How large is the machine translation market? Is it $67.5 billion as Language Weaver recently claimed? Well, just as T&I Business has said previously noted about the size of the human translation industry and the size of the interpretation industry, it all depends on how you define it.
The key word used to define this estimate is "untapped." This is an estimate of the "untapped" machine translation market in 2011, which definition is dramatically different from the definition used to estimate the human translation industry size and interpretation industry size mentioned above.
Until this "mind boggling" number (as Language Weaver CEO Mark Tapling describes it), industry estimates related to the machine tranlation market had always been described in the hundreds of millions (Example 1, Example 2), still even a far cry from fom the human translation market pegged at $14.25 million by Common Sense Advisory. So, where does a number like $67.5 billion come from? To assuage our curiosity, Tapling was kind enough to explain the calulations behind this estimate in a podcast that accompanied this bold announcement.
Here is a summary of Language Weaver's calculations for the untapped machine translation market in 2011:
1,800 billion GB of new digital content in 2011 [according to IDC]
x 30% produced in a workplace [thus implying longer term value]
540,000 billion GB of new digital content with longer term value
540,000 billion GB of new digital content with longer term value
x 0.000001 [one ten-thousandth of 1% - a small # with no explanation]
x 12.5 gigawords per GB [implied, but not mentioned by Tapling]
6.75 million gigawords to translate [Tapling rounds down to 6.7]
6.75 million gigawords to translate [in 2011 "untapped" MT market]
x $0.0001 per word [one 100th of a cent for high-volume MT]
$67.5 billion "untapped" market for machine translation.
So there you have it. That's the math behind Language Weaver's estimate for the 2011 "untapped" machine translation market. And it all sounds much more believable when you know the thinking behind it.
