Business Data & Benchmarks · United States
Translation and Interpretation Services Revenue Benchmark
Providers of written translation and spoken interpretation for businesses, courts, hospitals and public agencies.
Average Translation Services Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census
The 2022 Economic Census counts every translation and interpretation service with paid employees and publishes their combined annual receipts. Dividing one by the other gives the average annual revenue per employer establishment below.
≈$2,403,000 /year
Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment
2,851
Employer establishments in the United States, 2022
as published $6.9 billion
Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022
How this is calculated: about $6.9 billion in combined annual receipts divided by 2,851 employer establishments works out to an average annual revenue of $2,403,000 per employer establishment. Some institutional buyers, including courts, hospitals and agencies, procure through frameworks or rate schedules rather than job by job.
Scope: Translation and Interpretation Services, NAICS 541930. Classified separately in group 5419: 541910 Marketing Research and Public Opinion Polling; 541921 Photography Studios, Portrait; 541922 Commercial Photography, and 2 further codes. Nothing outside that code is counted on this page.
Source US Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, Summary Statistics (ECNBASIC): ESTAB, RCPTOT and PAYANN by NAICS · Vintage 2022 Economic Census · Calculation BusinessNES · Accessed July 2026
Employer Establishments at Year Five Industry group
Other Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services, NAICS 5419, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.
51.4%the year-five count as a share of the starting count
Across the 2014 to 2018 cohorts, five-year results ranged from 51.4 to 54.8 percent. This benchmark covers Other Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services, NAICS 5419, as a whole, and this category accounts for 2,851 of the 76,067 employer establishments in it. A count by age is not a survival rate, because the figures compare two headcounts rather than follow one set of businesses.
Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data
Payroll divided by receipts, both as published for the same year.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Annual payroll share of receipts, United States | ≈33% |
Payroll share of receipts, Translation and Interpretation Services, United States, 2022 Economic Census.
Approximately 33.0 percent of every revenue dollar goes to annual payroll. Linguists in this trade frequently work as contractors rather than employees, so the ratio understates what delivery actually costs.
Payroll here excludes benefits, employer taxes, payments to freelance linguists and owner compensation, which is a substantial omission in a trade built on freelance capacity.
Business Scale and Ownership Structure Official data
How large the average establishment is, and whether the population is independent operators or multi-site companies.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Paid employees per employer establishment | 19.8 |
| Employer establishments per firm | 1.05 |
Scale and ownership, Translation and Interpretation Services, United States, 2022 Economic Census.
The average establishment employed about 19.8 people, and the industry counted 1.1 employer establishments per firm.
These are arithmetic industry averages. They state the size of the average establishment and show that multi-establishment ownership exists. They do not show the distribution of business sizes and they do not measure market concentration.
Questions Worth Asking BusinessNES analysis
Translation and Interpretation Services: questions the benchmark cannot answer.
Before you rely on this benchmark
- What share of delivery is freelance? Many providers use a mix of employees and contract linguists, so the payroll ratio can describe coordination staff more than the people doing the work.
- Is the work written translation or live interpretation? One is scheduled and reviewable, the other happens in real time with no second chance, and they carry different rates and different risk.
- How much depends on public contracts? Some institutional buyers procure through frameworks or rate schedules, which can stabilize volume and cap price at the same time.
- What does machine translation change? Post-editing can change unit rates and review responsibilities compared with translation from scratch.
- How is quality assured across languages? A provider is unlikely to review every language in house, so quality rests on vetting and reviewer networks that cost money before any work arrives.
- How are rush jobs priced? Deadlines drive much of this work, and whether urgency carries a premium decides whether the busiest weeks are also the best ones.
Explore More on BusinessNES
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Data Source Notice
This product uses the Census Bureau Data API but is not endorsed or certified by the Census Bureau.
Figures above are from the 2022 Economic Census reference year, released by the Census Bureau in 2024 and 2025; markets have moved since.
Sources and Methodology
Revenue, establishment counts, payroll, employment and firm counts on this page come from the 2022 Economic Census, Summary Statistics, published by the US Census Bureau. Averages and shares are BusinessNES calculations from those published totals, and each one names the two figures it divides.
The Census counts employer establishments, meaning each staffed office rather than each linguist or language pair.