Trends in the Language Industry Services / How You Can Make Money in Translation

Renato Beninatto, Agent Provocateur & Connector, President of European Language Industry Association (ELIA), Chief Connector and Member of the Board of Advisors at Webvent.tv, to mention only some of his titles, held a seminar at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb, on Tuesday, April 12, 2011 on the theme of 'Trends in the Language Industry Services'. It was impossible to find a seat - professors, students, journalists and industry experts were curious to hear his witty and interesting vision. Thirty years of experience in localization, translation and language, globalization and internationalization, make him a highly respected expert and visionary who can reliably claim where the translation and localization industry is heading and where the future market is going to be.

When asked by a student what will happen with translation in 30 years, Renato Beninatto made a clear statement: “It's a moment of transition; it's a moment of change!”

Renato Beninatto demonstrated it with his phone. Today we can talk to devices and get the translation in different languages. You can trust them, because you can control them and they make life much easier. Efficiency is the key word for the examples that will follow. Efficiency is achieved faster with machine translation as a productivity tool and that tool enables translators to translate a lot more!

Renato Beninatto is aware of the fact that it is hard to break dogmas. But the only way to be efficient is to start to see things differently. “We will be talking about the same things at a different level!“

Machine translation is the future, which is proved by the following facts:

- Simplification of processes
- Elimination of manual steps
- Automation of repetitive tasks

Reviewing a translation with a red pen in your hand naturally generates errors and mistakes – it's in the human nature, the reviewer will always catch other's mistakes. The system of TEP (Translation-Edit-Proof) belongs to the past. The same thing applies to paper dictionaries. Why? It's an inefficient, dying, unnecessary tool. Better install a translate App! It's making things faster and easier.

Renato Beninatto knows about the NEW SCENARIOS!
- more translation
- more languages
- more media
- more topics
- more spoken translation

Human information is doubling, tripling, there are more types of content (more sciences, more terminology, new collected data), a growing field of intermediation (videos; human voice: easy to record - easy to transport; interpretation by phone; voice recognition by certain tools subtitling a TV show in a few seconds), the world is generating more content and what follows is the need for more translation.

Croatia is a promising and profit-yielding market. With Croatia joining the European Union, the Croatian language will become the 24th official language of the EU with more than 552 language combinations in the field of translation. Can you imagine a translation from Estonian to Croatian and vice versa? How many experts does Croatia have and how much money can they charge for these translations?

There is another thing that is important. There is a natural decrease of population in the Western civilization and logically at some point of time there will be fewer translators. That's a fact.

Globalization and the Internet era also create another trend. The user is the best expert and so we get to a term that Renato Beninatto is calling crowd sourcing which simply means “translate for free, make it free for the public“ and that is already in action if you take a look at facebook (translate facebook), Twitter, Linkedln, etc. We have reached a period of “good enough“ and there is no need for ”perfect“ translation, the content provides enough information; which is closely related to Renato Beninatto's statement about translation: “Translation is like toilet paper, you become aware of it when it's missing!“

Renato Beninatto presents NEW WORK METHODS
- Cloud
- Collaboration
- Disintermediation
- Project Management Automation
- dotSub

The location is becoming irrelevant, the information is everywhere - in the cloud (e.g. Gmail), and you can look it up from everywhere.

More than one person can work at the same time on a project (e.g. facebook, skype), that doesn't mean that consistency is missing, because consistency is not guaranteed by one or two translators on a project or by reviewing, agree upfront and you have consistency! It's a collaboration environment. Renato Beninatto is confident when saying that 10 translators in 2 days on one project is a better solution than 2 translators in 10 days when they have agreed upfront!

By disintermediation Renato Beninatto means taking away “layers“. The former model is divided into 4 relevant categories: the client, a large translation company, several languages provided by the company, the translators. But, translators will take more decisions and gain more power by eliminating some steps.

New devices guarantee project management automation, the human factor will more and more disappear.

New media translation is summarized in the term dotSub and is suitable in e.g. voice recognition, text transcription, and video. Translators have to combine language skills and technical knowledge.

Renato Beninatto advices young people who want to join the business:

FOCUS ON WHAT WON'T CHANGE

- Good knowledge of language
- Human relations

”It's really important to have a good knowledge of language, especially of your first or native language and to be a nice person, in general, but particularly when dealing with clients. Customer service means being available for the client in a freelance society.“

The term translation is always connected to the word service, so provide excellent customer service and you will see that “Language is a lifetime business.”

Renato Beninatto was invited by the leading translation and localization services provider in the wider region of South East Europe - Ciklopea, a customer oriented company and first member of ELIA in Croatia. Please, join us!