"Machine translation is approaching accuracy rates in the neighborhood of eighty percent today," Fenstermacher said. "By combining automated translation with the skills of trained professionals, it's now possible to increase the amount of multilingual communication dramatically—without sacrificing quality. The benefits for the language industry and the world's populations as a whole are staggering."

GALA cites three other technology trends that are driving demand for expanded language services:

• Multimedia technologies will push the communication enterprise in areas like speech-to-speech translation and multilingual audio and video.
• Multilingual search will allow people to find anything they want in any language they want, no matter what language it was created in.
• Language technologies will continue to embrace less widely spoken languages, such as those in Asia and Africa, fueling demand for collaborative localization and managed workflows in multiple directions simultaneously.

"Technology advancements not only benefit the public as users of language services; they support professional language providers as well," Fenstermacher said. "The days when translation was a cottage industry run by people who basically worked in isolation are over. Technology is propelling translation services—and the language industry itself—to the forefront of global communication."