ZSL London Zoo is Olympic ready and diving from new heights
The 2012 London Olympics represents a great sales opportunity. Visitors from all over the world will be visiting UK this year, some businesses are seizing this opportunity to maximise their slice of the action.
The Olympic Gold Website Package was launched this month by Web-Translations to Get Businesses Fit for London 2012.
By giving customers extra peace of mind when offering translated information, you’ll win their trust, and ultimately their custom.
W-T translate website for ZSL London Zoo
“At ZSL London Zoo we use Web-Translations to communicate key messages to our visitors from across the world.
The key pages we selected were translated quickly and accurately and have been a huge benefit.
Key pages such as how to find us, opening times and prices were translated into five key languages based on our visitors countries.
We have used Web-Translations for a number of years and find them helpful and efficient.”
Daniel Sprawson – Digital Communications Manager – ZSL London Zoo
"Excellent" customer service for The BrookLodge Hotel & Wells Spa
“The work was completed extremely quickly, and the customer service I received from the team was excellent. Our website is now multilingual, which has greatly assisted in our on-going campaign to attract more overseas visitors to the BrookLodge and I intend to add more languages to expand on this success. I would definitely recommend to all hotels based in the UK and Ireland that they localise their websites to ensure that they have the best possible chance in a highly competitive market.”
Eoin Doyle, Director – The BrookLodge & Wells Spa
Olympic Gold Website Package – Fit for London 2012
Get Fit for London 2012 with the recently launched Olympic Gold Website Package by Web-Translations.
The 2012 London Olympics represents a great sales opportunity. As mentioned in the Getting Fit for the Olympics blog post published last week not everyone is capitalising on this sales opportunity. Do you want to go for Gold in the 2012 London Olympics?
Last year the largest ever campaign by a national tourist board was launched by VisitBritain; the £100 million GREAT Britain You’re Invited campaign. Primarily fronted by five major global celebrities who agreed to film TV ads and help promote Britain overseas.
As VisitBritain’s Mark Di-Toro says, “Now is the time to wave the British flag”. Thanks to the GREAT campaign a global audience of billions will have their eyes firmly set on Britain like never before. Will you be profiting from this interest?
Global steel company Outokumpu relies on Web-Translations for high quality translations
“We use Web-Translations for all our translation projects, and get excellent service. The nature of many of our texts is very technical, but Web-Translations is more than capable of providing translations that are up to our high standard. We review these internally, and therefore know that the quality of technical translation is very good.
Web-Translations is prompt and reliable, which means that we at Outokumpu can direct our energies elsewhere, knowing our translation projects are in good hands.
I also find the pricing very competitive for the level of service we require and receive.”
Nora Berg, Communications Officer – External Communications – Outokumpu Oyj
Web-Translations says ¡Hola! to a new Madrid office
With the recent changes in Spain comes new opportunities and a new office for Web-Translations in Madrid. Spain may be going through some economic pain, but the fact remains it is the best placed European country for helping businesses to make the most of the fast emerging markets of Latin America, or any of the 27 countries for which Spanish is an official language.
Ignacio de Pablo, an experienced localisation consultant, will head up the Madrid office and spreading the word about Web-Translations among local contacts and partners who recognised the need to export as a strategy to grow. (more…)
Meet the Team – Fiona Henderson
Hi Everyone!
I’m Fiona Henderson and I have just joined the Web-Translations team as a Project Coordinator.
I was born in Edinburgh and grew up in the nearby seaside town of North Berwick. After studying Russian and Slavonic Studies at the University of Glasgow, I moved to Leeds to study towards an MA in Applied Translation Studies at the University of Leeds.
I’m delighted to have found a position which allows me to engage with my knowledge of languages on a daily basis, whilst learning new skills and building on my experience in this exciting and constantly evolving industry.
Other facts about me: I am extremely musical and love going to the theatre to watch an opera or ballet, or to listen to some classical music. I am not very sporty but I do enjoy horse riding, ice skating and dancing. My dream is to take the Trans-Siberian Railway from Moscow to Vladivostok!
We've Taken The Plunge Into Bath!
We’ve expanded Web-Translations and opened an office in Bath to meet the needs of our growing portfolio.
Andrew Carter (pictured right, below) who has been with us for over 2 years as a freelancer, has now become a full-time employee, and is heading up the new satellite office with his latest recruit, Jonathan Power (pictured left).
Andrew says: “I worked with Web-Translations on a freelance basis for 2 years, and became a full-time employee just a few months ago. I enjoy working with a wide variety of clients, and love knowing that whatever their aims are we have a product in our multilingual website “toolkit” that will help them succeed in international markets.” (more…)
Friends of Web-Translations – thanks for coming!
We had a great night last Thursday at our first Friends of Web-Translations event, so a big thank you to all those who were able to make it.
Vote for our blog! 2011 "Language Lovers" voting opens
Our blog has once again been nominated as one of the Top 100 language blogs – renamed this year as the “Top 100 Language Lovers” – in the Language Professionals category.
