Our story

1994-2010: from the floppy disk to Wikipedia, from Taylor to Drucker

Back in 1994, translation was an outdated profession struggling to keep up with new modern market demands, faced with what was then new technology. In translation, information technology meant basic word processors, unreliable reviewing tools and very limited computers with no graphic interface. Telephones, faxes, primitive modems, floppy disks and couriers were the order of the day. A hard copy dictionary was THE dictionary. The Internet was merely a rumour.

So it’s hardly surprising that Ampersand was founded precisely on the opportunities IT was offering to improve translation processes. New corpus-based translation technology inherited that eternal promise of automatic translation. Over 10 years before Google appeared, this technology was beginning to point to a future where statistical intelligence would take over linguistic intelligence in the realm of computer translation.

The economies of scale brought by this new technology steered Ampersand in the direction of an industry-inspired production model. The company strove to apply the work philosophy behind consolidated industrial sectors to translation, albeit on a very small scale. Ultimately, the production formula was based on a stable and in-house team of high-quality translators working in an organised, methodical, cooperative, cumulative and networked environment, using state-of-the-art technology to reach their full potential.

But a company is not just its factory, and translating is not really like mass car production. Ampersand continues to grow with the market and to place more and more importance on extralinguistic aspects as part of our comprehensive translation services: customer service, dealing with formats, adapting processes to our customers and personalising all of our services. Today, we view translation as a service chain - each service has its own value added. Translation, considered in the traditional sense, is just one link in that chain.

Let’s not forget that a translation company is, above all, a company. This means it has to play by the rules just as any other company does, regardless of its size or sector. Ampersand has also been standardising its operations and implementing modern management techniques, theories and paradigms. These include the need for marketing, the challenges related to human resources management, the importance of monitoring management, the potential of financial management, the possibilities offered by value chain design, and many more - all this in a bid to constantly improve management.

Today, 15 years on, Ampersand has mastered the art of balancing youth and maturity. Ampersand is ready to draw on its experience in order to continue developing and consolidating itself as a benchmark company in corporate translation, offering services to organisations with multicultural audiences and companies with international communication needs. Companies like yours.