When I founded our translation agency in 1989, I had just stopped working for a manufacturer of construction machinery.

I was looking for translation customers. I telephoned hundreds of them. It’s never an easy task. It’s very difficult to get past the switchboard – and email was hardly used at that time.

Then one day I thought "Why don’t I try the company I used to work for?" (I don’t know why it took me so long to think of that). So I contacted that company and received plenty of translation work.

Our translation agency expanded. It had its ups and downs, but it managed to weather three recessions (one in the UK, one in the USA and another in France). We were translating mostly engineering documents, service manuals and the like, for construction and agricultural machinery manufacturers, plus various engineering companies. It was still difficult to find enough new customers.

Then I suddenly realised that the reason why we got so much work from construction machinery manufacturers was because I knew the business and I had been able to build up a team of translators who had also been in that business. Our customers had confidence in us and we were supplying their needs.

What our customers needed were translators who had practical experience in the industry or profession concerned. Not just people who have a degree in the language concerned, but people such as engineers, doctors, programmers, bankers, accountants, lawyers, geologists, scientists and technicians, people who know the business and who also speak the languages concerned.

We then had to devise a procedure for finding such practical experts. It took time, but after all the tests were completed, we assembled a large team of translators who met our requirements. We know now that we can satisfy our customers and that they can be confident that the translation will provide correct information to their own customers.

The work of a translation agency in 2007 doesn’t stop at translating. Every sort of DTP program can be used and the right translation memory software is available to supply translations with harmonized vocabulary and harmonized phrases for repetitive actions.

People in your company who are responsible for your technical or commercial literature would be very interested to learn about translation memories, which are a good way to cut your translation costs and improve consistency in your documents.