Language services business units inside larger corporations

Large-scale clinical research organizations, digital marketing agencies, auditors, technical documentation developers, and even retailers like Alibaba have language services business units that complement their service offering. In some cases, the billions in revenue from the core business in some of these companies makes the proceeds from the translation business units seem like nothing more than rounding errors.

Because of this, it is not always possible to distinguish the language services component from the larger organization. Yet, some of these language services business units make far more than USD 10 million. Therefore, they are relevant for an in-depth analysis of the industry because they compete with conventional market players for the best talent and the best clients.

We list some of them below.