The survey of language and cultural service providers was
carried out by CILT, the National Centre for Languages in spring
2005, by means of a questionnaire sent via email to all registered
BLIS Professionals providers based in the UK and with an email
address.
The key findings include:
- Finance, IT and legal services are the three business sectors
from which providers currently have the most work. It is predicted
that future demand will remain the same in these three sectors,
whereas demand is likely to increase in both the tourism sector and
the public service sector.
- The language services sector is still dominated by small
companies and sole traders.
- While the demand for language training appears to be
decreasing, there is a discernible increase in demand for
translation services.
- There is a growing demand for localisation and cultural
training services.
- Across all forms of language service, French, Spanish, German,
Italian and Portuguese are the most popular languages that
providers currently offer to their clients.
- Demand for Chinese, Arabic, Russian and Japanese is growing,
while demand for German is decreasing.
- There is some increase in demand for Eastern European
languages, particularly Polish, Czech, Bulgarian, Ukrainian and
Slovak.