Our History

TransPerfect's co-founders recognized that there was a need for a service-minded enterprise that could deliver complex translation projects quickly and accurately. In 1992, Phil Shawe and Liz Elting founded TransPerfect to fill that gap. Their mission: to provide the highest quality language services to leading businesses worldwide. With no external financing, TransPerfect grew from its beginnings as a two-person company operating out of a dorm room into one of the world's most reputable language and business services companies.

Over the years, TransPerfect and its flagship GlobalLink technology suite have won numerous awards, including being recognized on the Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest-growing companies multiple times. The company pioneered the adoption of critical quality standards for the industry and is today certified to ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 17100:2015, ensuring the highest level of quality and service for all projects. In addition, TransPerfect introduced the industry’s leading standard for linguist certification, the TransPerfect Linguist Certification (TLC) program, which tests linguists for language proficiency and subject-area specialization.

In 2018, Phil Shawe completed a historic buyout of his co-founder—ushering the company into a new era with renewed focus on expansion and innovation. The sale ensured the continuation of TransPerfect’s long history of profitable growth, job creation, expansion of the company’s global footprint, and a pursuit of strategic mergers and acquisitions—all with the overarching purpose of better serving the international business requirements of its prestigious and ever-growing client base.

Today, TransPerfect has over 9,500+ full-time employees and a network of over 10,000 certified linguists and subject-area specialists, all dedicated to helping clients overcome business challenges. With offices in more than 140 cities around the globe, TransPerfect is the world’s largest language services provider. Its global group of companies completes over 400,000 projects per year, and works with many of the world's most recognizable enterprises.