Between interlingual and intersemiotic translation. Innovation in translation services seen by officials of French translation companies

The measurement of innovation-viewed in a broad sense as an introduction of significant changes to improve company or societal performance-has always been a methodological challenge. Even if Translation Studies scholars pay ever more attention to translation enterprises we notice a lack of large-scale and exhaustive studies on innovation in these market-oriented entities. In the paper we outline the most relevant results obtained from an exploratory, qualitative, inductive study carried out in 2015 in France. By applying a subject-based approach to measure innovation issues and conducting interviews with heads of translation enterprises we gathered data on their opinions on factors which enhance the emergence of innovations, on innovation itself, and on their creative solutions implemented in new services and work organisation. It seems that in these translation SME the traditional conception of innovation, understood almost solely as technological improvement, remains dominant, and that all other forms of innovation offered by service activity are still underestimated. Arguably, translators' lack of initial training in entrepreneurship, management and innovation could be one of the main causes.