I recently had the honor to interview a friend and specialist in the translation industry in Sweden,
Anne-Marie Colliander Lind. She has worked in the translation industry since 1989 and is now
running her own consultancy business, Inkrea.se. Here is the translation of my interview with her,
and the original Swedish interview is found here.
1. What does the translation industry look like in Sweden today?
The translation industry in Sweden is very fragmented, just like in the rest of the world. We have
some really large companies that dominate the industry and supply translation services to both the
public and private sector in most subject areas, and then we have a large group of small to medium
sized companies with more or less specialized services. The Nordic countries have great spending
power and it is no coincidence that there are no less than eight Nordic companies on the list of the
50 largest translation companies from 2011 (according to Common Sense Advisory).
2. Do you see any trends?
More and more customer relations are established by public tenders. This concerns primarily the
public sector, which is governed by LOU (a Swedish law for public tenders), but we also see this for
customers from the private sector. Businesses and institutions are increasingly looking for a partner
that can offer a long term, close relationship, with integrated working methods, rather than
aimlessly searching for a translation provider in the Yellow Pages. I see this as a sign of maturity.
When it comes to price trends, the price to the end customer has decreased a bit, mainly due to the
strong competition in the buying processes, and the price pressure naturally affects the price per
unit for the subcontractors. It is interesting to see that for 20 years, the prices were higher the
further away from Sweden you went (Japanese, Chinese, Korean etc.) but today it is the opposite,
the most expensive languages to buy are the languages spoken for example in our neighbor country
Norway, into and from English.
3. Who buys translation services the most?
In Sweden, the Swedish state is among the largest buyers of translation services. There is a constant
demand for translation from Swedish authorities, thanks to, for example, Sweden’s generous
immigration policy. Examples of authorities are the Swedish Migration Board, The Swedish Tax
Authority, the Police and the Swedish Social Security Agency. Many of the Swedish translation
companies receive a large part of their income from contracts with Swedish authorities. The EU
Commission is also a big buyer of translations and provides many Swedish suppliers with large
translation volumes. In the Swedish economy large international companies are dependent on
multilingualism and we can mention several brands with documentation and websites in more than
50 languages, in order to be competitive internationally. Here, the demand is driven by separate
marketing strategies for globalization or by legislation.
4. How much do you think the public knows about the translation industry or translation in
general?
I have been working in the translation business for over 20 years and I am still greeted with a
quizzical expression when I meet new people asking what I work with: Translation… what? Followed
by: How many languages do you speak? I think many of our colleagues in our business have
experienced the same thing. My feeling is that the public does not know that this is an industry that
gives many, many people work, not only linguists and translators, but also project managers,
technical engineers, sales people, accountants, business managers and more. But when I start
talking about it many see the need for translation everywhere in our lives, especially in a country like
Sweden, a multicultural country with so many international brands to be proud about.
5. How are you involved in the translation industry and how did you get there?
I started working in the translation industry in 1989, as a project manager for Interverbum, one of
the largest translation companies at that time. Five years later I started working from the customer
perspective, as a buyer of translations for a company in southern Sweden, before starting at Trados
Scandinavia in 1998. I stayed at Trados for almost 10 years, a very exciting period with lots of
developmets. When I started there, CAT-tools were more an exception than an industry standard,
and 10 years later the product was a world leader in its niche. After that I returned to the translation
company side again and helped Semantix to consolidate and develop its sales strategies, after the
company had grown rapidly through purchases and mergers. Semantix was then a customer of the
research company Common Sense Advisory, and after some prompting from CSA I decide to accept
their offer to become their European representative. Two years ago I founded my own consultancy
agency and now I am helping translation companies with strategies, sales and management. I also
bring knowledge to the buying sector, e.g. to the companies that buy translation services, most
often in regards to investments in technology or new buying processes and choice of strong
partners, etc. I am a proud co-organizer of NTIF, the Nordic Translation Industry Forum, the second
annual forum took place in Copenhagen in November 2012. As if this is not enough, I am also a
volunteer for Translators without Borders, where my main task is to find company sponsors, and
represent the organization at different industry conferences.
6. What do you think is most important for a customer when they buy a translation, when
thinking of the value triangle (time-cost-quality)?
The most important for the customer is to receive what they expect, when they want it, e.g. the
right quality, at the right time and price. The importance of these parameters can vary substantially.
Time is probably the most important factor most of the time. If a translation job arrives late, the
consequences can get very expensive for the project at large. Then it does not matter what price
was agreed upon – “Better good enough in time, than perfect but too late” – so to speak. It is a
different story for texts that will get published though, where quality is vital. Thankfully I am
convinced that the price always comes in second or third place if we put it in relation to time and
quality.
7. Do you think that translators will be replaced by machines some day?
Machine translation is here to stay – no one can slow this development down. I recently read that
there are companies that have achieved a level of quality in machine translation where the error
margin is less than 1.5 percent. With some simple-post editing they have achieved a good translation
with minimal involvement by a translator. But still the answer to your question is no, there will
always be a need for professional translators. The amount of information that we have access to
increases exponentially and only a fraction of what should be translated gets translated. I believe
(and hope) that companies will realize that you can get large amount of text translated at a lower
price per unit with the help of technology, and that you can spend the rest of the budget on the
texts that really make a difference and where the artistry of a professional translator is required in
order to produce top notch results. I also hope that they then can afford to pay reasonable
compensation for this. The more globalized we become, the larger role the local languages will play
– I am convinced of that.