The State of the Language Industry in 2026

[00:00:03] Speaker A: Hello. Welcome to Localization Today, where we explore how language, technology and community converge to unlock ideas for everyone everywhere. I'm Eddie Arrieta, CEO at Multilingual Media. Today's episode centers on one of the most widely referenced benchmarks in our industry, the NIMC100. Published annually, the report provides a snapshot of the language services market, tracking growth, shifts in demand, emerging regions, and how companies are adapting to ongoing change. This year's edition brings not only updated rankings, but also new sections, deeper analysis and expanded visibility into the mid market. Joining us is Marjolaine Groot. Nibelink. Thank you very much. Marjolaine, who leads the NIMC100 project, will explore what this year's data reveals about productivity, staffing, and where the industry is actually heading beyond. Ladies and gentlemen, the headlines. Marjolaine, welcome back home. How are you doing? [00:01:16] Speaker B: Thank you. I'm doing well. Thanks for having me. [00:01:18] Speaker A: How is the wilderness? [00:01:20] Speaker B: We're about to head into the wilderness again in three weeks. So I just have finished the NIMSI 100 project and now it's time to pack bags, make the house ready, and head north. [00:01:32] Speaker A: Would you take the Nimsi 100 in your heart with your knife and your pistols? And you must have a lot of gear to organize. More gear than with the NIMSI 100. About the same level of complexity, A [00:01:46] Speaker B: lot of physical gear and no data. [00:01:48] Speaker A: No data, just physicality. Wonderful, Wonderful. Thank you so much again for joining us here. How are things going? How did things go with the NIMS? Congratulations on the 2026 release of the report. How is it going? How are you feeling? [00:02:07] Speaker B: Good. Yeah, the project went really fluent. I was involved in the printing, the bringing to print process three years ago and then. Well, actually two years ago, I guess three issues ago. And then last year I was allowed to lead the project and it turned out that my skills and knowledge were more valuable than I thought initially. And so this year is the first year that I really headed the entire project, both the research and the analysis and the writing and the production. So it's neat. I feel like I could take some ownership of it and go more in depth simply because I was working on every step of the process and also because of new technologies. And it was much easier to mine for knowledge from all of the survey entries that we get, and then also the conversations that we've had with industry leaders, in addition to other reports that have come out over the year. And so gathering all that information, um, it's. It's been. It's Been really helpful to use technologies to. To draw the right information from. From all that data. [00:03:29] Speaker A: And right now this is available for free on the NIMSI website, correct? [00:03:35] Speaker B: Yeah, it's very easy. It's the first menu item at is research and then it's NIMDZI 100. So that's where you can go. You can go straight to nimdzi.com nimdzi-100 [00:03:47] Speaker A: and for those that are not familiar, of course, for those that get the multip magazine part of the audience, they might be familiar with the printed but have not been familiar with the ecosystem that the NIMC100 is. When you go to the website, there is a landing page. I can consume the NIMSA 100 within the website. Right. And then within PDF format. What can you tell us rather should be the question about this year's format as compared to previous years. And you know, some of the insights that you mentioned that you had more time to devote more ownership to also explore there. How did that all look for you? [00:04:26] Speaker B: Yeah, so there is indeed a web version and then there is a PDF for those who enjoy, I don't know, reading it on a tablet without having the paper copy. And the multilingual subscribers may be used to seeing it shipped along with multilingual magazine. And this year we are approaching it slightly differently. And those who really would like a paper copy, they can order it on the Nimzi website and the print is issues will be available in 10 days. Personally, I love that because, you know, well, you know, I came from magazine publishing so I really enjoy having something in my hand. And yeah, I was very adamant about having a printed version. And also anyone who's going to look world. Eddie, are you going to have some at the booth? [00:05:18] Speaker A: Oh, we'll have plenty. Plenty on the booth. We can get you to sign a few. You should sign a few. [00:05:24] Speaker B: Yeah, because they're coming to my house first. People might not realize that, but they're coming to my house. And then, yeah, we still have a distribution center. [00:05:31] Speaker A: Let's get 25 signed copies, Margall. [00:05:34] Speaker B: 25 signed copies signed in. [00:05:35] Speaker A: And you say from whatever you put, you do you, you do you. And then we'll have. We'll take pictures of the people that take those first 25 nimsy 100 signed by Marshall and Groot. I think that would be awesome. I think that would be great. And then