It is no secret that advances in technology have drastically changed the translation industry in recent years. The emergence of Artificial Intelligence has already reshaped translation. It is yet to be seen how deeply both the industry, and our lives, will be affected. But AI is not the only technology that is changing the face of the translation industry. When Big Data entered the scene, it began to allow translation companies to identify key trends which can be used to help determine future growth. This phenomenon became available in recent years due to the rise of cloud-based translation platforms and the overthrow of their server-based predecessors.
Cloud-based translation platforms
As cloud-based platforms continue to be used, new benefits keep revealing themselves. In previous years, servers were used to store clients’ data during the translation process, but today, cloud tools are used to centralize data as it comes from multiple organizations and translators. Cloud technology keeps TMs up to date, and makes the process of translation uniform. This ultimately results in better translations for businesses, with more consistency across the company.
Cloud-based tools are also able to collect data on translator productivity, project management, and related costs. This data can be utilized by Language Service Providers (LSPs) to streamline operations and reveal any major issues in their project lifecycle.
When company data was stored on servers, the data had to be customized to meet the needs of each company or each individual department that worked with an LSP. Thanks to cloud-based tools, data is gathered in one format, making it easy to compare. As cloud tools continue to grow, the industry begins to gather enough data – or big data – to form definitive conclusions.
The benefits of big data in translation
Big data certainly has the potential to dramatically shake an already evolving translation industry. With the help of big data, companies will begin to understand how to better utilize their resources.
Large quantities of data will also give companies the ability to identify, and eventually predict, key trends such as the demand of language pairs. Additionally, big data makes it possible for businesses to accurately compare the disparity between machine translation (MT) and human translation. These kind of benchmarks should increase productivity across the industry and allow companies to eradicate previous mistakes.
As companies gather more and more big data, it has become clear that the above outcomes are just the tip of the iceberg. For better or for worse, big data is changing the language industry, one project at a time.
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