Language business is booming on Page B3 of Monday, August 18, 2014 issue of Chicago Tribune
Number of jobs doubled in past 10 years for translators, interpreters
It’s a high-stakes, multibilliondollar industry with tight deadlines, demanding clients and lives at risk. Miscommunication can cause deep financial loss or death. Some in the industry work in war zones, while others have cozy home offices. “The stakes can be huge,” said Lillian Clementi, 55. “There’s tons of time pressure.”
The business is language. And it’s booming. The number of jobs for translators and interpreters doubled in the past 10 years while their wages steadily grew before, during and after the recession. Jobs are expected to grow 46 percent between 2012 and 2022, according to the Labor Department, making it one of the nation’s fastest-growing occupations.
During a period of stagnating wages across the labor market, the language-service industry with its 50,000 jobs is a bright spot in the jobs outlook. Clementi is a French translator who works in corporate communications from her home in Arlington, Va. Clementi is routinely on tight deadlines to submit translated material.
One of Clementi’s former clients, a French company, routinely would send her legal documents to translate at the end of France’s workday — about midday on the East Coast. Clementi would translate the material and email it to another translator in Australia to double-check it. Then the Australian translator sent the translated documents back to France before the company’s offices opened the next day in Paris. “It had literally gone around the globe,” said Clementi, who translates French into English. “This has been going on forever in this industry.”
Translators’ and interpreters’ relative immunity to the nation’s economic downturn also highlights the growing demand for multilingual speakers in an increasingly globalized economy, experts said. “Good translators who specialize in a particular subject and become really good at it can really make six-digit figures annually,” said Jiri Stejskal, spokesman for the American Translators Association. “The professional translators and interpreters … they are pretty happy right now because the economy is good and the jobs are there.”
The estimated value of the language-service industry worldwide, including technology language services, this year will be about $37.2 billion, according to Common Sense Advisory, a market research firm in Boston. That’s a 6.2 percent increase from 2013. Common Sense Advisory predicts the industry will be worth $47 billion by 2018. Multinational corporations, U.S. demographic changes and the Internet economy raise the need for translated and localized information. Companies increasingly want their content tailored to the tongue of the town. One can also depend on the London’s best translation agency to get help with translation.
The number of translator and interpreter jobs went from about 25,000 to 50,000 between 2004 and 2012, according to Occupational Employment Statistics, a Labor Department subsidiary. The OES figures do not include self-employed workers. But another Labor Department survey, Employment Projections, counts self-employed workers. Altogether, there were over 63,000 translators and interpreters in 2012, Employment Projections reported in December.