Inc.com
By Tanisha A. Sykes
August 4, 2009

The following is an excerpt. To read the full article, click here.

As the world gets smaller and the demand for language services grows bigger, some Inc. 500|5000 companies are cashing in by bridging the communication gap between people and businesses around the world.

Welcome to the world of translation services and localization – a multibillion-dollar global market, where companies help bridge the communication gap between clients, businesses and individuals. Many of the high-growth companies on our Inc. 500|5000 list have thrived in this niche area that offers a suite of services from document translation to website localization to multilingual court reporting to oral interpretation.

These companies help bridge the communication gap between clients and businesses worldwide. They understood early on that in a global economy, clear, concise, communication is everything.

Another example of growth is No. 1790 on the Inc. 5000, TransPerfect, a New York-based company that strives to be a one-stop shop for companies that need to conduct business on a global scale, says co-founder and CEO Liz Elting.

With $200 million in revenue in 2008, TransPerfect is the largest privately-held language services company in the world. “We used to focus exclusively on document translation, but our clients started demanding more,” says Elting, who grew up watching her father own and operate a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise in Portugal.

Now the company offers everything from patent translation to multilingual court reporting to desktop publishing services for annual reports. With 57 offices around the world and 1,125 employees, “We never take a day off," Elting says proudly. "We can place any size job 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year."