Vietnam’s rising economy holds “tremendous opportunity” for language service providers
A survey from the Associated Press-GfK earlier this year shows that Vietnam’s economy is on the rise. What do providers of language and globalization services need to know now in order to get ready?
* Spending power is steadily growing. The top three growth sectors in Vietnam today are oil and gas, IT, and banking and financial services.
* More than a quarter of Vietnam is online. Out of 89.5 million people in Vietnam, 24 million are reported to be on the internet.
* It’s becoming easier to do business.
* Most of the population is young. Vietnam’s Gen-X has had the freedom to reinvent its culture and language.
Now, what about the language, and the language services industry? Here are a few points that we gleaned from our conversation with Manh Nguyen Duc, CEO of Wise-Concetti Ltd:
* The Vietnamese language is rapidly evolving. Linguistically, young people continue to be very open and motivated to adopt whatever words make the most sense to express what they want to say, regardless of linguistic origin.
* A Roman script narrows the language gap. During French colonial rule, the Vietnamese language moved from a traditional Chinese script to one based on the Roman alphabet. This also presents fewer challenges for some parts of the localization process.
* Dialects should be taken into account.
* Competition is alive and well. Pricing currently averages around US$ 0.22 for English to Vietnamese, and US$ 0.25 for Vietnamese to English, according to pricing data released in July.
* Diaspora communities are not the best source for reviewers. One common mistake that U.S. companies make – especially when localizing high-tech content into Vietnamese – is to engage reviewers among the expatriate community in the U.S.
Certainly, the country holds tremendous opportunity for language service providers with operations there.