LSP Website Study Data Set

This exploratory study of translation company websites introduces the concept of translation service diversification and concludes that it is a strong feature in the marketing translation sector, with translation, post-editing, localisation, and transcreation as primary services. It highlights the difficulty in distinguishing between translation as a concept and standard translation as a service, and companies’ tendency to describe other services as superior to translation. It suggests that the dominance of negative descriptions of translation might influence companies’ ability to signal the value of translation to uninformed clients, which is vital in an industry climate characterised by the growth of freely available MT. It identifies the inverse scale between efficiency and text customisation as the primary differentiator between services. They are hypothesised to be based on different perceived client needs and require different sets of professional expertise to deliver. In providing their definition of translation, do Carmo and Moorkens underline that the notions of efficiency and text customisation (adaptability, and effectiveness) represent added values in demand in the language industry, but also concepts that have always been part of translation (2022, p.19). This reveals a potential gap between translation studies theory and industry realities which warrant further investigation.