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Welsh, What’s That?

Eve Butler called the Welsh language line at British telecom to speak in Welsh with staff at the Welsh language bureau, which is two miles from her home. Imagine her surprise when she was put through to a call centre 5,500 miles away in British Telecom’s (BT)’s call centre in India. When told what she [...]

More on That MOJ Court Interpreter Contract

Capita, who bought out Applied Language Solutions (ALS) and the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) court interpreting contract that came with it, continue to face challenges in meeting its commitments. In late 2011, the MOJ outsourced interpretation work to private company, Applied Language Solutions (ALS), in a bid to save £18m a year. The target for [...]

Translations Come at a Cost For The Irish

The Irish Official Languages Act (2003) stipulates that State bodies must translate documents of major public importance into the official Iris language, gaeilge. The Act is an important part of a plan to have at least 250,000 daily speakers of Irish by 2030. The bill for translations in 2012 is estimated to be around €1.6M [...]

An Intriguing Tale of Socrates, The BBC and £8.3M of Our Money Wasted

Ever since the mid-1940s, Caversham Park, near Reading in the UK has been home to the BBC Monitoring division, which analyses and translates into English radio and television bulletins from about 100 foreign languages. At any one time its antennae picks up more than 30 television broadcasts and 100 international radio networks from around the [...]

The Future’s Bright for the Translation Industry

The translation industry has been defying the recession for a number of years now. While the world economy is stalled, the demand for translation services continues unabated with forecasts of a 13% increase in 2013 of an annual global spend of $13 Billion. There are three particular hotspots in the world today with ferocious appetites [...]