is planned for a future blog post). But the technologies have their limits. Something's going to give.
Here's what I think is going to happen. Eventually, something is going to give, maybe not all at once, and not across all parts of the industry, but something is going to give. Eventually, language service providers, the essential middle men, will implode, or at least feel enough pressure. They'll realize that translators still need to eat, so they won't push quite as much for lower rates. They'll still make as much use as they can of available technologies, and hopefully work to improve and add to those technologies. And clients will realize that quality translation is essential. They won't like it, and who can blame them, but they'll start to accept some higher rates. An equilibrium will be reached, until the point is pushed again and the cycle continues anew.
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