2014: the year of opportunities for inWhatLanguage!

I can hardly believe it’s been a year since I wrote the “Triskaidekaphobia? No Thanks!” post for this blog.  Back then, shortly after being recently appointed as the new Marketing Manager, I composed my first end-of-the-year article with a summary of what 2012 meant to inWhatLanguage, and a hopeful list of things to come in 2013. Well, now I can happily say with confidence that I didn’t exaggerate one bit. 2013 has been, simply speaking, an awesome year for inWhatLanguage.

For starters, we have tripled our size last year. Step by step, iWL is transforming itself from a promising little translation agency  into a big company with infinite potential. While at first we mainly focused on businesses in the US, now 20% of our clients come from Europe and other parts of the word. And that is a mighty sum, considering that over the last year we have serviced over 1,500 new clients!

The increase in demand has obviously required a new impulse from our staff. In 2013 we have added new members to our core team, and over 500 more linguist from all over the world. We have expanded our capabilities in the medical, technology, IT, software, and eLearning industries, and we enhanced our abilities with voice-over, subtitling, and all other multimedia related tasks.

Our website has also experienced a healthy evolution during the year. We have completed "Our Gold Standard" section on the iWL website. We also have started developing our new interactive client portal, which is a really exciting endeavor. And last, but definitely not least, we have opened a brand new department that will be further developed during the coming year: iWL Academia.

And in order to make all of this well-known and worth it, we have invested heavily into technology and marketing development for the company, with measures like protecting our cool trademark and our company name, logo and tagline or shooting a batch of cool promo videos. Some of our clients have voluntarily sent us absolutely fantastic testimonial videos with their opinions about our services, which at the end of the day is the most honest and flattering type of publicity we can ever get. 

Furthermore, we have improved our Facebook and Twitter pages and gained thousands of new followers, and we have given our Google+ page a noticeable boost.

Lastly, a little journey back in time through the blog pages will also give you a good overview of all the amazing adventures and events iWL has taken part in during the last year. The Rubber Ducky Derby, iWL’s trip to Brazil, our sponsorship of the “Road to Success” project -which helps children learn to read in bilingual schools-, our presence in the DevLearn conference…

Seriously, who ever said that 13 was an unlucky number…?

The road has been long and exciting, and we are definitely thirsty for more. “2014 will be more of the same,” says iWL CEO, Cody Broderick. “I want to double our business this year, add 2-3 more team members, continue giving back to the community, and most importantly, continue creating an awesome culture where people love to work together.”

And, out of experience, I can definitely say that this statement, again, is not an exaggeration. We welcome you 2014! iWL is eager to see what you have in store for us!

Christmas at inWhatLanguage!

At the tables, from left to right, Sondra Creps and Veronica Johnson.
On the floor, Natalie Herrera, Brian Palmer and Ty Palmer.

inWhatLanguage has had its good share of changes and surprises in the last months, but nothing could stop us from being infected with the Christmas spirit. So this year, in our new offices and with a bunch of new people, we are celebrating the holiday season with more joy than ever!

Of course, we never forget those who, for many reasons, cannot celebrate these days the way they would like to. That is why this year iWL is lending a helping hand to three families that could use a little support in order to have a holiday season to remember.

Brian and Ty Palmer with one of the people who received gifts from iWL.

“We are sponsoring three families - parents and kids - that are the type of people that are in great need but would never ask for it. We found it by asking friends through social media,” explains inWhatLanguage CEO, Cody Broderick. Once again, the leader of our little iWL family shows his philanthropic side with an admirable will to help others and a great commitment to society.

Christmas is a time to be with family, to love and to share, and the team at inWhatLanguage does take this very seriously. “There's something very special about this time of year. At inWhatLanguage, we're all big fans of the holiday season,” adds Broderick. “From our hearts to yours, we wish you a joyful Christmas and a wonderful 2014.”

No need for further words – let the bells jingle and have yourself a merry little Christmas!

Meet Brian Palmer, our new Sr. Account Executive!

Today we give a warm welcome to our latest member of the iWL family: Brian Palmer!

Brian was born and raised in Utah.  He grew up in West Jordan until he was 13 years old when his parents uprooted them all to South Jordan.

