London-based language service providerTranslateMedia reported an 8.5% increase in revenue and an operatingprofit margin of 10.6% for the full year ended March 31, 2017 compared toa year ago.

In a regulatory filing on November 9,2017, the company posted GBP 7.49m (USD 9.9m) in revenue and GBP0.79m (USD 1.05m) in operating profit for the period. This marks an increase onboth the top and bottom line compared to the same period in 2015/16, when thecompany generated revenue of GBP 6.8m (USD 9.1m) and an operating profit of GBP0.25m (USD 5.02m) in 2016.

Discussing the results with Slator,Rupert Evans, TranslateMedia’s Managing Director, attributes the uptick inrevenue to the growth of two big clients, one or two good client wins, and“keeping clients happy.” Evans was unable to reveal the names of theclients or provide details of the big wins for the year.

“If I had to pick one thing that wentvery well for us in that year, it was teamwork. People wanted to listen to eachother and help each other,” he said. “Sometimes I think that a translationagency is about getting lots of things right – pipeline management,commercial arrangements, technical handling of the files, making sure the righttranslators are available and properly briefed, and so forth. Everyone has acritical role to play.”

Evans disclosed that there hasn’t been ashift in client verticals in the past 12 to 18 months and he projects thedemand for the company’s core verticals to be “broadly more of the same.”

However, he sees consumer spending andconfidence having an impact on the language services business in time, thoughhe believes other trends are more important in the short term such as recentinterest in “smart” consumer electronics.

On Brexit

The TranslateMedia chief told Slator in an interview in 2016

rightafter the Brexit vote that its effect on the pound is “unwelcome.” Asked tocomment on the matter now, he said they’ve noticed uncertainty affecting someof their clients’ planning and slowing spend.

“We oppose Brexit tooth and nail” —Rupert Evans, Managing Director, TranslateMedia

“Currently, [the] weak sterling is nothurting us. However, we oppose Brexit tooth and nail,” he added. “[The] lasttime we spoke, Brexit was a cloud on the horizon. It’s getting closer. It looksbigger. And, I can’t see even a hint of a silver lining.”

On Neural MT

On neural machine translation, he saidhe believes it has reached a tipping point where well trained neural MT engineshave a much wider application than even in the recent past. “After being solong ‘in the pot,’ the quality gap has fairly suddenly narrowed and the worldis changing,” he said.

“In more and more cases, translatorswill be asked to act more as editors”

Evans’ prediction is that neural MTwill change the role of translators. “For the foreseeable future, high-endcreative translation will be exclusively human. But, in more and more cases,translators will be asked to act more as editors rather than doing the workfrom scratch.”