We are honoured to be part of this list for the 3rd year running – if you like reading our blog, please vote using the button below, or use this link.
Thanks for your support, we’ll let you know the results!
We’re recruiting: have you got what it takes to be our Personnel, Partner & Agent Manager?
Web-Translations is looking to recruit a Personnel, Partner & Agent Manager to help recruit, manage, and train our team.
The successful candidate will recruit and manage a team of freelance sales agents, recruit and manage partner companies to our affiliate scheme, and recruit new team members to the office.
A large part of the role involves training, motivating sales people and holding people to account for their performance.
More details about the role and what we’re looking for are available on our website, but if you feel you’ve reached the ‘glass ceiling’ in your current role, and that your potential is not being exploited, this is an excellent opportunity for you to shine.
If you’ve got 5 years or more of sales management experience (especially in the recruitment or translation industry), and have a proven record of being able to drive team performance, we’d love to hear from you!
To apply for this vacancy, please email your CV with a covering email stating why you wish to work with us to: recruitment@web-translations.com.
Web-Translations acquires Live Translation
Web-Translations is pleased to announce its acquisition of Batley-based company Live Translation.
www.livetranslation.com is the world’s first real-time translation service powered by human translators. It offers professional translation in minutes as well as a fully managed document and website translation service, making it the ideal complement to Web-Translations’ existing portfolio of services.
With prices starting from as little as £1.99, Live Translation is ideal for translation of emails, text messages, and blog posts.
Managing Director of Web-Translations Daniel Rajkumar is naturally thrilled about the takeover:
“This is a great opportunity for us, as we can now cover both ends of the market: the corporate and SME clients who have planned budgets to spend on their translation needs, and the smaller businesses and individuals who are looking for a more economical service, but still demand a certain level of quality.”
The next step will be to localise the website into different languages, then integrate Live Translation with email-translations.com, and other services such as blog translation that Web-Translations is already offering. The service will also be expanded to include additional language pairs.
Sign up for your free Live Translation account here to try it for yourself!
We won the Pub Quiz!
The Web-Translations team were the proud winners of the first “Peak of the Week” pub quiz held at The Midnight Bell in Holbeck on Wednesday.
It was a really fun night, with a choice of delicious curries and free poppadums on offer – what more could we have asked for? We’ll definitely be going back to see if we can retain the champions title!
Check out our prize – we would have saved it to share with the boss, but hey…we were thirsty after all that hard work! Sorry Dan, you’ll have to help us to victory next time…
Are you ready to "Go Global"?
Join Web-Translations and a host of other international business experts at the betterbusiness Going Global Workshop, next Wednesday (9th March) at Lacon House, London.
This event will focus on how to take your business global. With growing populations across the globe and the rise of the developing nations, can your business afford to miss out on these lucrative markets? (more…)
Meet the team: Malcolm South
Hi, I’m Malcolm! I’m 23 and I’ve just started work at Web-Translations as a Project Coordinator. I was born in Leeds and grew up here before going to the University of Nottingham for a degree in Hispanic Studies.
On my year abroad as part of my degree I studied in Santa Maria, Brazil and Granada, Spain. I really enjoyed it and found the time to discover Argentina, Uruguay and Chile as well. I speak Spanish and Portuguese and I’m learning French in an evening class at Leeds Met.
Before working here I worked as a waiter – you’d be surprised how much you can learn about communication that way! I also worked as a personal Spanish tutor.
I enjoy learning about other languages and cultures, listening to music (especially live!) and caving.
I love the challenge of working at Web-Translations and it feel great to know that I’m playing my part in helping people communicate across the world.
I look forward to working with you if I haven’t already!
…
You can read Malcolm’s first Web-Translations blog post here: http://blog.web-translations.com/2011/01/what-makes-wordreferencecom-so-good/
Meet the team: Geraldine McCarry
Hello!
I joined Web-Translations in January 2011 as a project coordinator after graduating with a degree in Spanish and business administration from the University Of Kent in July 2010.
I’m new to Leeds, having recently moved here from my hometown of Sychdyn – for those of you with no idea where that is, it’s in North Wales, not far from Chester.
I’ve lived, studied, worked and travelled overseas fairly extensively, including a five-year stint attending an international school in Sri Lanka, a gap year (which I spent on a work placement, a volunteering programme and generally travelling) and also a year abroad at a university in Spain. In fact, many of my closest family members and friends still reside abroad; the main advantage of which being that should I fancy a trip away I have lots of options for where to stay! Other languages and cultures are therefore inevitably of great interest to me.
I’ve had some varied and interesting jobs in the past – museum guide and dog groomer to name but two – and I’m sure Web-Translations will become another example of a varied and interesting job if the past couple of weeks are any indication! I certainly do relish a challenge and always strive to set myself goals for personal development.
Apart from the usual things like spending time with my friends and family and pets, in my spare time I like going to the cinema, visiting museums and art exhibitions, long walks in the countryside, reading, singing and writing poetry.