Brian is youngest of five; three older brothers and one older sister. All four of his siblings and parents still live in Utah and all within 40 minutes of one another.  He loves spending time with them when he can.

He graduated from Bingham High School, and shortly after graduating, the next three years he took on the role of store manager and area manager at Journeys Retail Shoes here in Utah, as well as in Nevada.

After 3+ years in the glitz and glamour of the Nevada Desert, Brian moved home to attend Salt Lake Community College for 2 years, to receive an Associates Degree in Criminal Justice.

After receiving his degree, Brian continued to work with Journeys for a few more years until receiving a promotion to the Genesco Corporate Offices, based in Nashville, Tennessee, to be an Operations Project Coordinator.  Although Brian loves Tennessee, the South and his job, his family was in Utah.  After 5+ years in the Volunteer State, Brian decided to return home to the Beehive State.  Genesco created a Loss Prevention Manager position based in Utah so he could continue to work for them as well as to be closer to his daughter Sayuri.

Shortly after returning to Utah, Brian met the most amazing woman he had ever encountered. Luckily, Brian was able to convince Emma to be his wife and were recently married in May of 2013.

In Brian’s last position, he travelled every week, leaving Monday and returning Thursday or Friday, as a Loss Prevention Manager. The travel got wearing, and he wanted to be home more and expand his knowledge while utilizing skills he already had. Brian was referred to inWhatLanguage through his brother-in-law, and immediately after his first meeting with iWL CEO Cody Broderick, Brian was enticed by the culture and goals he had – and not only by the company, but also by its employees and clients. Brian is pumped to begin and looks forward to his future with inWhatLanguage.

With this new position locally, Brian is also looking forward to spending more time with his wife, daughter, and get back into CrossFit and mountain biking.

We are excited to have you with us, Brian! Welcome!!

Linguists forums: the answer to huge translation projects

Translation projects can come in a wide variety of types, genres and sizes, but nonetheless they must always be equally correct and coherent. While we all pretty much can assume the former, quality from any professional translator, the latter can get tricky when a project reaches a certain size.

For perfect coherence in a translation project, the ideal option is to have one translator do the whole job on his/her own. That, however, can prove to be quite impossible when we are talking about millions of words, especially with a tight deadline. The client can be tolerant and understanding to a point, but a whole project of these dimensions done by one person can take ages, and sometimes that is not possible. The solution, in these cases, is to divide the workload among several translators.

Sure, that sounds logical enough. But then again, let us think about translation for a minute. If we give one single sentence to ten different linguists, the results we obtain after they have translated it can very easily be ten slightly (or sometimes, very) different translated statements. And whereas perhaps none of them is actually wrong, that means that if those ten linguists work on one single project divided in ten parts, each part would differ significantly from the others. The result could be a translation where the divided parts are clearly noticeable, and in the worst case scenario, confusing to the reader. And that, folks, is simply unacceptable.

How to solve this? Word data banks, shared glossaries and thesauri are powerful tools that can help with these issues, but at the end of the day, the only method that could guarantee success is proper communication between the translators involved in the project. That means regular contact, availability, the will to help others, and a dash of humility in order to admit that sometimes we are not the ones in the right.

A hard-to-find combination? Maybe so, but not for inWhatLanguage. We have pointed out many times that we have an awesome working team, and today we give you further proof of this. In one of our latest projects that involves four Spanish translators, one of them, Farid Mazari, came up the brilliant idea of starting a private forum just to discuss matters related to the project: deadlines, doubts, and above all, terminology!

“It is a luxury to be able to collaborate with other translators in joint projects, especially when we are talking about a job that must be undertaken by many people, with its added technical and linguistic difficulties,” Mazari says. “In my personal experience, I’ve come to the conclusion that we have to coordinate our efforts and optimize the knowledge exchange flow, since sometimes deadlines are aggressively tight.”

Mazari suggests other translators to consider private forums with restricted access when they face this kind of projects. “Forums allow us to answer questions about words, unify criteria and other style issues,” he assures.

And, I gotta say, as one of those four translators in the project who actively participates in the forum he created, I completely agree. It has helped me enormously, and it has made this whole project special and fun – which is a nice perk!