Last year was the first time in a decade in which closures outnumbered new arrivals
Businesses are closing
The UK’s translation industry boom could be over thanks to the rise of AI – with businesses increasingly turning to free models to do the work. Analysis by companydata.com found that the translation industry has stopped growing with the number of active UK businesses falling for the first time since 2015.
The country now has 4,088 translation companies, down from a peak of 4,217 at the end of 2024. Last year was the first time in a decade in which closures outnumbered new arrivals, with 601 translation companies struck off the Companies House register against 546 newly incorporated in 2025.
This year the gap is wider still, just 361 companies registered between January and mid-September, while 436 closed. In a 2024 survey by the Chartered Institute of Linguists, more than 70% of freelance translators and interpreters said their workload had fallen and half called the drop significant. In a Society of Authors survey the same year, 36% of translators said they’d already lost work to generative AI and 77% expected it to cut their income.
What’s left pays less, a UK freelance translator working through an agency gets around 7.5 pence a word for general text and that rate is still sliding. This year’s European Language Industry Survey found every part of the industry agreeing that prices fell again in 2025, with no rebound expected.
Increasingly the job is not translating at all but checking what a machine produced first and that pays about a third less. Almost two-thirds of independent translators now work with machine output in some form.
But RWS Holdings, Britain’s largest listed language services company, grew half-year revenue by around 5% to roughly £360million and lifted adjusted pre-tax profit from £18million to £24million. The UK isn’t an outlier, the number of translation companies here has fallen 1.8% since January.
Across Europe the decline is steeper – 39,869 translation companies remain, but this is down 2.5% this year. Uttam Ramdaras, data analyst at companydata.com, said: “The gap has been narrowing for years and it’s now closed. Until 2024, more translation companies opened than shut. Last year that flipped and this year the gap is wider still. You can’t read motive from a register, but the timing is hard to ignore.
“Anyone can get a usable translation out of a free AI model in just seconds and the businesses that used to do that work are coming off the register.”
