As part of SDL’s ‘Knowledge is Power’ workshop day at Aston University, Alexika’s Gemma Cooper will present a training seminar ‘SDL Trados Studio 2011 Workshop for Beginners.’ SDL Trados Studio is the world’s leading computer-aided translation (CAT) tool and Gemma is an SDL Approved Trainer.

The event takes place on Thursday 31st May and is free to attend - for more information and to book your place, please click here.

Our people are the most important element in building strongrelationships with our clients and suppliers – so delivering great service. But it is true to say that investing in technology is one of the most important elements. We will shortly be installing another upgrade to our project management system, and it caused me to reflect on the constant nature of our investment in 3 areas of the business:

• Our project management system is bespoke for the translation industry and enables clients and suppliers alike to open innovative web portals and track their projects. The project management team have all client and supplier information at their fingertips and translation projects are monitored constantly.

•  We use the latest version of SDL Trados Studio translation management and translation memory software. This leads to greater consistency across projects for our clients and ease of work flow for our linguists. Two members of the Alexika team are SDL approved trainers and we pass on knowledge both to the in-house team and we run courses for freelance translators.

• Behind the scenes, we upgraded the server and network in recent months to the latest business standards. We have the most
  robust back office network possible.

We will continue to invest in technology wherever there is a clear benefit to our clients or our suppliers.

Thank you to everyone who entered the draw for our Easter Giveaway – we had a lot of fun reading Easter comments and greetings on our Facebook and Twitter pages. We also had a lot of fun making the draw and the names of  the 2 lucky winners were:

Rachel Waddington – freelance translator from Dutch and German to English

Lyndsey Hall – HGF

Congratulations to both and a very Happy Easter! Rachel and Lyndsey will be enjoying gift boxes full of chocolates, cakes, and biscuits from the renowned Bettys Online Shop & Cafe Tea Rooms.

The History of Bettys:



Bettys was founded by Swiss confectioner Frederick Belmont in 1919. He creating the first Bettys Café Tea Rooms in Harrogate in the Yorkshire region of the North of England. When Belmont first arrived in the United Kingdom, he was unable to speak English. However, that did not stop him from founding what is today an established family business with a fascinating blend of Swiss and Yorkshire influences.

Alexika Director Mark will be walking the 76 miles (115 km) Yorkshire Dales Way in August 2012. If all goes well, Mark and other brave members of his family will complete the distance in 5 days.

To sponsor his efforts and donate to Oxfam, please click here.

Why Oxfam? Well, it was actually decided whilst reading about the great work that Alexika’s adopted charity Translators Without Borders carries out in tandem with Oxfam – particularly fighting poverty in the Horn of Africa. This time the money will go straight to Oxfam. All donations would be gratefully accepted.

Our focus is international business, but we are proud to have been a member of a local Chamber of Commerce for well over 10 years.

These organisations can be a real engine of growth for local economies, and can provide the perfect forum for sharing best practice and resources. So well done to our own local Chamber in the North of England on their excellent new web site  and we look forward to meeting new and existing members in the course of the coming year!

A thought from Mark directed at UK exporters….

I love this job – but it can be hard to explain to others in social situations sometimes! Two recent illustrations: an acquaintance at an evening class, on hearing that we are a translation company, said “they all speak English on the continent don’t they!” Secondly pub landlord comedian Al Murray on hearing that a member of his audience was a Spanish translator quipped: “they all speak English, you’re surplus to requirements you are mate!!”

NO!  According to some latest figures, approx. 56% of the population of Germany can speak English to some degree as a second language – a Eurobaromoter survey from back in 1994 gave the figure as 35%, so maybe there is a trend there. In the Spain the recent figure is 27% and the 1994 figure is 13%. Whilst these figures are not particularly scientific, there may be a trend to more people speaking English as a second language - but clearly this ability does not extend to the majority of the population in many key European markets.

So the key questions for UK exporters are: do the people receiving my communications speak and read English, and then are they more likely to purchase from me if I communicate in the receiver’s language? The answer to the second question is very probably yes: people are more likely to buy in their own language.

The graph below is taken from Wikipedia, and shows the approximate percentage of the population that speak English as a second language in each country.

