Leaving the country used to be a fantasy. Now it’s starting to feel like a contingency plan.
A recent Talker Research survey found that nearly one in five Americans would like to move abroad within the next five years. Another 2% say they’ve already started making it happen. Expatsi, a relocation services company, says two-thirds of users who complete its online assessment express a clear goal to leave the U.S. by 2026. Of those, 12% are planning to make their move within the next six months.
It’s not a stampede, but it’s not noise either. What was once a retirement dream or an expat experiment is increasingly becoming a real-time shift fueled by a complicated mix of political fatigue, global job mobility, and the lingering sense that the grass may actually be greener elsewhere.
And behind that movement is a less obvious, but absolutely essential, industry now undergoing a transformation of its own: certified language services.
“We’re seeing sharp increases in legal, healthcare, and educational translations in particular due to global migration patterns,” said Salvador Ordorica, CEO of The Spanish Group, a California-based translation firm with international reach. “Countries like Canada, Germany, and Australia are leading this trend, focusing on multilingual services to support immigrant integration, patient care, and legal access.”
The paperwork of relocation is often invisible until you’re deep in it. Legal affidavits. Medical records. School transcripts. Residency applications. In countries with strict regulatory requirements, any documentation not translated and certified in accordance with local standards can delay or derail a process. For migrants, voluntary or otherwise, this is not a bureaucratic detail. It’s a threshold.
And as more countries move to tighten immigration screening while expanding services for qualified newcomers, accuracy in translation becomes more than a courtesy. It becomes a gatekeeper.
The Spanish Group, founded in 2013, is one of a small group of ISO-certified firms that has grown alongside these trends. But the shift isn’t just about volume. It’s also about where demand is coming from and what that says about how people, and companies, are moving through the world.
In the global economy, dominant languages, such as English, Mandarin, Spanish, Arabic, and Portuguese, continue to drive the majority of translation work. But new centers of growth are forcing a recalibration. Southeast Asia, in particular, is generating rising demand for Bahasa Indonesian, Vietnamese, and Hindi. And across Africa, there’s increasing focus on Swahili, Amharic, and other languages that reflect the continent’s expanding commercial footprint.
“Multilingualism is increasingly seen not just as a courtesy but as a business imperative, particularly in Asia and Africa,” said Ordorica.
As markets shift, so do the strategies companies use to enter them. Translation has evolved beyond simple text conversion, now including localization, transcreation, and regulatory adaptation. When companies launch in Lagos or Jakarta, they aren’t just translating websites. They’re adapting entire brand identities to align with local cultural nuance, legal systems, and consumer expectations.
And increasingly, those companies are also turning inward — to the audiences at home they’ve historically overlooked.
“We’re observing growth in requests for indigenous languages, such as Nahuatl from Mexico and Yoruba in West Africa,” Ordorica said. “While they’re not widely used in global trade, localizing in these languages creates powerful connections with domestic audiences, opens new consumer bases, and strengthens corporate social responsibility narratives.”
That’s a shift worth noting. Translation isn’t only about crossing borders. It’s about redrawing the ones inside them.
From multinationals seeking market share to individuals filing immigration paperwork, the stakes for translation accuracy are climbing. For many, the ability to be understood — legally, medically, financially — is vital.
As more Americans prepare to test life outside their own borders, they’ll find that language isn’t just the first barrier. Increasingly, it’s also the bridge.
