How Will Continued Offshoring Impact Translation Jobs?
You would have to be blind to not see that many types of jobs have left America. But while this trend has been visible for at least a decade, translation firms are experiencing an increase in demand.. As you might imagine, the types of translators who are in greatest demand come from the industrialized countries of Germany, the United States and Japan and from the developing nations of India, Mexico, Brazil and several others. It's important to realize though that the need for skilled Chinese Translation workers is often at the cost of workers from America and other industrialized countries. In these countries, highly skilled workers are at risk of having their jobs eliminated and moved to a third world country. Because we all know people who have lost their jobs due to offshoring, more and more lawmakers and media sources are spending more time to address these issues.
What Drives The Translation & Interpretation Industry?
Offshoring is a type of outsourcing. According to Eiko Ito, a Portuguese Document Translation worker, "Offshoring simply means having the outsourced business functions done in another country." Firms primarily engage in offshoring as a means to reduce their labor costs and add profit to their bottom line. Other times, the reasons for offshoring are strategic — to enter new markets, to tap talent currently unavailable domestically or to overcome regulations that prevent specific activities domestically. At a time when jobs demanding labor skills are being exported to foreign countries, the demand for interpretation and Russian Document Translation workers is solid and may even be growing. However, we think it is important for everyone to recall that offshoring is driven my global trade initiatives and helps facilitate the development of world economies. Since the sudden and significant growth in outsourcing began, several important changes in the business environment in the late 1990s facilitated the emergence and rapid growth of services offshoring, including the offshoring of activities with significant engineering and medical content. Some examples include Medical Translation professionals, Electrical Engineers, Aerospace Engineers and more. These changes have been made possible due to advances in information technology, an increase in the demand for certain types of technical skills, and the emergence of appropriately skilled, low-wage workforces in India, China, and elsewhere.
Criticism of offshoring and the presumed "hollowing out" of the U.S. engineering and medical workforces are reminiscent of the debates of 20 years ago about U.S. standing in international trade and manufacturing industries. Thinking back almost 20-years, I remember the names of many people who publicly denounced offshoring and the results that it would have. However, others believe that offshoring creates value for the U.S. economy by creating value for U.S. companies and freeing U.S. resources for activities with more value added.
What's Stopping Language Translation Agencies From Being Offshored?
While it appears that domestically located language translation agencies are profiting at the expense of the American workforce, several language translation trade associations are offering different opinions. It is more than likely that at the current pace of offshoring, more translation companies and translator jobs will be located outside of the United States. Furthermore, a German Translation company reports that continued offshoring puts U.S. leadership in science and engineering is now at risk as well as translation services. With every day, it seems that a growing number of translators and interpreters become increasing concerned about jobs being lost to third world countries. If these country's can provide high value in terms of science and engineering human resources, America's ability to innovate and sustain economic growth will be seriously undermined. The results will then be a deterioration of translation services within the United States.
