STB in the ITI Bulletin

Amey Higgon of Surrey Translation Bureau looks back 40 years to tell the story of how this translation agency came into being and what’s changed since it began

The year is 1984. Torvill and Dean have won gold at the Winter Olympics, Frankie Goes To Hollywood are at the top of the charts, and Surrey Translation Bureau (STB) has just opened its doors. As we celebrate 40 years in business, we have been reflecting on what has changed in the last four decades, both for our company and the translation industry as a whole.

It all started with a language school…

You could say STB came onto the scene by popular demand. The founders of STB originally owned a language school in Godalming, Surrey, that offered one-to-one tuition alongside English classes for foreign students. When the school started to see an increasing number of requests coming through for translation services, the owners decided to create a dedicated translation branch of the company. This started out as one small room in the office, but as the company expanded, one room became two, which then became a new office in Farnham, where you can still find STB today. Eventually, the demand for our translations outstripped the demand for language classes, so STB became the focus, with a growing team of dedicated in-house linguists and project managers.

Going back to STB’s humble beginnings in 1984, you really get a sense of just how far the industry has come in that time in terms of technology. Former STB staff will talk (sometimes fondly!) about the days when new projects would arrive by fax, project managers would phone translators to offer them assignments, and clients would find us in the Yellow Pages. New orders from clients were written down in a physical book, and our in-house team had heavy dictionaries stacked up next to their desks. Nowadays we do most of our work in the digital sphere, although there are still a few dictionaries dotted around our office that get dusted off every now and then!

Like other translators, we too adapted to the new tools and systems on offer. We were an early adopter of Trados Studio, although this would be accessed via a dongle that staff plugged into their PCs. In 2019, we also started working with the translation management system Plunet, which allows us to log new orders at the click of a button – another big milestone in our manual-to-digital evolution.

Although big changes in technology can be daunting for small businesses, we’ve seen how they can have significant positive impacts for our business, our clients and our suppliers. In particular, CAT tools have allowed us to translate more efficiently and ensure more comprehensive terminology management and quality assurance methods, whereas 40 years ago our staff would have combed through a printed translation line by line to iron out by eye any final wrinkles such as missing numbers or terms. There are so many ways we’ve become more productive and able to add value by working with technology in this increasingly digital world and competitive market.

New services, new languages and new clients

While translation continues to be STB’s bread and butter, we offer many services and language combinations now that we wouldn’t have dreamed of in 1984. Back in the day, we largely focused on European languages into English, but in the last 12 months we’ve completed translations in 227 different language combinations. Although we still translate a lot of the same types of documents our team would have seen in 1984, such as birth certificates and financial reports, this year we have also seen the likes of large post-editing projects about electric cars and user interface (UI) strings for apps. We have continued to adapt to our clients’ demands, and our small pool of freelancers has grown over the last 40 years to become what’s now an Olympic-sized pool of more than 500 linguists – some of whom have been with us from the very beginning.

At the same time, our client base has grown and diversified, but we’re proud of the fact that more than 35 per cent of our clients have been with us for over a decade – though the way we work for them has of course changed in line with new technological developments. For instance, we have one client working in the medical field for whom we have been translating instructions for use (IFUs) for decades. Although what we deliver to them has remained largely the same, we’ve introduced CAT tools to the workflow, built glossaries and brought in dedicated translation teams in new languages – all of which have enabled our partnership to stand the test of time.

Community engagement and industry presence

As a company that’s staffed by trained translators and language lovers, STB has always placed a strong emphasis on championing language learning. Back in 1984 we achieved this through the language school, but in recent years we have set aside time throughout the year to go out to events within our local community and the translation industry. Visiting local schools (to give talks about the benefits of speaking a foreign language) and hosting undergraduate internships are two of the ways we aim to inspire the next generation of budding linguists.

It’s also important to us that we recognise the work of our suppliers – the translators who work for us. To this end, we’ve held various events over the years where we’ve welcomed our translators to Farnham, Guildford and London to meet our in-house staff and do some free training with us but also to say thank you for their hard work. In 2023 we incorporated a pottery class into our freelancer event for the first time, and it was a big hit!

Innovation (some musical choices aside)

As we look to the future, our focus remains on innovation and sustainability. In the first quarter of the year we have been testing how we can integrate AI solutions in a way that matches STB’s values and particularly without damaging the integrity of the translation profession. It’s a careful balance between offering our clients value for money, making sure the service we provide meets their needs and expectations, and ensuring our translators are fairly compensated for their work and expertise. In an increasingly interconnected world where free translation tools are available to all, it’s more important than ever that we continue to educate the public on the value of human translation and the highly skilled nature of the work that translators do.

Another area we’ve been shining a spotlight on in recent years is our commitment to supporting the principles of environmental sustainability. We have adapted our business practices to reduce our impact on the environment and set targets each year for implementing further improvements internally. We have many positives to look back on over the past 40 years; but like many other businesses and individuals working in translation, it hasn’t always been a smooth ride, and the last few years in particular have been tough for many working in the industry. We hope that by continuing to remain agile and passionate about the work we do, STB can continue to flourish in the years to come. In the meantime, you can still find us here in Farnham, blasting out the odd 80s tune.

Amey Higgon has seven years’ experience working for Surrey Translation Bureau. Having started there as an intern, she is now head of project management, running a busy team of project managers alongside her own clients. She is an advocate for continuing professional development (CPD) and knowledge sharing among her own team and the linguists she works with. Amey translates from Spanish and Italian into English and also enjoys working on US into UK English localisation projects, monolingual editing and subtitling.