* * * * * * * * *
Welcome to the team, Geraldine, and keep up the good work!
You can read Geraldine’s first blog post here:http://blog.web-translations.com/2011/01/the-relevance-of-online-translation/
Meet the Team: Sunita Persad
This is the first post in our new Meet the Team section – we’ll be profiling each member of the Web-Translations team with a short introduction, so you can learn a bit more about the people behind your project.
* * * * * * * * *
Hi everyone!
Just a quick post to introduce myself. My name’s Sunita Persad, I’m 22, I’m from Hull and I’ve just started at Web-Translations in Leeds as a Sales Executive. I studied International Business and Spanish at Aston University in Birmingham and graduated last summer.
I’ve just moved to Leeds, and am enjoying having my own place and getting to know the city. I’m certainly not missing the daily commute from Hull, getting up at 6am and getting back home at 8pm!
I’ve previously worked in a Market Research company in Hull, and as an assistant in a Morroccan-style spa while I lived in Barcelona. When I’m not at work I enjoy reading, watching films and socialising with friends. I’ve also recently started trying to brush up on my French language skills, as that will come in handy at work!
Let me know what you think of my first blog post for Web-Translations, I’d appreciate your comments. You can read it here: http://blog.web-translations.com/2011/01/the-rise-in-non-english-internet-communication
I look forward to speaking to you over the phone or via email in the coming months.
Web-Translations welcomes three new employees!
The Web-Translations team has expanded! We’d like to introduce 3 new members of staff here in the Leeds office.
We are happy to announce that two new Project Coordinators, Geraldine McCarry and Malcolm South, have joined the company, starting this week.
Also joining the team as New Business Consultant is Sunita Persad.
Welcome to the team!
All three are currently undergoing a comprehensive training and induction programme, you may encounter one or more of them in due course so we ask you to please bear with them and be kind! We were all new once too…
We are really looking forward to getting to know Malcolm, Geraldine and Sunita and working with them as they get up to speed with their new roles. 2011 is already shaping up to be a busy year for Web-Translations!
Coming soon – watch this space…
We’ll be posting a longer introduction to each new member of staff as part of our new “Meet the Team” section on this blog.
Interpreter/Translator listed as one of the best 50 careers for 2011
U.S. News has compiled a list of the predicted best 50 careers for 2011. They have based their decisions on estimated projections of job growth from 2008 – 2018 provided by the Labour Department, and then finalised the 50 careers by taking into account which jobs would provide an above-average median income, and the careers for which the number of jobs is expected to increase. They also used information on job satisfaction and turnover, as well as consulting industry experts to gather “anecdotal evidence about employment prospects and job satisfaction”, according to a recent article in US News.
Interpreter/Translator appears in the subcategory ‘Creative and Service Jobs’, along with Film and Video Editor, Commercial Pilot and Multimedia Artist, amongst others. Employment of both interpreters and translators was expected to increase by over 20% between 2008 and 2018. Cities in America, such as Washington D.C. and New York offer the most possibilities, particularly with Spanish, given the increasing number of Spanish inhabitants in the US.
In fact, many professional translators agree with this trend, with nearly 50% of those polled by Proz.com saying that they believed their income would increase in 2011 – that’s compared with only 14% who felt the opposite.
Besides the potential growth of the translation marketplace, there are many other reasons why becoming a translator is a good career move for individuals with the necessary skills and dedication:
- Being your own boss
- Flexible working hours
- Flexibility of workload – can work as many or as few hours as you like
- Can reject projects if not suitable rather than having to do whatever you’re given.
- Working from home
- Support & Advice from the translator community
Alternatively, in-house translation positions (although rare) also offer the opportunity for creative language work, and honing your craft while in a stable, secure working environment.
What skills do you need to become a translator?
- High level of fluency in the source language
- Native speaker of the language you intend to work into (target language)
- High standard of grammar and spelling in all the languages you intend to work with
- Attention to detail
- Good speed of typing (or it will take you forever to complete assignments!)
Qualifications required by each company may vary, but as a general rule, all translators are expected to have completed at least 5 years of Higher Education, and many translation companies (Including Web-Translations) will require a minimum of 3-5 years of commercial translation experience.
Lots of the language translator professionals we work with have worked in a particular industry such as engineering, or in a legal profession, before deciding to change career.
If you’re a translator, share your career journey with us: How did you end up becoming a translator, or is it something you always wanted to do?
Are there any other benefits of working freelance that we’ve overlooked?
Merry Christmas!
We’d like to wish all our readers a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!
Web-Translations will be closed from 12 noon on Friday 24th until Wednesday 29th December.
On the 29th, we will have limited staff cover, so please bear with us.
We will be back to full working capacity on Tuesday 4th January.
If you have any urgent translations, please get in quick – our hard-working translators and project managers deserve a holiday too!
Season’s Greetings, and all the best for 2011!