Final study report on CEF automated translation value proposition in the context of the European LT market/ecosystem (2019)

This study positions CEF Automated Translation, a building block of the Connecting Europe Facility, in the European market for language technologies (LT). The study provides an analysis of the LT market in the EU (supply and demand), of LT adoption by public services in the EU, and of the EU’s competitiveness with respect to the US and Asia in three LT areas, i.e. machine translation (MT), speech technology and cross-lingual search. Based on the results of the analyses, the study develops a business model for CEF AT by defining the latter’s value proposition in the context of the market. The analyses show that suppliers are often SMEs with local solutions, that public services have a strong interest for translation technology, and that the worldwide LT market, dominated by large players, has deficiencies regarding under-resourced languages, customisation needs, and security and privacy requirements. While CEF AT’s current value proposition consists of providing a secured MT service to public administrations and of a language resource collection effort (ELRC-SHARE), the proposition may be extended in two ways, given the market deficiencies and CEF AT’s mission as a multilingual enabler: a more elaborate MT offer or a broad LT offer, focusing on under-resourced languages and customisation while avoiding market distortion.