Milestone as TransAction records job number 25,000

However, in the week that the city’s oldest translation agency celebrates its 25,000th assignment, its co-founders say that one third of its turnover now comes from overseas firms.

“Since the days of just a telephone and fax machine the industry has certainly changed over the years, mostly due to technology,” said Maryline Tergella, co-director of TransAction.

“With the currently weak pound helping significantly, we compete at an international level and with e-mail we communicate with translators and clients a lot more easily, many of them being based outside the UK.”

Mrs Tergella came to Sheffield nearly three decades ago to be a French assistant at Tapton School. When she first turned her hand to translation, TransAction was a co-operative of translators. It wasn’t until the end of 1999 – 16 years after it was established – that TransAction became a limited company.

Daniel Collis, Mrs Tergella’s co-director, joined TransAction in 1997 and together the pair employ a core group of 40 “old school” translators and work with up to 300 other people. Translators are categorised along subject areas and languages.

Of all the dialects that TransAction is asked to deal with, French, Italian, German and Spanish are the most popular. The company’s 25,000th job was a Spanish to English translation of internal documents relating to a worldwide mobility programme for Telefónica, the global telecommunications business. Telefónica, which has more than 315 million customers in 24 countries, has employed TransAction for the past seven years.