we can follow up with this. Mila, let's not forget this is a great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dublin and also Vancouver. [00:06:00] Speaker B: Vancouver. So it sounds like Vancouver Is going to work with my timing of driving back from Alaska and I'm going to try to swing by Look World that is perfect. [00:06:10] Speaker A: You can sign them yourself in person, you can take some pictures and you bring the leather jacket. What are the benefits of the leather jacket and where you are? Where are you at? Idaho. Right? [00:06:23] Speaker B: I am in Idaho in a small town. Leather jackets are great. We were just talking about leather jackets. I have way too many and I intend to buy more. It's. Yeah, I don't know, it becomes. Actually, the funny story is. So I was working at Multilingual before Nimzy took it over, and when they bought it, they hopped my pay and the first thing I bought with it that month, my first month's paycheck. I went to this little store in the corner and I had seen this leather jacket there for a really long time and I didn't think I could afford it. And I took that first paycheck and I bought that leather jacket and I wore it all the time. And most of the pictures you see of me, I'm wearing that leather jacket. And so it kind of became part of my personality as the publisher. [00:07:08] Speaker A: Yeah, that is wonderful. I love that. And of course, we see it even in the conversation. Right. You devote significant amount of time, focus, effort to understand the industry as the NIMC 100. And then you take some time out. You come as a. An insider with an outsider perspective. What does the report look into in terms of industry productivity? Conversation, of course, is out there. What did you see these years? Are companies being more efficient or is just more pressure? [00:07:45] Speaker B: Yeah, and kind of talking about that outsider perspective too. I think people can relate to being in their offices alone. Our industry is based on a lot of remote work going on LinkedIn, seeing people freak out about the situation. Things are changing really, really fast. I take a step away from it and then come in with kind of a fresh look, like, I know how things were last year and now I'm going to look at how things are at this point this year. So I step away for a good nine months and come back in because the Nimzi 100 is exactly that. It is looking at what has changed since the previous point of measure. And so I think that helps me when it comes to productivity. It was really quite astounding. Productivity has been going up since we started measuring it, but usually not more than, I would say 20% a year. Productivity is up, by our measure, 73.6%, I believe so not doubled, but three quarters more productivity. That is a Calculation of the revenue gained in a company divided by the number of employees. And of course people know productivity goes up when you add technology and you develop AI forward solutions. But that is a real number. So people can really see that they can benchmark themselves against it. And I thought that that was one of the most telltale statistics that we had in the report this year. [00:09:26] Speaker A: And in terms of that revenue gain that you see is I've seen more moderate expectations year over year on what the total size of the market is going to be. Is there a recomposition in what the total market look looks like in terms of that revenue gain? Are companies offering more technology for example, and then rely less on human talent, thus selling the same, perhaps offering new technology services but then not using the same number of talent? Or it's like talent maintained and then more revenue is being produced. How does that dynamic at least feel from what you've seen? [00:10:12] Speaker B: Right, so more productivity, you could consider that happens if there's more volume being processed and more revenues being gained. But if you look at one of my favorite, one of the most telltale graphs I think of the report is the growth by segment that we've measured since 2021. And the segments are the top 10, the top 20, top 50, then the 50 to 100 and then the rest of the market. So it's the first time we saw negative growth in one of the segments which was the 50 to 100 segment. So those are the companies like between 18 and a half million and I don't want to lie, I think like 50 million of annual revenues. So they're struggling the most. But overall the growth is down in all segments. That doesn't mean negative growth, but it is slimmer than previous years, it is slowing down and even the large companies are having a hard time. The fastest growing companies are growing not as fast as previous years. The fastest growth is realized mostly by M and A. So it's harder to measure how healthy the company actually is. You know, how much of that growth is organic growth without getting full transparency into the finances. So yeah, that's kind of the overall picture. The mid market segment is struggling hard, but we still calculate that the entire volume, the entire size of the industry is growing, but growing by probably 1% or less simply because we don't have visibility into the big machines, the LLMs that are gaining popularity now and