Translation Market in Ukraine

The translation market in our country though leaves much to be desired, but shows an insignificant yet stable growth. The situation obviously began to turn for the better just a couple of years ago.

This situation can be explained by a very simple reason. In most western countries, translation market culture has been developing for many decades, while in Ukraine, due to specific historical factors, the translation market, as it exists now, only started to appear early in the 1990’s. We could divide the process of the modern Russian translation market formation into three basic stages:

1. 1996-1998. A period of low competition when the participants of the market did not actually know anything about each other. But it was the time when the first Ukrainian translation companies started to emerge.
2. 1998-2004. A period of intensive development of the Internet and other information technologies. The market extends and becomes more transparent for both the customers and translation services providers. Small translation agencies merge creating larger companies.
3. 2004-present. Today, we observe an incredible competition growth. Companies tend to further merging.

And yet, in spite of these processes, which seem to be quite favourable for the development, Ukrainian translation market is strikingly different from the foreign markets. First of all, it is different by the translators’ remuneration. If US companies charge USD 50-70 per page of standard format translation, in our country the same material will only cost USD 10-20. In spite of this, the translation market experiences steady growth. Paradoxically, this situation is quite common for Ukraine.