Translators are commonly imagined a pretty quiet bunch, a community of people sitting in front of their keyboards, day after day, worrying about how many words they’re going to be able to deliver today, where they are going to find a dictionnary for that kind of jargon, whether they should go for the mushroom or leek soup for lunch, and putting off doing the backlog invoicing to tomorrow.

They work for amenable companies like BGS, LIOX, SDL and a galaxy of others, whose vendor managers call them up to flog words or sponsor their acquisition of Trados.

With the advent of new diplomatic and geopolitical practices, coupled with large-scale privatization of previously regalian activities, companies appear on our radar screens that bring a whole new dimension to linguistic services.

Will such new players look to take a stake in the existing gilt industry? If they do, can the traditional companies compete?