Hiring activity in the language industry fell in June 2022, interrupting the three-month upward trajectory from February 2022. The Slator Language Industry Job Index (LIJI) decreased by 1.7 points in June, the first decline in the index since the seasonal dip of January 2022.
The LIJI was developed to track employment and hiring trends in the global language industry. The July-2018 baseline is the starting point from which expansion or contraction of employment and hiring activity across the industry is measured.
The Slator LIJI retreated slightly to 178.55 in June 2022 from 180.29 the month prior. The job index has climbed more than seven points since January 2022.
The slight decline in the June 2022 figure is linked to a slight slowdown in job ads across a number of the platforms monitored by Slator, which offset growth on a number of other platforms.
Observational data related to activity across the language industry in the month of May 2022 indicate that the translation, localization, and interpreting hiring environment has remained strong but exhibited less growth momentum.
M&A, Funding, Financials
In May, Slator covered five M&A and funding transactions, compared to the six transactions covered in April.
Toppan Digital Language kicked off the month by announcing its acquisition of fellow London-based language service provider (LSP), TranslateMedia.
Also based in the UK, RWS and Baring Private Equity Asia Fund VIII Limited (BPEA) confirmed that Baring will not proceed with its takeover bid after news broke in April of the possibility of a takeover of RWS by BPEA.
Over in Europe, French media localization provider, Dubbing Brothers, unveiled plans to expand into the Nordic market with the acquisition of Eurotroll, a Scandinavian dubbing and subtitling company.
US-based localization service provider, Pixelogic Media, announced the acquisition of Korean dubbing studio Juice Media.
Rounding out the month, the North American market was surprised after Lionbridge AI Buyer, Telus, abruptly withdrew its USD 700m bid for Australian rival Appen. “No reasons were given,” Appen said.
Also in May, several publicly listed companies shared updates on their financial results and trading.
New Zealand-headquartered Straker Translations, released full-year results for the financial year ended March 31, 2022. The company reported revenues of NZD 55.9m (USD 36m), up 79% from the previous year.
US-based AMN Healthcare, the parent company of AMN Language Services (formerly Stratus Video), announced results for the first quarter of its 2022 fiscal year, posting a 20% revenue increase versus the year before.
Ahead of Japan’s more relaxed border controls starting June 1, 2022, Honyaku Center reported a 4.3% revenue growth to JPY 10.34bn (USD 81m) for the 12 months of its fiscal year ended March 31, 2022.
Over at LocJobs, there were close to 20 new job postings in the month of May. Companies such as memoQ, Language Insight, Supertext, and RWS posted their vacancies for roles such as marketing, project management, vendor management, and more.
The Slator LIJI relies on LinkedIn for part of its underlying data. The social media site has some 500 million users, many of whom share data about their skills, experience, location, company, and job titles on their personal LinkedIn pages. There are over 600,000 profiles under the Translation and Localization category and a search using the keyword Localization also yields more than 600,000 profiles.
In addition to using data from LinkedIn, the Slator LIJI also culls data from a range of sources, including global job aggregation sites and additional direct company data collected from Slator LSPI companies.
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