IS TRANSLATING A GLOBAL BUSINESS?
One field in which small businesses have recently enjoyed rapid growth is in the business of providing translations. As barriers to international business continue to fall, more and more people are encountering language differences in the people they work with, sell to, and buy from. At the same time, advances in technology are providing avenues to deliver translations over the phone and over the Internet.
TransPerfect is one of the success stories. The company, based in New York City, started out when founder Steve Iverson, a French teacher, began translating documents for clients. Satisfied customers returned, looking for translations of patents and annual reports—even for court reporting in foreign languages. The company now provides translations in over 170 languages. It has offices in more than 90 cities spread over six continents.
CETRA Language Solutions is headquartered in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. It started with a lawsuit: while founder Jiri Stejskal was working on his doctorate degree in Slavic languages and literature, a Philadelphia law firm asked him to translate thousands of pages of documents related to a case. Stejskal brought in all the Czech translators he could find, and his company was born. Now CETRA’s employees and hundreds of consultants serve the federal government plus companies involved in law, marketing research, and life sciences. The company’s freelance translators and interpreters are located throughout the world.
LinguaLinx, based in Page 674Troy, New York, handles more than words. It converts documents, websites, and multimedia into almost 150 languages. The company not only has to find qualified translators, but it also needs experts in technology to make state-of-the-art presentations. To recruit employees, LinguaLinx emphasizes interesting work experiences, rather than fancy perks. The company’s careers website describes opportunities to work with a diverse, multicultural group, including clients at leading corporations and nonprofit organizations.
Question: What kinds of challenges would be involved in recruiting and selecting people to translate documents from Spanish, Polish, and French into English?