gaining users. We just don't have the data from OpenAI. And how much revenue is being, how much is being invested in that technology, how much software subscription revenue do they get from that. So that's where we're limited. But we're estimating this is always an estimation that the entire market did grow a little bit but we know for sure that it did not grow in the segment of like the 5 million to 50 million revenue companies. [00:12:31] Speaker A: One of the very interesting things to me is this inclusion of the mid market ranking and there is always so much, I mean I always thought every time it's meeting so many great companies that nobody was looking into at this level of detail. So this for you is the next 250, right? [00:12:53] Speaker B: And you know what's funny too is I knew company names through multilingual as advertisers, many that have been advertisers for a really long time. And so I, in my perception they were big important companies and then I find out that they are not top 100 companies, that they sit somewhere at number 251 and I had no idea. And so I see their revenues and then they, and then I know that they spend money on multilingual magazine and it's really neat to see but to be able to share those names in the next 250. So it's actually a separate ranking that's only online the next 250. So in effect we have a NIMD350 this year. Those companies though that entered the survey, their information, their survey responses are used also in the Nimzi 100 analysis. And we're getting more of those mid market players to join the effort and it's giving us a much more complete view of the industry. [00:14:03] Speaker A: That is wonderful and I think the estimations are a very interesting approach. I know for a fact so many language service companies, LSPs in Colombia, interpreting companies, translation businesses, regulated industry translations, they have no idea that lockworld exists. They have no idea. This whole community meets in all these different places and consolidates knowledge through all different podcasts and different events and different reports like this one. I think people don't realize that these estimations actually are probably an underestimation if we will be able to really measure a lot of the things that other companies are doing. [00:14:51] Speaker B: Right? Yeah, I mean when we look at accessible market size and I think that's what Slater uses for their market size size estimation, you're not going to get past I don't know, $35 billion. But that's exactly what we know with our experience from the industry is that there are so many small specialized boutique providers which by the way those seem to not be as affected if they are specialized Especially like you say, in regulated industries or rare language pairs that are not covered with LLMs yet. So, yeah, this industry is by its nature a fragmented industry, and we need to do our best to draw people together to get those companies to, you know, kind of join. Join the movement to make clear to the clients what our new capabilities are and what our value is as a. As a providing industry. [00:15:46] Speaker A: Yeah, and it's part of the conversations that, you know, how do you call it when you go to conferences? The whole conversation. How do you say there is an expression for this? [00:15:57] Speaker B: Like the water cooler conversations? [00:15:59] Speaker A: Yeah, like the water cooler conversations of the industry. I think there is an understanding that there is an element of collective intelligence in the industry that allows for the industry to morph and adapt to different needs in different functions of the globalization sphere. And that's very powerful. You see it. You see how knowledge is transferred so quickly through, like a lock world, a gala, an alc, like, all these events that happen throughout the year. The podcast, like that generates a lot of resilience. And I think that the question that we also have about this is the discussion on staffing levels. Are companies shrinking in terms of like, total human talent? What's going on in overall terms? [00:16:53] Speaker B: Yeah. So from our survey respondents, the entire poll altogether, all of the staff in every section of the industry, staffing levels are down just under 5% overall. Yes. More linguist staffing got cut, more technology talent got hired. And then we see a very, very limited shortage in tech talent. I think only 17% of companies said that they had a hard time attracting the right tech talent. But then, interestingly, it was more than 25% for link linguists. So there are a lot of linguists leaving. I know that linguists online say, hey, I can't find work. And that's definitely true for a lot of them. But when I talk to industry leaders, they are saying that they're linguists, especially the really good ones, they don't want to make the adaptations. They don't want to adjust to this new reality. This is not why they became linguists, just to do MTPE all day. So they're leaving, and therefore there's actually talent crunch in good linguist talent. So it's worth for people that are having a hard time to find work, Invest in yourself. Companies are saying that they're willing to invest in training for linguists, so keep