Why am I in localisation business?
- Details
- Created on Tuesday, July 03 2012 05:30
When I decided to start the localisation business hand in hand with consulting, vast majority of people around told me I'd gone bonkers.
I am grateful to all of them, to those still supportive 5% and, especially, to those two or three individuals who had in fact initiated this idea - which certainly wasn’t mine at the beginning.
I’m none of your traditional universal translators, even less a linguist. Indeed, those 20 exciting years at more than one great multinational and most of my time lived in multicultural cities like Brussels, Paris, Cologne or LJ, still make me no translator. Really, why should someone like me become a translator?
Well, for one, I've sensed that the cross-border communication can still improve considerably in Europe and that I can provide my fair share there.
Then, my clients have told me so. Being in consulting business provides a deep insight into clients' issues and communication with the outer World seems to be one of the more important bits there.
One common denominator? We might have gratefully accepted them, but still don’t know how to handle all the differences among various cultures, mentalities and value sets in our fragmented Europe.
Just think of an exemplary Catholic country, like the one I’m coming from. For some reason, the way the language is used there might not always be as pragmatic as somewhere else. You'd better know that, when, for example, translating from English into one of those languages. Or, a typically Teutonic accent on technical details sometimes comes short in a Latin culture. Family values are set high in France, but not necessarily so when you go north.
In the traditional translating business, these aspects are all too often neglected.
Hence the room for improvement. A translator able to mentally transfer himself into the environment his translation is targeting, I believe, just might do his work better.
Hence the very idea to create this new CrossEuropean spin-off - and myself entering the translating business.
Now, a service limited to only six languages, few fields of activity and just a handful of industrial sectors might sound less spectacular than what you read in the most translation agencies' ads.
I believe to have a good reason to keep it that way. I only translate fields of my own expertise. I limit my services only to where I know how things work.
My coming blogs might be as much about the translating business itself, as about recent developments in these fields. I'll be glad to share my views on the individual mobility issues with you, on trends in the leisure segment, automotive industry, green energy and on particular regional issues.
So come along, check my www.cross-european.eu and don't miss my next blog.
