| 
Chesterfield company services business clients
around the world, getting the words right in more
than 100 languages.
In today's global economy, it's easy for business
deals to be lost in translation, literally.
Nobody knows that better than Susanne Evens,
who has built a business dedicated to getting
the words exactly right when they're converted
from one language to another.
Her company, AAA Translation, serves business
clients the world over, translating everything
from product labels to technical brochures, into
and out of languages ranging from Arabic to Swahili.
Evens is an accomplished linguist, who learned
English, Italian, Spanish, French and Russian
during her student days in her native Germany.
Marriage brought her to the United States in
1982. She opened AAA in 1993, hoping what had
always been a pleasant sideline would become a
profit-making venture.
"I knew there was a huge market," she
said. "I knew there was a huge need."
Still, she said, she was surprised at how fast
the company took off and continues to grow - 50
percent in each of the last three years.
AAA offers services in more than 100 languages
now. "There's no language foreign to us,"
Evens said.
She does none of the work herself anymore, relying
instead on a worldwide network of native speakers,
who work for her company as subcontractors.
"Everything is translated in-country,"
she said, German in Germany, Chinese in China
and so on, to make sure the sense is correct and
the words are as current as possible.
Evens said she hires mostly degreed, full-time
professional translators with a minimum of five
years of experience and only after checking their
references. She said she offers above-average
pay "to make sure I get the quality,"
and most have been with her 10 or more years.
Her pet peeve: translators who work on the cheap,
especially in Asia, with poor quality control.
Some entrepreneurs never quite manage the transition
to full-time manager when their businesses grow
and they must hand off to others the work they
once loved doing themselves. For Evens, that has
not been a problem.
"I like going out, meeting people, doing
the networking, selling my business," she
said.
That requires flying overseas with some frequency
and working at all hours, whether at her business
address in Chesterfield or in her fully equipped
home office.
With time zone differences, she's up early to
talk to Europe and late to talk to China. Her
constantly buzzing BlackBerry has become her best
business friend.
"It's like my mini-laptop," she said.
"I can stay in touch with my clients and
respond right away."
Such quick reflexes impressed Psychological Associates,
which uses AAA to translate surveys from English
into several languages and the responses back
into English.
Connie R. Voelker, who manages surveys for the
Clayton-based human-resources consulting firm,
said Evens' company generally turns assignments
around within a week.
"They're very thorough, very accurate,"
Voelker said, to the point of making sure it was
legal to also translate the company's trademark.
It was, and AAA did.
Karen Moore, director of international marketing
for Overland-based Build-A-Bear Workshop Inc.,
said AAA's work for her company was professional
and imbued with "the playfulness and lightheartedness"
of its stores, where children buy and dress teddy
bears and other stuffed animals.
Build-A-Bear, which began as a single store in
the St. Louis Galleria, has grown to hundreds
of stores all over the United States and Canada,
as well in Denmark, France, the United Kingdom,
Japan, Korea and Australia.
The company hired AAA to translate all packaging,
labels and other marketing materials into each
country's language and, in doing so, "to
make sure that the brand is consistent, from the
U.S. to any store you go to around the world,"
Moore said.
In the tradition of one thing leading to another,
AAA has branched out into Web site translation
and "cultural consulting," teaching
clients about business customs and etiquette in
foreign countries.
Evens also is advising a German company that
wants to set up a U.S. subsidiary and gathering
information on St. Louis for another foreign company
that might move here.
She said it helps to know how business is conducted
both here and abroad. "I always try to build
bridges."
|