an eye open for those opportunities. They are there because the companies are expressing a shortage in linguist talent. [00:18:26] Speaker A: And that makes a lot of sense. A lot of the progress that we will see in language services will need to come from our understanding of the evolution of language and this much deeper conversation. And I think we're just scratching the surface on what it's needed to be able to get a holistic picture. And I think the NIMC 100 now, the mid market ranking and the NIMC 350. Can't wait to see to see that gives an idea through the different insights that we get from there on this Marjolin. New sections, new graphs, favorite graphs. I love the graphs because they immediately tell you like what's up? I prefer looking at all the graphs than reading the whole thing. So what graphs would you send me to? [00:19:17] Speaker B: Yeah, and what's fun too now you can click on a graph, any graph, and then you can just toggle through them and just absorb the information in that way, if you're more of a visual person. One of the best ones is the one that I shared first is the business challenges ranked graph. And it basically looks like a table with an assortment of shades of blue going from light blue for a low percentage to dark blue for high percentage. And then we calculate the weighted average of how companies are ranking those business challenges. And because we can compare to previous years and that's the part that we do in the text, it makes it even more interesting. I love that one. I like the Atlas graph that we have developed even further this year. And yet you get more than just one statistic. So you can see growth and market share and that's the one we have for the Nimzi 100 and then we also made it for the mid market. So for those next 250 and you can see both of those side by side by geography and. And we're now separating the Middle east as one of the regions that we want to calculate new sanctions. Well, we were able to get a lot of information about the Chinese language market this year and so we decided to include a segment on China and emerging markets to kind of create space for those much overlooked areas. Regions in the world, South America, Africa, APAC, et cetera. [00:20:58] Speaker A: Yeah, I think also the NIMSI 100, it's very human. I really liked a section where it talks about the optimism about the person's own business and the optimism about the industry. And I love it because if you look at the graph on the website or the PDF, you will see that you will have from 1 to 10. Is the scale like a Likert scale? This is what it's called, right, Marjolaine, you will have from Likert. [00:21:32] Speaker B: That sounds Liker. [00:21:33] Speaker A: A Likert scale. A Likert scale. Then from 1 to 10 you'll have from 5 to 8 the highest percentages. 13, 20, 20 and 19. So like 80%, 70 to 80% is there from 5 to 8. Then you can read it in so many ways. But to me, I always remember these net promot score is like most people are not either optimistic or pessimistic from my reading, of course, what I love about this graph is that it's open to interpretation. You can go check it out and you can see like the optimism about the industry and optimism about own business and then kind of like decide what the mood is. What do you think was the mood that you perceive from the respondents? [00:22:17] Speaker B: Well, I mean what you're pointing at is exactly what you, what you experience in person at events. Right? People stand in groups at receptions and other gatherings and they complain about their concern, they share their concerns about the shifts in the industry. But then if you walk up to their booth, they will have nothing but positive things to say about their business. Right? Like things are going so great, blah, blah, blah. So yeah, there's that dichotomy that's really interesting. What's new in the graph this year is that we added last year's results as well in like a light gray shadow basically behind the bars of this year. So you can visually compare to last year and how things have changed traditionally. And it's the same this year. The optimism about the industry overall is lower than the optimism about people's own business. And you have to remember though that this is an average. So another, I wanted to come back on the new sections and even though the technology section is not a new section, it's actually a whole chapter. It's the final chapter of the report after the atlas. But Laszlo wrote these really interesting sector analyses. And so within the of course booming technology sector of the language industry, there are these subsectors. And so he wrote about the data for AI sector analysis. Then there's the machine translation sector analysis, translation management sector analysis, multimodal language technology sector analysis. This is a really interesting kind of dissection of the technology sector in our industry and it's very, very much worth a read. [00:24:05] Speaker A: And I agree there is a lot to unpack and I'm assuming that now you're going to do your Animsi 100 tour. Are there any dem. Any in depth conversations that you're going to be having with the NIMSY team and Nimsy life happening? What's going on? [00:24:22] Speaker B: