天下•译事 | 前景预测：给2018翻译行业“划重点”
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本期为第十三期，带你回顾2017年翻译和全球化领域的企业走过了怎样的历程，并对这一领域2018年的发展做出展望。
Technology, a growing demand for content across global geographies, and a trend toward voice and video are all having an impact on the translation and globalization space. Demand for translation services is growing and shifting, says Michael Stevens, growth director at Moravia. “One of the biggest trends that has surprised me … is how fast demand has snowballed for localization services over the phone, as well as for video interpretation,” he says. That demand has likely been driven by the growth in webinars, online events, and other two-way digital communication methods.
技术、全球范围内对内容的需求增长以及音视频的日益流行都在影响着翻译和全球化领域。摩睿公司发展总监迈克尔·史蒂文斯表示，翻译服务的需求在不断增长，而且发生了变化，“对视频口译和通过电话寻求本地化服务的需求激增，这是让我感到惊讶的一大显著趋势。”网络会议、线上项目等双向数字交流方式的增多可能推动了这一需求的增长。
“From a broader perspective,” says Stevens, “the growing demand for interpreters is clearly a byproduct of the shift from digital print communications to an increasing preference for more voice and audio content.”
史蒂文斯说：“从更广义的角度看，相对于数码印刷的交流方式，人们越来越倾向于视听内容，这种转变显然会推动对口译员的需求。”
翻译与全球化年度回顾
Translation and globalization are big business—and the field of service providers comprises some big and growing businesses, says Matt Arney, co-founder and CEO of TranslateNow. 2017 saw some massive movement among large companies in the space. “Large players, including Lionbridge, Pactera, LanguageLine, Welocalize, and TransPerfect, have all either been sold or merged with others in the past 15 months,” he says.
TranslateNow联合创始人兼CEO马特·阿尼说，翻译和全球化是大生意，服务供应商不乏蒸蒸日上的大企业。2017年见证了这一领域中商业巨头之间的一些大动作，“过去15个月里，Lionbridge、Pactera、LanguageLine、Welocalize和TransPerfect等大企业要么被出售，要么被其他公司并购。”
▲TranslateNow联合创始人兼CEO马特·阿尼
But smaller businesses have a place in 42 35352 42 14941 0 0 2915 0 0:00:12 0:00:05 0:00:07 2915the market as well. “Lots of startups in tech have emerged, including countless marketplaces and hybrid MT [machine translation] tools,” says Arney. But, he adds, “Large companies like Thumbtack, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Upwork have attempted to enter the translation space mostly for cheap, one-off projects.”
不过相对较小的企业同样在市场中占有一席之地。阿尼说：“市场上涌现了很多技术创业公司，销售市场遍布各地，机器翻译工具五花八门。”但他补充道：“Thumbtack、YouTube、LinkedIn和Upwork等大企业也在尝试进军翻译领域，主要针对一次性的廉价项目。”
Technology companies, says Arney, “are finding it hard to exist in an industry that doesn’t like to buy a lot of software. Research groups place the total translation services spend in the $40 billion range, while technology (i.e., tools, gizmos, online translation sites) does less than $200 million collectively.” Some technology firms, he says, are migrating from software to service. He points to Smartling as one example of this: “Smartling is the latest to do so having raised $63-plus million and is likely feeling pressure to bring in revenue, so they launched a services division.”
阿尼说，技术公司“很难在一个不怎么大量购置软件的行业立足。据研究团队估算，翻译服务的总支出为400亿美元左右（约合人民币2532.5亿元），而技术方面（如工具、小型设备、线上翻译网站等）的支出累计还不到2亿美元（约合人民币12.7亿元）。”他指出，有些技术公司开始由软件向服务转型，并以Smartling公司为例：“Smartling最近为此筹集了6300多万美元（约合人民币3.9亿元），或许因为感到增收乏力，所以成立了服务部门。”
According to Smartling's Vice President of Marketing, Juliana Pereira, the trend toward providing services has a different origin: "Smartling's offering of language services came from organic customer demand. As our customers grow their business and have needed to expand into new languages and markets, they turn to Smartling to help them provision language services for those languages."
Smartling市场副总裁茱莉安娜·佩雷拉称，每家公司提供翻译服务的初衷有所不同，“Smartling提供语言服务是基于客户的根本需求。随着我们客户的业务拓展，需要涉足新的语言和市场，于是让Smartling帮他们提供相应语种的语言服务。”
▲Smartling市场副总裁茱莉安娜·佩雷拉
Data management and quality measurement for translation are top challenges for localized content, says Pereira. There are, however, solutions coming to market that can now help to solve these data and measurement challenges. Pereira points to Smartling’s Quality Confidence Score (QCS), which uses machine learning to predict the likelihood that a translation will be a good one.
