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Latin America:

A Potential Translation & Localization

Power House

ByCharles Campbell

President, spanishbackoffice SA

An overview of the market, the players, and the trends

A volatile, incipient and exciting market

A handful of small & medium sized dynamic translation and localization companies characterized by:

Hardworking, talented and gutsy management (cojones)

Low profile: sales by Internet/e-mail

Dependence on language industry clients

Very little full scale localization

Translation, Editing, Proofreading

Project Management

DTP

Software Testing

Others???Localization

Proprietary Products ?

Multilingual Projects ?

CM

The services provided:

Our largely undeveloped potential:

Culturally rich and diverse countries

Education: free universities in Argentina (!!!)

Comparatively low costs

Time zone compatibility with North America

Strong established translation and publishing industries

Steadily growing local software industry

Lots of translators (!)

A comparison with Eastern Europe:

Where are the Moravias, Skrivaneks and Argos of Latin America?

Eastern Europe emerged from dictatorship only 16 years ago but has quickly prospered (generally speaking). Why?

It is Europe after all – short distances to clients

Strong exact sciences and analytical focus at universities

Multilingual region

Sustained investment from Western Europe and the US

What is holding us back?

Few “real” companies

Very few quality project management/localization training events

Almost no cooperation with government, software companies, universities and other localization companies & professionals

Very little inter disciplinary cooperation with desk top publishers, engineers, programmers, localizers, etc.

No industry organization

IndustryOrganizations

Universities(public / private)

SoftwareIndustry

Freelancers

Translation &LocalizationCompanies

Cooperation !!!

If we don’t all hang together, we will surely all hang separately

A look forward to 2016: Questions to ask ourselves:

What if the peso revalues?

What if more multinationals like Moravia set up offices in Latin America?

What if server-based solutions and GMS systems replace in the box software?

What if rates continue to slide downwards?

What if quality translators/localizers get even harder to find?

What if the tax authorities (AFIP etc.) get serious about income remittance and employment taxes for subcontractors?

A look forward to 2016: Is this as good as it gets?

No!The future is bright,¡animémonos a más!