THE POLISH BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT FOR LANGUAGE SERVICE PROVIDERS IN VIEW OF THE PORTER’S FIVE FORCES MODEL

After the Polish accession to the European Union in 2004, language services have considerably grown in importance. Intensive contacts with foreign companies and institutions coupled with information technology developments have increased the role of English as a linguistic medium of international cooperation. The overall aim of this paper is to examine the Polish business environment for Language Service Providers (LSPs) offering specialized English courses and translation services (EN-PL and PL-EN). LSPs should be distinguished from regular language schools and translation agencies whose service offering concentrates predominantly on General English courses and general translation. LSPs, in turn, operate to provide tailored English courses for specialists within different fields (e.g. business, law, medicine, engineering, etc.) and the translation of specialized texts/documents (e.g. financial, legal, medical, technical, etc.). The Polish business reality will be viewed from the micro perspective by means of the Porter’s five forces model, which will help to assess the industry’s attractiveness and market potential for LSPs.