All of these new online businesses indicate that there is a lot of potential and money in online translation services.

I think that these online, fast-turnaround translation companies are terrific for our business. The reality is that not every client needs a high-quality translation on every assignment. But most of the time, quality is absolutely non-negotiable and must, in fact, be proven.

It actually helps us if our clients use the services of Tolingo, Mygengo, OneHourTranslation, et al. for their small, one-off, quickie translation needs. It frees us up to focus on what we’re good at.

And I am not worried about our clients wanting to have their next regulatory submission or 20-language labeling project handled by one of these companies – at least they won’t do it twice

All of this is Jose Henrique Lamensdorf has called this the “x market” of translation (we wrote about this in our blog recently).

Rather than signaling the beginning of the “one-hour photomart” stage for all translation companies, I believe that these companies will help bring more specialization and overall quality to our industry. As an industry, we should be working on defining different service levels, in response to differing client requirements.