Where in the world is the translation industry?
Written by ForeignExchange Translations on Tuesday, December 29, 2009
The recent post about the fragmented state of the translation business on Adam Wooten's excellent T&I Business Blog did a good job driving home the point that there are lots and lots of small translation companies. Adam's data was pulled from recent U.S. Census reports yet it mirrors some of the findings in the recent EC-backed study Size of the language industry in the EU.
Interesting stuff, for sure, but inquiring minds wanted to know more, namely where the "centers" of the translation industry are. Because neither data set included information regarding the geographic distribution of translation companies, we turned to LinkedIn's company directory for help.
Reflecting the fact LinkedIn's users are primarily based in North America and Europe, the locales listed are limited to those geographies. Nonetheless, the 250 cities and regions that are included range from Aberdeen, Scotland to Zurich, Switzerland.
Here are the locales with the largest number of translation companies listed:
| Rank | City/region | Number of translation companies |
| 1. | New York | 46 |
| 2. | Barcelona | 31 |
| 3. | Amsterdam | 27 |
| 4. | Montreal | 26 |
| tied | San Francisco Bay | 26 |
| 6. | London | 25 |
| 7. | Washington, DC | 23 |
| 8. | Madrid | 21 |
| 9. | Boston | 19 |
| 10. | Denver | 16 |
| tied | Los Angeles | 16 |
It's interesting to note that the northeast corridor from Washington to Boston is home to 50% more translation companies than California. Similarly, who would have thought that Spain would rank so high?
Clearly there are advantages as well as disadvantages to all of these locales. However, if you are looking be in the center of our industry, it sure helps to be located in one of these areas!
ForeignExchange is smack in the center of the translation industry with offices in Boston, Denver, and Madrid. Contact us for more information on our specialized medical translation services for drug and device companies.
4 Comments:
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December 30, 2009 3:31 PM
Something is amiss with this list and/or numbers are deceiving. NY, Boston, D.C., generate the majority of translation work, irrespective of the number of companies. Los Angeles and San Francisco produce far less, in actual fact. France, which offers great deal of translation work, isn't listed in the top 10. I would view this data with caution.December 30, 2009 4:28 PMAs Anonymous said, view this data for what it is: a compilation of user-supplied info on LinkedIn. It isn't meant to be a statistically robust view of the industry.January 4, 2010 9:54 AMYes, where is France and, especially, India?!!January 4, 2010 11:52 AMKeep up people! Once again, the areas you miss are not represented amongst the members of LinkedIn. Sorry to be so grumpy at new year but I do expect a higher level of reading comprehension from translators than this, especially medical specialists.