This is it. This is my tour. [00:24:24] Speaker A: This is your tour. [00:24:24] Speaker B: This is the end of my tour. [00:24:26] Speaker A: This is the end of your tour? [00:24:28] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we sent it to print just the other day and we've done a presentation. If you go to the website, to the landing page, you see the presentation there. It's not really long. It's only 30 minutes. There's a lot of laughter. So do that. You know, you can watch that if you have a moment. And yeah, that's pretty much it because I'm going to be packing up. Tomorrow's my last day. [00:24:54] Speaker A: Oh, wonderful. And of course, companies now, you know, the 350. Why would a company want to sit down with you and give the information to you? If I'm like a company that I would say I'm 270, I really want to be in 200 for what that means. Right. That just means there are brackets of, you know, pockets of value that you can be part of. Why would it matter to these companies to like, be part of the NMC 100, 250, 350? [00:25:28] Speaker B: Well, one is to be part of the effort and that looks good. You know, the only way we can do accurate benchmarking is by gathering a lot of data. And the other thing is you have your name out there on a list. And if investors are looking for a company of your size in your region or with your specialties, it's going to be really easy for them to find you in an independent publication. So that's a reason. Yeah, I mean, I'm going to ask them more myself because that's what I can come up with. But I should ask them more directly why they share their data. I find it amazing and I'm incredibly grateful to all the companies that, that join the effort. [00:26:10] Speaker A: And it's incredible how you put it when you mention joining the effort. It does relate completely to this concept of collective effort, collective intelligence and making sure that things are in place to make sure that the buyers see cooperation, they see teamwork. From that, there is a lot of innovation that can happen. I'm starting to see in this whole staffing conversation talent going from one team to another in very good terms and helping all the companies kind of like grow. [00:26:47] Speaker B: It's a community. It's a real community. Every time you go to look world, there's people that you associate with a certain company and then they've moved to another company and everyone is still happy and having beers together. It's not a big deal. Usually it's a community effort and it is a community Service from nimd. This is available for free. Not just the ranking, but the entire report which is in print, 80 pages. So the ranking is nine pages and the entire report is 80 pages. So the entire report is available for free. With a deep look at the market, a deep look at money situations, M and a technology geographical distribution and just the state of the industry. And you know, you don't have to pay for it, you don't even have to put in your email address and your name. You can just go ahead and get it, you can download it, you can request a print copy and which are not endless, in endless supply. So get yours while they last. We don't have very many. [00:27:49] Speaker A: And for those that want to find other excuses to look into it, yes, there is an element of AI, specifically in the technology section. What is the big shift that you've seen there? When you go to the reporters, there's a great graph where you have what before Genai looked like, which is language localization and contact technology being the big part of the business and then a small part of the business being AI. Whereas today AI is a big part of the technology budgets and expenditure, while language localization and content technology, it's the smaller size of the conversation. It looks like now, now there's more demand for everything. In terms of what you found in technology, Marjolaine, what is insightful for you? What can you tell us about this whole thing with artificial intelligence in the mix? [00:28:48] Speaker B: It's the biggest driver of the industry right now. It's the biggest disruptor for those that haven't had a chance to adapt in, in the big picture, a lot of providers have been able to adjust and include these really powerful tools in their workflow and they're able to serve their clients better. But it's the client's understanding that's often behind somewhat. So spending time with clients is incredibly important. Holding their hands through the new process, explaining to them where providers, language providers still play a major part. And then. And in terms of the report, we have developed some new ways to visualize these shifts in technology and taking a deeper look at it. The survey is asking more questions about the technology sector separately from the traditional services sector. So it's a very, very good look at technology as well. We have types of technologies developed, which size companies launched multiple products, new proprietary technologies or services. So you can really start seeing this divide grow between the companies that are able to adapt, which usually requires tremendous investment, and those that can't. So new visuals for this budget effect of generative