Language industry

The language industry is the sector of activity dedicated to facilitating multilingual communication, both oral and written. According to the European Commission's Directorate-General of Translation, the language industry comprises the activities of translation, interpreting, subtitling and dubbing, software and website globalisation, language technology tools development, international conference organisation, language teaching and linguistic consultancy. According to the Canadian Language Industry Association, this sector comprises translation (with interpreting, subtitling and localisation), language training and language technologies. The European Language Industry Association limits the sector to translation, localisation, internationalisation and globalisation. An older, perhaps outdated view confines the language industry to computerised language processing and places it within the information technology industry. An emerging view expands this sector to include editing for authors who write in a second language—especially English—for international communication.

The scope of services in the industry includes:

The persons who facilitate multilingual communication by offering individualized services—translation, interpreting, editing or language teaching—are called language professionals.

Translation as an activity exists at least since mankind started developing trade millennia ago; so, if we include interpreting, it is no exaggeration to say that the origins of language industry are older than those of written language.

Modern language industry has developed rapidly following availability of the internet. Achievements of the industry include the ability to quickly translate long texts into many languages. This has created new challenges as compared with the traditional activity of translators, such as that of quality assurance. There are various quality standards such as the International Organization for Standardization's ISO 17100, EN 15038 in Europe, the CAN CGSB 131.10 in Canada and ASTM F2575-06 in the USA.

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