佩雷拉说，翻译的数据管理和质量测评是内容本地化面临的首要挑战，不过市面上已经出现了应对这些挑战的解决方案。佩雷拉提到了Smartling的质量可信度评分体系，它可以通过机器学习预测一篇译文的优劣水平。
翻译与全球化展望
In 2018, says Arney, a slowdown in the U.S. economy is likely to positively affect the translation industry. “Companies will seek to boost declining revenues by aggressively expanding to new markets overseas,” he predicts. “We saw a similar trend in 2008 during the last major economic crisis.”
阿尼说，2018年，美国经济的放缓很可能为翻译行业带来积极影响。据他预测，“很多公司都将竭力开拓海外市场，力求扭转营业额下滑的趋势。在2008年的重大经济危机期间，我们看到了类似的趋势。”
Balancing demand with budget may see more companies bring some of this talent in-house, says Craig Bloem, founder and CEO of LogoMix. “We’ve seen more small businesses translate their websites, but in 2018, more small businesses will begin to produce and translate educational content. Because of this, translators and foreign-language copywriters will become more an extension of a marketing team, rather than an outsourced vendor,” he predicts. “To manage a smooth process, it’ll become more important to build strong working relationships with these resources. The goal will be to build a global content team—not just find a transactional translation vendor. This may result in an increased use of freelancer platforms like Upwork and WriterAccess. WriterAccess has added a translation feature for this exact reason.”
LogoMix公司创始人兼CEO克雷格·布勒姆说，为了实现预算平衡，许多公司可能会将翻译人才引入公司内部。 “我们发现，越来越多的小公司已经自主翻译网站，2018年，将有更多小公司开始创作和翻译教学内容。所以，译者和外语文案将更大限度地参与营销团队的业务，而不再依赖于外包供应商。” 他预测，“为了保证工作流程顺畅，就要更加注重与这些资源建立强有力的工作关系。公司的目标将变成建立全球化的内容团队，而不仅仅是寻找一个事务性翻译供应商。这可能会使Upwork、WriterAccess这样的自由职业者平台使用率增加。也正是基于这一点，WriterAccess新增了翻译功能。”
▲LogoMix公司创始人兼CEO克雷格·布勒姆
Demand for translation is heating up for certain southeast Asian languages, says Arney. “We believe there will be a big push towards southeast Asian languages like Malay, Thai, Vietnamese, and Indonesian. These emerging economies may be boosted by China’s large Belt and Road initiative.”
阿尼表示，市场对某些东南亚语言翻译的需求正在增加。“我们相信，马来语、泰语、越南语和印尼语等东南亚语言将得到大力推进。这些新兴经济体可能会被中国大规模的‘一带一路’倡议所带动。”
Additionally, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) have been hot topics throughout 2017, says Pereira; they’re likely to continue to be a focus in 2018. “One of the most talked about technologies in the content localization space has been machine translation using neural networks and other forms of AI,” she says. “Great strides have been made with machine translation for decades, although several recent improvements and developments in neural machine translation and adaptive machine translation are providing potential for many more compelling applications.”
此外，佩雷拉说，机器学习和人工智能一直是2017年的热门话题。2018年，人们可能会继续关注这一话题。“在内容本地化方面，人们谈论较多的技术就是神经网络机器翻译以及其他形式的人工智能。”她说，“几十年来，机器翻译取得了重大进展。最近神经机器翻译和自我学习机器翻译所取得的几项进步和发展可能会促进更多令人瞩目的应用程序发展。”
Localization will also remain top of mind for marketers in 2018, says Stevens. “As content continues to go more digital, knowledge of international digital localization strategy is much more critical than ever before. Whether companies have the resources internally or they prefer to partner with an external provider, content marketers need to know how to manage a wide range of localization issues, including how to optimize search internationally, how to bundle language-related devices for multiple markets, how to drive cost-effective and efficient ways to manage multilingual communications, and, most importantly, how to measure the success of multinational digital communications,” he says.
史蒂文斯表示，在2018年，本地化依然将是营销人员关注的重点。他指出：“随着内容数字化程度的不断提高，具备国际数字化本地化战略知识比以往更重要。无论公司内部是否拥有资源，或者更偏向与外部供应商合作，内容营销人员都需要了解如何处理各种本地化事务，包括如何优化全球范围内的搜索，如何针对多元化市场捆绑销售语言设备，如何低成本高效率地处理多语言沟通，最重要的是，如何衡量跨国数字化沟通是否成功。”
One key impact here, he says, is neural machine translation (NMT). “Even though NMT is still in its infant stages commercially, it’s gaining momentum because of its ability to automate translations more easily between languages that have virtually nothing in common, like, for example, Finnish and Chinese,” Stevens says.
史蒂文斯说，神经网络机器翻译（NMT）的影响重大。“尽管NMT在商业上仍处于起步阶段，但由于能更轻松地在几乎没有共同之处的语言之间实现自动翻译——如芬兰语和汉语，其发展势头也越来越迅猛。”
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