In some ways, this question is similar to asking how many grains of sand there are. There are two main reasons for this. First, it depends on how you define what a LSP is. Researchers consider companies that provide at least one of the following services for projects such as the
Nimdzi 100, a ranking of the top 100 LSPs in the world, as part of their core business:
Translation, localization, transcription, multilingual desktop publishing (DTP), language quality assurance, language testing , multilingual copywriting, multilingual technical writing, language project management, interpreting, video remote translation, telephone translation, language expert verification and staffing, media localization, versioning, adaptation, subtitling, voiceover, dubbing, machine translation (MT), educational machine translation engines, cultural consulting, data services and related services.
There is a second reason that makes this a tricky question. While this is not a protected profession, businesses can be registered and classified in many different ways, which vary from country to country. Another factor to consider is the low barrier to entry for the language services industry; this means that anyone can start offering services such as translation and interpreting without the need for a formal license, and there are countless freelancers around the world.
Despite these difficulties,
Nimdzi researchers tried to estimate how many
LSPs there are.
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