logo image
  • News
    • People Moves
    • Deal Wins
    • Demand Drivers
    • M&A and Funding
    • Financial Results
    • Technology
    • Academia
    • Industry News
    • Features
    • Machine Translation
    • — Divider —
    • Slator Pro
    • — Divider —
    • Press Releases
    • Sponsored Content
  • Data & Research
    • Research Reports & Pro Guides
    • Language Industry Investor Map
    • Real-Time Charts of Listed LSPs
    • Language Service Provider Index
  • Podcasts & Videos
  • Events
    • SlatorCon Remote May 2021
    • Localizing at Scale for International Growth
    • Design Thinking May 2021
    • — Divider —
    • SlatorCon Coverage
    • Other Events
  • Directory
  • RFP Center
  • Jobs
MENU
  • News
    • People Moves
    • Deal Wins
    • Demand Drivers
    • M&A and Funding
    • Financial Results
    • Technology
    • Academia
    • Industry News
    • Features
    • Machine Translation
    • — Divider —
    • Slator Pro
    • — Divider —
    • Press Releases
    • Sponsored Content
  • Data & Research
    • Research Reports & Pro Guides
    • Language Industry Investor Map
    • Real-Time Charts of Listed LSPs
    • Language Service Provider Index
  • Podcasts & Videos
  • Events
    • SlatorCon Remote May 2021
    • Localizing at Scale for International Growth
    • Design Thinking May 2021
    • — Divider —
    • SlatorCon Coverage
    • Other Events
  • Directory
  • RFP Center
  • Jobs

Register Before April 15th for SlatorCon Remote and Save 15%!

  • Slator Market Intelligence
  • Slator Advertising Services
  • Slator Advisory
  • Login
Search
Generic filters
Exact matches only
Advertisement
Japan’s Transcosmos Enters Remote Interpreting Market With 7-Eleven Win

5 years ago

September 2, 2016

Japan’s Transcosmos Enters Remote Interpreting Market With 7-Eleven Win

Deal Wins ·

by Florian Faes

On September 2, 2016

5 years ago
Deal Wins ·

by Florian Faes

On September 2, 2016

Japan’s Transcosmos Enters Remote Interpreting Market With 7-Eleven Win

Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) company Transcosmos has entered the remote interpreting market. Tokyo-based Transcosmos competes in similar markets like LanguageLine’s new owner Teleperformance, such as call centers and other customer service outsourcing services.

Transcosmos has been around since 1966, employs 40,000 employees, and generated USD 2bn in annual revenues in 2015. In the run up to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Japan ramping up efforts to tackle the language barrier, which, compared to many other global cities, is still a major issue to foreign visitors in Tokyo. Naturally, Japanese language service providers (LSPs) all expect the Olympics to boost business and have invested to cater to the additional demand.

LSPs are not alone, however. Transcosmos also saw the opportunity and, in December 2015, announced the construction of a multilingual contact center. The center would start out small with 30 workstations, but the plan was to ramp up to 300 workstations by 2020.

Advertisement

That was then. In 2016, Transcosmos doubled down on multilingual customer service and acquired UK-based Merlin, rebranding it into Transcosmos Information Systems Limited. Merlin has been in the call center business since 1991 and employs 600 employees in five branches in the US, Europe, and the Philippines.

Merlin comes with language capabilities in over a dozen languages and Transcosmos hopes it can leverage the UK company’s expertise to build out its multilingual capabilities.

With some of the pieces in place, Transcosmos has started to go after remote interpreting deals.

In April 2016, it announced it won a contract with Mizuho Bank to provide English, Chinese, and Korean call interpreting services for the bank’s own contact center, Mizuho Information Dial.

A much larger deal now comes with the announcement that Transcosmos was contracted by convenience store chain juggernaut 7-Eleven to provide language interpreting services for its nearly 19,000 locations nationwide starting September 2016.

Initial translations will be in English and Chinese, with Spanish and Korean translations also under consideration.

According to an Asia Nikkei Review report, the idea is that foreign visitors to Japan who need help operating, for example, “all-in-one copy machines at the stores that also issue event tickets and print photos” are now able to communicate with shop assistants using three-way calls with an interpreter. That is one use case. But it will not end there.

The offshoot for the language industry is that with Capita, Transcom, Xerox, Serco, and now Teleperformance and Transcosmos, large providers of so-called CMSes (customer management services) are building out their remote interpreting capabilities, entering the turf of the few LSPs specializing in that area.

TAGS

remote interpretingTranscosmos
SHARE
Florian Faes

By Florian Faes

Co-Founder of Slator. Linguist, business developer, and mountain runner. Based in the beautiful lakeside city of Zurich, Switzerland.

Advertisement

SUBSCRIBE TO THE SLATOR WEEKLY

Language Industry Intelligence
In Your Inbox. Every Friday

SUBSCRIBE

SlatorSweepSlatorPro
ResearchRFP CENTER

PUBLISH

PRESS RELEASEDIRECTORY LISTING
JOB ADEVENT LISTING

Bespoke advisory including speaking, briefings and M&A

SLATOR ADVISORY
Advertisement

Featured Reports

See all
Pro Guide: Translation Pricing and Procurement

Pro Guide: Translation Pricing and Procurement

by Slator

Slator 2020 Language Industry M&A and Funding Report

Slator 2020 Language Industry M&A and Funding Report

by Slator

Slator 2021 Data-for-AI Market Report

Slator 2021 Data-for-AI Market Report

by Slator

Slator 2020 Medtech Translation and Localization Report

Slator 2020 Medtech Translation and Localization Report

by Slator

Press Releases

See all
Smartling Announces Smartling+

Smartling Announces Smartling+

by Smartling

XTM Cloud 12.7 “Intelligent Connectivity” is Here

XTM Cloud 12.7 “Intelligent Connectivity” is Here

by XTM International

LocHub Announces QA Localization Solution For Multilingual Content Publishing Processes

LocHub Announces QA Localization Solution For Multilingual Content Publishing Processes

by Xillio

Upcoming Events

See All
  1. T-Update-2021

    T-UPDATE ’21 VIRTUAL

    by Gerard Castañeda

    · April 15

    Join us at the leading language Industry event for decision-makers. Just pack your agenda for 2 days and travel to the...

    More info €65-421

Featured Companies

See all
Sunyu Transphere

Sunyu Transphere

Text United

Text United

Memsource

Memsource

Wordbank

Wordbank

Protranslating

Protranslating

SeproTec

SeproTec

Versacom

Versacom

Smartling

Smartling

XTM International

XTM International

Translators without Borders

Translators without Borders

STAR Group

STAR Group

memoQ Translation Technologies

memoQ Translation Technologies

Advertisement

Popular articles

Google Translate Not Ready for Use in Medical Emergencies But Improving Fast — Study

Google Translate Not Ready for Use in Medical Emergencies But Improving Fast — Study

by Seyma Albarino

The Slator 2021 Language Service Provider Index

The Slator 2021 Language Service Provider Index

by Slator

DeepL Adds 13 European Languages as Traffic Continues to Surge

DeepL Adds 13 European Languages as Traffic Continues to Surge

by Marion Marking

SlatorPod: The Weekly Language Industry Podcast

connect with us

footer logo

Slator makes business sense of the language services and technology market.

Our Company

  • Support
  • About us
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Privacy Policy

Subscribe to the Slator Weekly

Language Industry Intelligence
In Your Inbox. Every Friday

© 2021 Slator. All rights reserved.

Sign up to the Slator Weekly

Join over 13,800 subscribers and get the latest language industry intelligence every Friday

Your information will never be shared with third parties. No Spam.