Large Translation Companies Overlooked for CSA's Top 30

Common Sense Advisory may or may not have overlooked a few companies that should have been on the recent list of the Top 30 LSPs.

CSA has noted that every year it receives feedback with suggested corrections to its report on the Top 20, 25, or 30 LSPs. The feedback suggesting the market is really a different size is to be expected when so many people define the industry differently. The feedback with suggested numerical corrections and notifications that certain companies have been overlooked is also to be expected for three reasons:

• List criteria require that some companies be intentionally excluded as when LLS was excluded from the 2005 list because CSA was not ranking OPI companies
• Few translation companies are public, and not all large private translation companies are willing to disclose their financial information to CSA, so naturally the list is only as good as the data reported
• In such a highly fragmented industry, it is difficult to accurately track all players

At the risk of sounding like a Monday morning quarterback or an armchair quarterback, here are a few companies that were overlooked intentionally or unintentionally. The following companies should probably be listed in the Top 30 based on fairly reliable sources.

• Benesse/Simul International ~$57.6 million
  As previously noted here, Benesse is not only the parent of the language instruction company Berlitz, but also the parent of Simul International. Benesse's 3 subsidiaries with the Simul brand are Simul International ($46 million), Simul Business Communications or SBC ($7 million), and Simul Technical Communications ($4.6 million). This adds up to a total of approximately $57.6 million in 2008 revenue, and revenue for the year ending in 2009 was approximately the same.
• SAIC/SM Consulting ~$50 million
  As previously noted here, SM Consulting is a $75M company that has been providing approximately $50M in linguistic/translation services (what appear to be similar to services provided by L-3 and GLS) to the US Department of Defense since 2004. SAIC is a $9B company that completed announced an acquisition of SMC Consulting in 2008 and completed the acquisition in early 2009. SM Consulting may have been excluded all these years because its linguistic services are somehow categorized differently than those of GLS and L-3, as is often the case with "language" work for government contracts. CSA appears to confirm their numbers directly with each company, and SM Consulting might not be inclined to disclose too much information on its single large government contract. Likewise, SAIC may have been excluded from the most recent list because it is not primarily a language services company; however, CSA does include divisions of larger companies like Xerox and HP on its list.

The following companies are reported to also be large enough to be in the Top 30, but the sources appeared to be more questionable. Not all business databases are very reliable (for example, some have reported that certain translation companies make $2 billion or more in revenue). Some of these errors may be the result of failed currency conversions. We'll let CSA use their resources to double-check the numbers.

• STOPS, Inc. ~$23.8 million?
  Update 8/24/2009: See comments below indicating that STOPS is not a LSP (language service provider), but instead a LSP client and company that resells the services of other LSPs.
  STOPS stands for Specialized Transportation/Translation for Out Patient Services. So, not all of their revenue comes from translation. Some of it clearly comes from transportation services. But according to the D&B Million Dollar Database, STOPS earns $23.8 million in revenue. If that really were the case in 2008, that would be quite a large jump (60% growth) from revenue of $14.9 million confirmed by Inc. 5000 for 2007.
• Kyiv Translation Center ~$80 million?
  According to Gale's Business & Company Resource Center, the Kyiv Translation Center does $80 million in revenue. This looks a little suspect when Gale notes that the KTC only employs 150 people and therefore does $533,000 in revenue per employee, which is not only well above the typical rate for that part of the world, but also well above the highest rate in the current Top 30 list. However, top500.de claims KTC revenue is even higher than 100 million euros.
• Japan Translation Center ~$421 million???
  According to Gale's Business & Company Resource Center, the Japan Translation Center does $421 million in revenue. However, the JTC website notes that it employs only 15 people. Chances are that the JTC actually has revenues of 421 million yen or $4 million.

Other translation "companies" survive on millions of dollars in donations, not sales. These companies do not fit the traditional mold of CSA's top performer, which are all for-profit.

• Wycliffe Bible Translators ~$153 million
  According to the D&B Million Dollar Database, Wycliffe has $142 million in revenue and 900 employees. According to the financial reports on its website, Wycliffe received $153 million in 2008 contributions (revenue) and spent $138 million on "Bible translation and related activities." Wycliffe has also recently begun a 17-year, $1 billion dollar "Last Languages Campaign." This would require average funds of more than $58 million per year.

CSA is open to suggestions and has openly solicited input. Unfortunately, they often limited by the fact that some companies refuse to confirm financial details. The above information has been sent to CSA, so some of these firms may appear on next year's list. Until then, kudos to CSA for pulling together a lot of information that otherwise would not have been public and thereby helping us to satisfy our curiosity with these Top 30 lists and market size estimates.

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