Price elasticity of demand is high in the translation market, and that LSP’s cannot fulfill the pent-up demand with rapid enough and inexpensive enough translation services. Currently, the average price per translated word is $0.23. If a vendor can halve that price while providing accurate translations, many existing consumers would essentially purchase twice the translation services.

The high price elasticity and inability of current LSP’s to meet the market’s throughput demand presents a golden opportunity for a firm with faster, cheaper translation services to capture significant market share. Because almost all translation consumers exhibit high price elasticity of demand, the entire global translation market is a ripe target for a disruptive technology that lowers cost.

Existing buyers are already requiring faster turnaround times, more machine translations, and are expecting increased use of AI technologies in the translation services they consume.