Our translation company Alexika was launched in November 1998, and we celebrate with a stunning brand new web site. Thank you very much indeed to Matt and Flair Digital for making it happen.
Thank you so much to everyone who has contributed over 25 years of Alexika – whether as colleagues, clients or linguists. We are very proud that so many of you who were around in the early days are still working with us. The company was founded on the principle of providing a great service to exporters, so that they could do more business around the world. It will always be the case that people are more likely to buy in their own language. Our ‘golden rules’ for written translation still apply after 25 years:
- All translations are performed by native-speaker professionals working into their mother tongue, and checked by a second professional linguist.
- Translators are also domain specialists, so that the correct terminology is used for a particular industry or domain
- We use technology sensibly to provide an accurate and prompt service.
And yes, it is that last point which will change the most over the next 25 years. The rise of artificial intelligence is more than just another step change in technology, and will change the way that we work.
But the human sense of community has always been – and always will be – at the heart of what we do. We’ve got to know some great people over the years; we are blessed to work with some lovely clients and suppliers. The language profession is unusual to have such a high quality of membership organisations, and the Association of Translation Companies, the Chartered Institute of Linguists and the Institute of Translation and Interpreting have all been a great source of information and companionship over the years.
So we’re looking forward to continuing to be a cog in the wheel of international trade. Not a new industry, admittedly – translators and interpreters have a claim to be the second oldest profession in the world, and the ancient Romans and other ancient civilisations were well schooled in the business of trading goods around continents. But, amidst all the progress and technological advances, we must never lose sight of the fact that translation and interpreting will always be essential to international trade, which itself is an essential element of international sharing of ideas and understanding.