AI. Where we are starting to compare to previous year's results, but we also have gathered results this year that we cannot compare yet that we intend to use going forward. So, for example, the overall split of revenues gathered from traditional services, pure technology offerings and interpreting. So over time, I expect to see the technology revenue grow, but we just don't know yet. So we have a baseline of data from this year and some also from the previous year that. That you'll see visualized next year because we need to start doing comparisons with those. You can't just, you know, present one year of data and say, this is how. This is how the industry looks. So we want to compare. And the technology section of the report has just become endlessly more interesting this year thanks to Laszlo, because that's what he wrote mostly. [00:31:16] Speaker A: That is correct. I love having reference points year over year and then seeing graphs that kind of like explain it better. So if you like looking at reports like this, if you like graphs, if you like insights that can help grow your business, I believe this is a great opportunity to kind of like understand how you're positioning yourself. There's a lot of great nuggets there. I'm sure the NIMC team and within multilingual, you will also see some of the promotion of this amazing work by the Nimsi team. Of course. Marjolaine. Marjolaine. I can get it physical. I can have the digital version of the magazine. You don't have any current call for companies or if I'm a company, I want to be part and kind of like send you my information. How can I do that today? [00:32:09] Speaker B: Let's see. You can sign up for the newsletter and when you do, on Nimzi.com, i believe that you can specify that you're interested in the Nimzi 100 and then you will get the updates, which means releases next year when the survey starts happening, you'll get a notification. And there is always a way to reach the Nimdzi100 team directly, which is at nimzi-100imzi.com and you know, our people are everywhere. And anything you need, you can ask of any of them and they will point you in the right direction. [00:32:48] Speaker A: Direction that is wonderful. Very easy, very easy to get. Marjolaine, before we go, any final thoughts, recommendations before you go on to your long trip into the Alaskan wilderness? The Alaskan wilderness, is it? [00:33:05] Speaker B: Sure, yeah. There's a lot of wilderness there. Well, last time we talked about getting you a rock and our CFO is going to be in this town. And so. So I'm hoping that we have overlap and I can give her a rock and then she can give it to you at. Look World. [00:33:20] Speaker A: Wow. That would be amazing. [00:33:21] Speaker B: And you can have it at the booth. [00:33:23] Speaker A: Wow. How big is this rock going to be? [00:33:25] Speaker B: I don't know. [00:33:26] Speaker A: The biggest one right now is this one. Look. Well, I'm showing Marjolaine one of my rocks. This is not. [00:33:32] Speaker B: It's a piece of. No, no. I have to see closer if it's quartzite. [00:33:36] Speaker A: Yeah, it's all this sandstone, but. Great. Thank you. I really look forward to having the rocks from. I'm sure I'm going to become a collection of different minerals. That's going to happen. [00:33:50] Speaker B: Yeah. We have hundreds just on all the windowsills. It's kind of crazy. I just have to pick one for you. [00:33:58] Speaker A: Oh, thank you. Thank you. And thank you for talking to us about the NIMC100. Amazing work. Congratulations. Amazing report. And look forward to the other materials that are going to come out from the NIMC 100 team. [00:34:12] Speaker B: Right. Because that's the other thing. Thank you for pointing at that. We gather so much information with the survey. Not all of it can be used in the narrative of the Nimzi 100. So there will also be the language technology atlas, There will be another interpreting index. So these will start coming out in the next few months. It's just that I'm not going to be involved with them. I did the data mining and now I'm going to take off. So, [00:34:42] Speaker A: like a good miner. Fantastic. That is wonderful, Marjolaine. Thank you very much and of course to our listeners for listening to localization today. Thank you. Big thank you to the NIMC team, the NIMC 100 team, of course, especially to Marjolaine for walking us through this year's NIMC 100 and helping us better understand what the data is actually telling us about the industry. If you are interested in exploring the full report, including the mid market rankings and new sections on emerging markets, you can find it online through NIMSI. NIMSI.com is the first section on the reports and you can also access the print edition that will be shipped to you with love. We'll have all of that included in the description of this episode. Whether you're listening to it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or YouTube, please remember to subscribe to rate and share so others can find it. I'm Eddie Arrieta with Multilingual Media. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next time, Marjolaine. Good luck and see you next time, too. [00:35:49] Speaker B: Thank you so much. It was my pleasure.