The Nimdzi 100 is the most referenced and well-known market report in the global language industry. Combining the 50,000 readers of MultiLingual magazine, conference handouts, and 60,000+ online views of last year‘s report, the Nimdzi 100 can confidently claim to reach more than 100,000 people annually. The 2025 issue was published on Monday, April 14, 2025. It includes a PDF and a print version will be shipped along with MultiLingual in May. You can also order one to be shipped anywhere. Furthermore, hundreds will be made available at conferences throughout this year. Just walk up to Renato, Josef, or Eddie and ask for one! 

Making the Nimdzi 100

Nimdzi invited me to be the Nimdzi 100 program lead in 2025 and it was a humbling experience. After years of publishing MultiLingual magazine — the most established publication for the language industry — this was a daunting project even for me. Its preparation, execution, analysis, writing, and visual production, take more than three months. The vast amount of survey data that language service providers (LSPs) willingly send over astounded me. The kind and enthusiastic way that companies of any size shared their perspectives, revenues, and business insights — even if they reported negative growth — defies logic in a way. This data is not publicly available, nor is any privately held company (74 of the 100 largest LSPs) required to disclose it. These companies choose to engage with our research because they believe in the collective effort of sharing insights, hardships, and hopes, to progress our business branch.

I had not expected to write as much of the actual report as I did. Attentive readers should be able to identify the different writing styles of Laszlo K. Varga and myself, one being more journalistic and macro-level, and the other taking a micro lens to technology and business dynamics. I will let you guess which is which. Along with the support of Eddie Arietta and Antonella Tiezzi of MultiLingual Media, we were able to produce what is in my opinion the most handsome report yet. If you don’t have time to read the entire thing, a TL;DR summary is included at the start of the report, highlighting the market size and growth, key trends, and a few infographics.

What’s in the report

The report includes sections about the state of the industry, there is, of course, the ranking of the 100 largest LSPs in the world, who fell just shy, who to watch, and what has changed. Following that, there is a deep dive into many aspects of the market, including market size and growth projections, revenue concentration, growth trends of the top 100, growth by ranking segment, the most productive and fastest growing companies, woman-led LSPs, top services and verticals, the interpreting sector, and business challenges providers face.

In the next segment, we talk about money. The global economic situation, growth sectors, pricing pressures, inflation, and mergers and acquisitions. My favorite segment in the Nimdzi 100 report is the Atlas. I love maps, so we added a few more than usual. The data on these maps covers growth and market size by geographical region, where the largest LSPs are, where the clients are, and change in demand. 

The final chapter is the most text heavy (and nerdy) and probably of the highest importance. In the technology section we delve deeply into artificial intelligence (AI), generative AI, large language models (LLMs), and how they have affected our industry. We project upcoming developments and how LSP’s can harness these powerful tools. Other technologies are covered as well, such as machine interpreting (MI), speech translation and AI dubbing, and automation and orchestration.

For the first time on top of the usual Nimdzi 100 process and glossary, in the PDF we have added a legend for all of the infographics and tables, so you don’t have to leaf back-and-forth to find them. Another new function on the website, is that you can click on any graph and it will open in a full screen gallery where you can navigate through all of the graphs, with titles included so you know what you’re looking at. 


Impact

Beyond a doubt, the Nimdzi 100 is the most impactful project I have ever been involved with, simply due to the scale of the data and its reach. It is not the most elegant writing I’ve ever done, nor is it about travel or the human condition, which are the subjects of my personal writing passion. It’s been an honor to work with Laszlo. He has impressed me with his brilliance, kindness, patience, and perseverance. It was great to connect and reconnect with the business leaders of our industry after I’d hung up my hat almost a year ago to pursue a new career path in geology and I hope to return for next year‘s Nimdzi 100 project again.