Following our outstanding Customer Satisfaction Survey result, Dora Wirth (Languages) Ltd. is proud to be listed in Slator’s 2021 Language Service Provider Index (LSPI), in the Boutique agency category. We were also the only UK Boutique LSP in the index to specialise solely in the Life Sciences vertical.
In Slator’s report, LSPs were divided into four groups: Super Agencies, Leaders, Challengers and Boutiques.
According to the report, organic growth across all translation companies was broadly “flat to single low-single digits” in 2020. This hints at the challenges resulting from the pandemic, though it also reported that companies some companies saw growth either through increases in revenue or due to the significant M&A activities.
Some LSPs reported a drop in business but “none of the five Super Agencies reported revenue declines”.
In this report, Slator pulls together vast amounts of reported industry data and allows readers to examine various segments of the industry. It’s a reminder that competition is high, but also that end clients continue to trust specialist Boutique LSPs, who tend to be subject matter-experts, agile enough to handle increasing volumes of translation work.
With the industry still so fragmented towards the Boutique end of the revenue scale, and M&A activity high despite the pandemic, it will be interesting to see what the 2022 Language Service Provider Index looks like, in a year’s time.
It’s important to note that DWL is among those Boutique translation companies who experienced organic growth in 2020, and continues to build on this momentum into Q3 of our financial year.
Services outside of pure translation such as Machine Translation (MT), Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Data Annotation are seeing growth in the translation industry as a whole.
DWL is not the only boutique LSP scaling up our efforts to allow MT to support our translation services and supply increasingly large and complex solutions to our life science customers.
As mentioned in a previous article, it’s up to LSPs to grow these automated services carefully and responsibly, particularly in our field where patient safety and commercial success are so entwined.
Some, LSPs in the index are focussing more heavily on automated and data services, with pure translation playing an increasingly minor role. It’s fascinating to see the wide range of specialisations in our industry.
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