Machine Translation Market Report 2025

The machine translation market size has grown exponentially in recent years. It will grow from $1.9 billion in 2024 to $2.28 billion in 2025 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20%. The growth in the historic period can be attributed to the emergence of rule-based machine translation, the rapid expansion of the internet, the globalization of businesses, the increasing demand for software and website localization, and strong academic and research initiatives.

The machine translation market size is expected to see rapid growth in the next few years. It will grow to $4.67 billion in 2029 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.6%. The growth in the forecast period can be attributed to the rising demand for real-time translation, increasing adoption of machine translation in customer service automation, the expansion of e-commerce and online content, the growth of social media platforms, and the rise of multilingual artificial intelligence assistants. Major trends in the forecast period include advancements in neural machine translation techniques, innovation in context-aware translation systems, the integration of machine translation with virtual assistants, progress in real-time speech translation technologies, and the incorporation of machine translation tools into enterprise resource planning systems.

The rise in smartphone penetration is expected to drive the growth of the machine translation market in the coming years. Smartphone connections refer to the total number of active mobile subscriptions linked to smartphones that provide access to voice, messaging, and internet services. This increase is largely fueled by growing internet penetration, which positions mobile devices as the primary gateway to digital services and accelerates global connectivity and adoption. Smartphones support the growth of machine translation by allowing users to instantly translate text, speech, or images from anywhere, enabling smooth multilingual communication for travel, business, education, and real-time interactions without depending on computers. For example, according to the Mobility Report published by Ericsson, a Sweden-based telecommunications company, global smartphone subscriptions reached 6.93 billion in 2023 and increased to 7.13 billion in 2024. These developments highlight how rising smartphone penetration is contributing to the expansion of the machine translation market.

Leading companies in the machine translation market are introducing advanced solutions such as GPT-based translation models to improve translation accuracy and provide more human-like, context-aware results across multiple languages. A GPT-based translation model leverages generative pre-trained transformer architecture to deliver precise, fluent, and dependable translations tailored for various use cases. In March 2023, Lilt Inc., a U.S.-based AI-driven translation and localization company, unveiled the Contextual AI Engine for Translation, a GPT-based model designed for enterprise-grade translation. This solution demonstrated higher accuracy and performance compared to GPT-4 and Google Translate. By applying in-context learning, it quickly adapts to human translator feedback and context-specific information, ensuring industry-specific, high-quality results across fields such as legal, marketing, and product localization. The engine offers superior accuracy, reduced latency, and lower computing costs while supporting real-time translation workflows, integrating human verification with advanced AI to continuously refine translation output.

In January 2024, ChapsVision Group, a France-based provider of data intelligence solutions, acquired Systran for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition strengthens ChapsVision’s position in the secure, multilingual data processing sector by incorporating advanced machine translation technologies into its offerings. This move enables the delivery of AI-powered translation solutions to defense, government, and enterprise clients. Systran, based in France, is recognized as a specialist in machine translation technologies.

Major players in the machine translation market are Google LLC, Microsoft Corporation, Alibaba Group, Meta Platforms Inc., Amazon Web Services Inc., Tencent Holdings Limited, International Business Machines Corporation, Oracle Corporation, SAP SE, DeepL SE, Lionbridge Technologies Inc., Welocalize Inc., Appen Limited, RWS Holdings plc, iFLYTEK Co. Ltd., Ling024 Ltd., AppTek LLC, Lighthouse IP Group BV, Lilt Inc., Pangeanic SL.

North America was the largest region in the machine translation market in 2024. Asia-Pacific is expected to be the fastest-growing region in the forecast period. The regions covered in machine translation report are Asia-Pacific, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, North America, South America, Middle East and Africa. The countries covered in the machine translation market report are Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Russia, South Korea, UK, USA, Canada, Italy, Spain.

Note that the outlook for this market is being affected by rapid changes in trade relations and tariffs globally. The report will be updated prior to delivery to reflect the latest status, including revised forecasts and quantified impact analysis. The report’s Recommendations and Conclusions sections will be updated to give strategies for entities dealing with the fast-moving international environment.

The rapid escalation of U.S. tariffs and the resulting trade tensions in spring 2025 are significantly impacting the information technology sector, particularly in hardware manufacturing, data infrastructure, and software deployment. Higher duties on imported semiconductors, circuit boards, and networking equipment have raised production and operational costs for tech firms, cloud service providers, and data centers. Companies relying on globally sourced components for laptops, servers, and consumer electronics are facing longer lead times and increased pricing pressures. In parallel, tariffs on specialized software tools and retaliatory measures from key international markets have disrupted global IT supply chains and reduced overseas demand for U.S.-developed technologies. To navigate these challenges, the sector is accelerating investments in domestic chip fabrication, diversifying supplier bases, and adopting AI-driven automation to enhance operational resilience and cost efficiency.

Machine translation is the automated process of converting text or speech from one language into another while aiming to preserve the original meaning, tone, and context. It facilitates seamless cross-language communication by producing translations that are both accurate and contextually appropriate.

The main types of machine translation include rule-based machine translation (RBMT), statistical machine translation (SMT), example-based machine translation (EBMT), hybrid machine translation (HMT), and neural machine translation (NMT). Rule-based machine translation relies on linguistic rules and bilingual dictionaries to translate text from a source language to a target language. It is applied across various language pairs, such as English-Chinese, English-Spanish, English-French, English-Japanese, and English-German. Machine translation can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud and is widely used in applications such as e-commerce and retail, travel and hospitality, legal and government, manufacturing and automotive, and healthcare.

The machine translation market research report is one of a series of new reports that provides machine translation market statistics, including machine translation industry global market size, regional shares, competitors with a machine translation market share, detailed machine translation market segments, market trends and opportunities, and any further data you may need to thrive in the machine translation industry. This machine translation market research report delivers a complete perspective of everything you need, with an in-depth analysis of the current and future scenario of the industry.

The machine translation market consists of revenues earned by entities by providing services such as translation memory management, custom engine training, translation quality evaluation, and artificial intelligence (AI)-based language model development. The market value includes the value of related goods sold by the service provider or included within the service offering. The machine translation market also includes sales of neural machine translation engines, language translation software platforms, cloud-based translation tools, custom translation datasets, and multilingual chatbot solutions. Values in this market are ‘factory gate’ values, that is, the value of goods sold by the manufacturers or creators of the goods, whether to other entities (including downstream manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, and retailers) or directly to end customers. The value of goods in this market includes related services sold by the creators of the goods.

The market value is defined as the revenues that enterprises gain from the sale of goods and/or services within the specified market and geography through sales, grants, or donations in terms of the currency (in USD unless otherwise specified).

The revenues for a specified geography are consumption values that are revenues generated by organizations in the specified geography within the market, irrespective of where they are produced. It does not include revenues from resales along the supply chain, either further along the supply chain or as part of other products.

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