Brexit Problems for UK Translation Agencies

Britain voted to leave the EU (European Union) through a poll on 23 June 2016. On 29 March 2017, British Prime Minister Theresa May proposed Article 50 of the European Union, leading to what is now recognized worldwide as Brexit.

Called The Lisbon Treaty, it states that an EU member can leave the Union two years after announcing the company. This implies that on March 29, 2019, and no later than the period of April 2019, Britain will be out of the EU.

With the pending exit, more commonly known as Brexit, the translation industry, among other industries, feels the risk of their future due to the departure of Britain. They do have some reasons to bother because the bulk of the translation opportunities come from global business.

How can the translation industry plan for Brexit? Several industry specialists have their opinion and view on what should be arranged to buffer the effect of possible income losses in the coming years. Some remain positive that the translation industry, especially in the UK and the U.S., will continue the same.

Others foretell that the country will be hunting other business options with non-European Union countries, which will also mean more business options for the language translation industry.
While it is hard to predict just what influence Brexit will have on the UK translation agencies, many remain positive, giving a practical analysis of the current and future situations.

Short-Term Effects

At the moment all UK laws and regulations are the same as EU, but over time, as more choices are made, British rules and regulations will vary from those of EU. This will require thousands of pages of documents to be translated from English to other formal languages of the EU so that it might be a blessing to translation business in the continent and the UK.

If we issue article 50 and leave the EU, several short-term effects being hitting on the UK translation business.

Economic slowdown: The discussion is for how long. It looks like the Government wants the economy to be kick-started again by entrepreneurs. When this fell last time (2008), we saw policies from the Government to support business to retrain workers and invest in plants and tools. This may be the end of seriousness as the Government has the chance here to develop something big.

Fall in the rate of the pound, making what we provide cheaper to big markets such as the USA. Though our unit cost is already less costly than the US market, so I wouldn’t expect to see a massive penetration of work.

Unraveling the law: We’ve been part of the EU for over an age, and lots of our laws are tangled. This makes an immense amount of work for the legal services trade. A part of this will need language help. The big concern is who is going to pay for it all.

Uncertainty during the 24 after we start the process. Significant business hates this and will stop investment until the period has passed. Fear of slowdown causes a slowdown.

Long-Term Effects

More trade outside of the EU. Business outside of the EU means more work in more different languages for the UK Translation industry.

A real danger of losing London’s dominance of being a world economic center.

Isolationism: If nationalism increases in popularity, this may spell the start of the end of globalization. An industry developed by localizing products and services for alternative businesses will not suffer.

As the UK falls into recession so will part of Europe.

How should translators and other industry experts prepare?

If the dream becomes a reality and the UK becomes a capital dealing with the rest of the world, then the possibility for translation will grow exponentially. Other industry experts would do well to teach themselves in the cultures and financial trends outside of the EU. Some larger items I’d ask them to examine are the impact of the TTIP agreement, China’s foreign policies and what developing economies need. The EU will still exist but differently. Companies will still want to do business inside it. Translation industry will still help other businesses to engage consumers in different cultures.