Over the last couple of weeks, France, Germany and Japan have all announced that they are now officially out of recession - that is to say, their economies are no longer shrinking and their GDP is up. The UK and the US, however, are still officially in recession.
Personally, the recession is still having an impact on my workload in that I am receiving fewer translation jobs in automotive-related areas and clients are generally thinking twice about whether it is really necessary to translate their documents and the costs of doing so. Having said that, I have noticed that companies seem to be more willing to pay higher rates for quality translations, realising that cheap translations are highly likely to be a false economy, costing them more in the long-run when they need to call on an experienced translator to edit and improve these texts.
How about you - what impact is the recession having on your translation work? Do you think it is over or is there still a long way to go? If you are a translation buyer, has the recession changed the way you outsource your translations? Please share your thoughts and experiences with us!
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Here in Spain there is still a loooooong way to go before we’re even close to coming out of a recession. However the politicians try and spin it, the real economy is still on the way down and is heading towards an even bigger disaster.
There is currently an 18.5% unemployment rate, a 500% deficit increase over the last 12 months, a record number of companies listed on the Madrid stock exchange have reported losses in the first half of 2009 and 1000 companies PER DAY closed their doors during the first quarter. It’s possible that ZP’s socialist government is shell-shocked because they don’t really seem to be reacting at all.
Now, in September, we shall see things get even worse as everyone comes back from the beach and a two-month summer holiday (it’s not easy maintaining one of the lowest productivity rates in Europe!). There is a genuine worry that thousands of companies who closed their doors for the summer holidays won’t open them again, increasing unemployment and decreasing tax income even further but we probably won’t get any figures on that until the start of October.
I am about to discover, then, how much the recession is affecting my translation business. Up until the summer, everything was going quite well. I have spent the summer preparing my blog, some more marketing materials and a bit of a more coherent plan. I have also raised my core translation prices.
In Holland:
Some of my colleagues and I have lost many clients (agencies) in the last few years, because they prefer to work with Italian translators _living in Italy_, where the rates vary from 0,06-0,08 (even for combinations like NL-IT, and never mind the quality). For many of us, the recession started around 2001/2002. No signs of improvement yet. Thank God for direct clients.
Oh, and the recession in general here is not over yet.
Here in Portugal we’re pretty much sunk into recession. As mentioned in the post, the automotive industry is by far the one where i’ve noticed a strong reduction in procuring translation.
The work level for other industries as been keeping steady, fluctuating as usual in the summer months: for some it increases, as in-house translation or larger agencies suffer availability loss due to the vacations; for some it decreases as there is less material being produced for translation.
I find that we are some way off from recovering. While I’m not so hopeful for my country - but that’s a different story - I’m hopeful that President Obama will eventually “kickstart” the economy in the US, leading to the recovery of the automotive industry (they are selling cars on eBay, for Christ’s sake, it can’t go any lower…).
I am also quite hopeful that this period has provided translation buyers with some insight as to the perils of aquiring cheap translation services…
Finally, I’d just like to add that I find it curious that the comments on this topic hail from Spain, Italy and now Portugal. No recession elsewhere? (just kidding here)
Pedro´s last blog ..Client education and Presenting Value
I think Pedro has made a key point: as much as southern European countries try to deny it, there are huge differences and they must learn whatever they need to from Northern European countries and make deep structural changes to their productivity models. Maybe it has always been like this. Publications like the FT and the Economist have been following this tendency for the last few months.
Thanks for your comments, Matthew, Isabella and Pedro. It’s interesting to read other people’s opinions to get an overview of the situation throughout Europe. Although I am still doing ok, I have seen a definite decline in the overall number of translation jobs I have been offered since January of this year - I’m based in the UK and primarily work with clients in Germany. I agree that there is still a long way to go before things pick up again. The figures might tell us that certain countries are officially out of recession, but I think it will take a long time for business and consumer confidence to grow again - in my view, companies and consumers are generally more cautious about spending money at the moment and I can’t see this changing any time soon. As far as the translation industry is concerned, I think that the situation depends on what fields you specialise in, as I gather that business has never been better in some areas, such as legal translations.
That’s true. The situation on the translation markt in Germany has changed for the better compared to the beginning of the year. Though there was really little recession in the field of legal translations (and that is what I am mostly doing), I felt some shortage of jobs in the area of advertisement and marketing (my second area of specialization). Now it’s better again also in this, although still not so good as it was for example last year. I translate into Russian and can see that the export branch is developing (or better to say resurrecting) quite well, even automotive branch, at least what spare parts concerns. And tourism of course - it is still booming
As for the prices, it really depends. I agree that the customers are now more cautious about spending money, but suprisingly enough it’s also often easier to convince them to pay more. The agencies however are trying to reduce the prices. But that’s what they’ve always have been doing, haven’t they?
Great discussion everyone, very thoughful comments here
@Mathew, I think you’re quite right in the points raised about Southern European countries. On the other hand, it is sometimes a recipe for disaster… Portugal has tried to “import” and implement educational models from Northern countries with very bad results, mainly due to lack of proper adaption.
I would like to tie that in with Emilia’s comment, especially in what regards as tourism as a booming area. Portugal, Spain and Italy are prime destinations for tourism all around the world. If both the goverment and service providers took the effort to apply good translation/language services, I’m quite sure we’d all be happier professionals
Mind you that, while I mentioned three countries, my comment is directed to the Portuguese reality, which of course I’m more aware of.
Pedro´s last blog ..Client education and Presenting Value
@Pedro tell us more about Portugal importing education models…
Matthew Bennett´s last blog ..What you can now expect as a reader from this blog
Matthew, that discussion would probably be far off-topic here.
As an example, I’ll just leave the teacher’s evaluation process which bases itself on the conditions and workhours put in by teachers in Finland… You cannot possibly expect people in Portugal and Finland to have anywhere near the same working conditions… Or, to wrap it up, the adoption of U.S. style testing, whereby a portuguese student can enter the University without demonstrating his/hers ability to write a simple sentence in Portuguese.
@Serena, I don’t really want to “hijack” the topic or have the discussion stray too much from the post’s content. Please do moderate or edit my comment if you find it necessary.
Pedro´s last blog ..Client education and Presenting Value
Well according to This questionnaire
USA is the last country in the world, which will come out of recession. Apparently it is based solely on people’s opinions, but the fact, that basically 75% of 100% USA citizens think, that recession is not over yet and 17% of them think, that it will not even be over until 2-3 years, is not realistic. I have no idea, whether people have serious financial problems or they just don’t think realistically.