P.S. According to figures released recently by fellow ATC members LTC, the UK translation industry is now worth between €636 and €641 million. Also please see our own web site for some figures on how much business is done in different languages around the world.

We are pleased to support the international charity Translators Without Borders.

TWB translates more than two million words per year for charities such as Médecins sans Frontières, Médecins du Monde, Action Against Hunger and Oxfam. The work of TWB is of crucial importance for the success of humanitarian work such as engineering and construction projects but it is particularly important in healthcare.

Donations can be made here.

Our local Chamber of Commerce, where Alexika Ltd is a member company in the North of England, has recently turned its attention to exporting and produced a report entitled: Beyond Borders – Realigning the Leeds City Region Economy Towards Export Driven Growth. We applaud the initiative; you only have to look at the German economy – where unemployment is now the lowest since reunification – to see the benefits of an export-driven economy.

The report contains much useful information and sound advice for UK exporting companies. According to a survey upon which the report is based, current barriers for non-exporters include a lack of contacts (43%), insufficient market information or intelligence (28%) and inadequate finance (33%). It is suggested that potential exporters could speak to the various UK business support organisations including UKTI to build contacts through support and, if appropriate, take part in trade missions.

HOWEVER…..language is only mentioned twice in an 18 page report – and in both cases language is mentioned as a problem, with no solutions offered. We suggest that language issues and communications should addressed as part of an export strategy – alongside other key challenges that need a strategy such as finance and marketing aspects.

Questions to form the basis of such a strategy might be:

- What language is spoken by the target audience for my product or service?

- By what means can we communicate our messages and in what form do we want to receive communication?

After identifying the language spoken by the target audience, solutions and strategies might include:

- Deciding what resources might we employ to facilitate the communication e.g. are we using or recruiting in-house skills or working with a language service provider? Or a mixture?

- Deciding to have a professional translation of a web site – or maybe initially just part of a web site – in the target language. Maybe this will include a tightly controlled response form that prospects can use to send a simple enquiry.

- Working closely with a native speaker to set up initial meetings by phone.

- Consider hiring an interpreter for initial meetings.

So we commend the Chamber report to you, and suggest that potential exporters should not be too daunted by language issues. There is plenty of help out there.

Mark (mrobinson@alexika.com)

As reported in the Sunday Times, new research by Professor Mark Pagel - an evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading in the UK – makes fascinating reading. But there is one conclusion that we would like to take issue with.

First the fascinating part – and there is plenty of it. Prof. Pagel explains that as many as 500,000 languages have lived  and died since modern humans evolved. But they are dwindling all the the time, and half of today’s 6909 languages are under threat. We are living in an era of the least linguistic diversity, with only about 20 languages covering almost the entire population of the world. The remainder are spoken by tribal groups of usually only a few thousand.

Prof. Pagel explains that languages die out for political and geographical reasons: “Some languages just by accident get hooked up to successful societies and they drive those languages. Every language on earth is equally good at being a human language. There are just lucky ones. The luckiest of them all is English.” This research is fascinating and Prof. Pagel’s body of work can be accessed here.

No doubt the conclusion is simplified for the purposes of a newspaper article, but the argument is then taken to its conclusion as follows. English is everyone’s second language, so English will win this battle to the death. Just as many more languages have died out, so many more will follow until we are left with just one. But this is where we would beg to differ! On our own web site, we present the information that only 15 languages cover over 90% of the business done in the world. And yes, English covers 35% of business done globally. But look what’s coming – Chinese in 3rd place with only 7.4% – this is surely set to grow. German stubbornly in 4th with 7.2%, and showing no sign at all of losing impact.

We would humbly add another reason to Prof. Pagels list. Languages prosper or die out for political and geographical reaons – and also for reasons of international trade. Admittedly the British are not good at this, but generally people need to learn languages to sell things to each other across cultures – and they find that they can sell more if they use the language of their customers. To paraphrase Helmut Schmidt: If you buy from me I speak English, but if you are selling to me – Sprechen Sie Deutsch!!

University of Reading, Berkshire UK

We are pleased to welcome the travelling crib again this year – the beautifully knitted figures will travel around the local business community before arriving at St. Peter’s church in time to celebrate Christmas.

The crib will be visible in our office window tonight, and we hope that passers-by might stop for a moment to enjoy them. We wish everyone a peaceful Advent time.