Ccaps Newsletter interviewed Steve Yolen and Peter Warner, the two professionals who are heading Ccaps’ latest offering for the national market. In the interview, they describe the need for high-quality translation, discuss why such a service is crucial for contemporary Brazilian businesses and provide an overview of their background and experience. Below are the highlights:

How has the market for foreign language translation changed over the past few years?

Warner: With globalization, more companies are becoming aware of the need for international, publication-grade English language translation. This helps them become more competitive in international markets. The translation service as a business has evolved to meet this need. Today, there are service bureaus that provide basic language services. What the new Ccaps service provides is a high-end English and Brazilian Portuguese language service for the top end of the market.

Yolen: The bottom line is that companies that do not communicate in excellent-quality English will be perceived as companies that offer products and/or services of a lesser quality than those of the competition. Everyone now has access to the Internet, and let’s face it, the English language, like it or not, is the accepted standard language for business practice and practically everything else. We simply offer the market a more professional product so that Brazilian companies can meet worldwide competition standards.

Warner: As Brazil’s participation in worldwide trade increases, we believe that we can make a small contribution to helping that process grow. This market has evolved over the past five years from companies having little concern about their English language presentation to the point today where this is considered crucial to their business strategies and plans. Any Brazilian company that puts up a website, sells in foreign markets, has overseas partners or has shares listed on overseas stock markets urgently needs a premium service like the one we provide.

In your opinion, what is the translation market outlook for the next five years?

Warner: As Brazil continues to increase its exports and the number of companies engaged in international trade continues to grow, the demand for English-language services at the premium level will grow if only because of the need to meet the competition outside of Brazil. Furthermore, as more and more foreign companies invest in Brazil, their domestic partners will also require executive-level translations for their international partners.

Yolen: I agree with Peter [Warner], I think that translation is a recession-proof business. Like it or not, because of globalization, English has become the de fato world language.

What are the advantages of such a service?

Yolen: One of the problems that we encountered on our own was that our human resources were limited in most cases, and this made it impossible to bid on larger projects. Therefore, this alliance allows us to meet the market needs in terms of an English-language service – essentially a higher added value service.

Warner: The new service will allow us to increase the speed and flexibility of our response to our customers without compromising the overall quality of the work. And we can now bid on a translation project of literally any size.

What do you both bring to the table?

Warner: We have done more 70 annual reports over the last 10 years for many of the top 100 companies. This is one of the areas in which experience really counts, where the older and more experienced you are, the better the service or product.

Yolen: Three words: Experience. Experience. Experience. We bridge the culture gap between Brazilian and world business culture — we know both sides and can write appropriately. And speaking of writing, that’s another distinguishing characteristic. We are both writers first and translators second. We like to think we provide more than a literal translation, we actually add style — and value — to the text.

What was the initial idea behind the new service?

Warner: It was an idea that evolved over time, a relationship that has grown gradually with the projects we partnered on with Ccaps. It began as a professional contact between Steve [Yolen] and Fabiano [Cid, Ccaps’ Managing Director] that grew as we began to exchange work.

Yolen: We have been seeing a growing number of requests for larger-scale projects with shorter deadlines, and these projects require a good team. Therefore, a translation team and a method of organization with an integrated technology were essential to handle the deadline pressure and to achieve expected results. After two years of working on a project-by-project basis with Ccaps, we mutually found there was a good fit between us and decided to formalize the alliance. Both sides brought something to the table. We brought our expertise and experience and Ccaps brought its technology, organizational capabilities and established network of competencies.

What is the history of your professional interaction with Ccaps?

Warner: Over the past two years, we have worked together on several large-scale projects. One of these projects was the English translation of the lengthy new ground rules for the electric sector and the documentation for a German thermo-electric power producer that is investing in Brazil. Another was the urgent English translation of a 85,000-word tender for a Norwegian deep water drilling and exploration company. We also worked with Ccaps on several RFP translations for one of the largest cellular phone companies in the world. Our latest project was the translation of nine individual city project reports from the United Nations Habitat Program for a highly respected Brazilian public affairs organization.

Yolen: Although the alliance began due to our particular English expertise, it also allows us to support the Portuguese side of the business so that we can offer a full range of services to the clients. An important aspect of this partnership is that the alliance gives us the capacity to not only do the translation, but also to make the final English or Portuguese version of the text “look like” the original version. In other words, we can reproduce documents in their original format, which is a very professional way of delivering the end product to the client.