There is NO Globalization without Translation

When I sat down with our company directors over a cup of coffee just weeks before the launch of our business. Everything was slowly but surely falling into place; yes some took longer than expected but they were still all falling into place and fitting the bill. When suddenly Benjamin our Creative Director who was in the process of creating our company Logo asked a question, a very simple question it was. Guys, what is our company "Caption"? Funnily none of us had thought about it each being engrossed and engulfed in his/her responsibilities we forgot our most important phrase that would make us stand out from the rest. A picture of the moment would say a thousand words as we all looked equally bemussed and each looking at one another in stunned silence to see if anyone had an answer.

Sadly for that brief moment Silence was the only answer. Each member's eyes lay perplexed and lost in thought, how could something this important go un-done. As our CEO said we've forgotten the most important element "How can blood flow in your body without veins!!! he exclaimed. Nevertheless we are all adults and after a short wrap on how things are un-folding before the commencment of the business we all left the meeting with one thing in our heads. Get the CAPTION... and get it Right, no second chances. He also made sure to add that what we were looking for wasn't a catch phrase, it had to be different, something that was new, cathy, unheard of, creative and yet not corny. And with our Quality control and team of Legal Advisors that seemed merely impossible. It was a Friday so we all had to come up with a Caption or ideas for it by Monday.

I took it on myself though knowing that everyone would have a try I wanted this to be my most important contribution to the company. Whether I was going to be here 5 years down the line or not I had been there from the time this had gone from an Idea to the actual birth of this new baby in a company. I wanted to get this right. So after a hard days's work and some lousy snow shoveling that followed I finally retired to bed at about 10pm Eastern. I couldn't stop thinking about the Caption, I had numerous ideas that came to mind but everything, just everything seemed to be taken by another company and thats when I realized that there were more than a Million translation companies the world over, and with everyone trying to be unique you had to come up with something extra special to stand out in a crowd. It needed an Einstein's Eureka moment something spontaneous, and yet Perfect!

I'm an outdoor person and I usually head out for some Soccer or Basket Ball on the weekend before heading out for dinner and strangely enough my neighborhood is filled with immigrants from all over the world and your always bumping into someone new. However one thing that did stand out was that even though these people spoke little or no English they still found a way to communicate, mainly using English as their bridge or their broken English mixed with body language and their funny own foreign language either way the message always got the other way and that's what mattered.

Suddenly on Sunday evening just before heading out to Church after lots of thought and on the verge of giving up, like a bolt of lightening it hit me that here was the answer I had been looking for all over. If these foreigners used either English or English and their body language to communicate then hey what do we do as linguists and translation companies. We bridge that gap that cross-cultural, lifestyle and literary compositions from different parts of the world. So technically IF there were no translators and translation companies then the world truly would not have been such a small place and thus the idea and birth of our Tagline/Caption "There is no globalization without Translation".