Who We Are

Company Background

Translation Agency Applied Language Solutions was founded in 2003 by Gavin Wheeldon (pictured right) who ran the business from his spare bedroom doing everything himself; sales, programming, project management, and even the general administration.

As the customer numbers began to increase it was clear that he needed more people to carry out the work, so in 2004 Gavin began to recruit an operations team in the UK. With the team in place the company was able to focus on obtaining key accreditations such as ISO9001, ISO14001, ISO18001, DIN and Investors in People, all of which helped move the company and its service standards to a new level.

As a result of impressive sales growth the office was soon filled with talented and enthusiastic staff, but to achieve steady international growth and provide a truly 24/7 service it was clear that the business needed to expand overseas. Offices were opened in the US, Bulgaria, India, Guatemala, France, Spain and Germany.

To help our translators and to ensure excellent project management from any Applied Language Solutions location, we designed and launched Talkbase.net. This dedicated web portal provides staff and customers with a secure way to keep track of the projects they are working on and, just as importantly, ensure that costs are accurately recorded, and our translators are paid on time.

A huge part of the company’s success is down to the 17,500 highly qualified translators we have based around the world.

The global growth of Applied Language Solutions, both in terms of an international customer base and employees around the world, was recognised in April 2010 with a prestigious Queen’s Award for Enterprise. In the same year we also secured investment of £1.4million to fund our international expansion further.

This investment enabled the company to invest heavily in research, development and design of customized machine translation technology. A team was recruited from Dublin City University led by Professor Andy Way and the team has built solutions for some of the biggest brands in the world. In mid 2011 ALS launched the first version of SmartMATE, its self-serve machine translation solution.

The latest chapter of the ALS story was completed in December 2011, when the company was acquired by Capita Group Plc. ALS will continue to operate as a stand-alone Company within the Capita group, representing a new service offering for the corporation.

The hard work recognised

All the hard work from the team across all of our offices has been recognised times and time again. Since late 2005 the company has been awarded:

• The National Winner of the HSBC Startup Stars Award
• Exporter of the year from UKTI
• Credit Suisse ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ for the North East of England and with the Institute of Directors
• The website is an official Honoree in the Webby Awards
• Small to medium Business of the year with the National Business Awards
• Six awards from the British chambers of Commerce including Customer Service
• North West Business Insider 42 under 42
• Sunday Times Fast Track 100 – in 2009 and 2010
• Queen’s Award for Enterprise 2010: International Trade

The Expansion Continues

The company today employs 186 members of staff worldwide, provides language solutions to customers in over 90 countries, in at least 150 different languages – and all of it…with a smile!

The work doesn’t stop there. We have even more plans in the pipeline for expansion into Australasia and South America through a combination of owned offices and sales agents.

This will ensure that Applied Language Solutions will remain well placed to provide accurate, high-quality language solutions, regardless of your global location, time zone or language.

Applied Language Solutions was registered in the UK on 07 May 2004.

Company registration number: UK 5122429

UK staff

Manchester Head Office

The Applied Language Solutions UK head office moved to our current Oldham base in August 2008, relocating over the Pennine hills from Huddersfield to Greater Manchester. Situated in the picturesque village of Delph in the Saddleworth Hills the head office provides translation services in Manchester as well as covering the whole of the UK.

The head office is within easy reach of the national motorway network, only 5 miles from junction 21 of the M62, 5 miles from Oldham and 12 miles from Manchester city centre.

The Oldham office is also home to the UK staff including our Senior Management, Sales and Marketing and Service Delivery teams.

US staff

Chicago Office

Our Chicago office is home to the Mid-West team who provide Interpreting and translation services in Chicago and surrounding areas. The Mid-West team also look after customers across the whole of the Central time zone.

Los Angeles Office

Our West Coast office is based in La Habra, in the North West corner of Orange County, California. The Applied Language West Coast Sales Team provide Interpreters and Translators in Los Angeles as well as the entire West Coast, Pacific and Mountain Time Zones.

Bulgarian staff

Sofia Office

Our Sofia office is situated in the very heart of the Bulgarian capital, five minutes walk from the main high street and within walking distance from virtually everywhere worth visiting in Sofia.
We are located on Tri Ushi Street which translated means “three ears” in Bulgarian and named after a hill near Sofia, where a historical battle once took place.

Sofia is home to our in-house software development team and a large team of translation project managers.

HR Kremena Zheleva Office Assistant Technology Yonka Sapundzhieva Senior Software Developer George Ivanov Ushmanov System Administrator Team Leader Direct Dial : +44 (0)844 854 8946 Iliya Tonkov Software Developer Ivan Petrov Software Developer Service Delivery Michaela Michailova Project Account Manager Direct Dial : +44 (0)844 854 8931 Kami Milcheva Service Delivery Manager Direct Dial : +44 (0)844 854 8999 Georgi Petrov Technical File Engineer Georgi Kotsev Project Manager Direct Dial : +44 (0)844 888 7218 Lyubima Kovacheva Project Manager Finance Gergana Naydenova Credit Controller Direct Dial : +44 (0)870 225 1534 Strategic Service Delivery Maria Angelova Project Support Assistant Direct Dial : +44 (0)844 854 8926 Katya Popova Project Manager Direct Dial : +44 (0)844 854 8944 Diana Vladimirova Project Manager Niya Mateeva Project Support Assistant

Sofia Office Address 8 Tri Ushi Str. Fl. 2 Office 1 Triaditsa 1301 Sofia Bulgaria

Indian staff

Chennai Office

Applied Language Solutions India is located in the coastal city of Chennai in India’s southernmost state Tamil Nadu. Formerly known as Madras, Chennai is the fourth largest city in India with an estimated population of around 8 million.
The Chennai office provides sales and project support to out US and UK offices and covers the Asian and Australian time zones.

Our Translators

Working with a database of over 17,500 translators covering every industry, we’ll align translators to your specific technical requirements, who are subject matter experts in their field, whether it’s manufacturing, legal or marketing. As one of the world’s fastest growing translation agencies we receive applications from translators all over the world each week, who want to work with our customers. Each one is fully vetted and reference-checked before we assign any projects to them.

As a bare minimum all linguists must:

• Be a fully qualified translator with the appropriate qualifications (such as, IOL, ATA, ITI) and/or a degree in their target language which we verify
• Have a minimum of three years verifiable experience as a professional linguist
• Be a member of the relevant in country translation body
• Translate only into their mother tongue and be in-country (unless second generation translation is required)
• Be appropriately qualified in a specific technical area, for example IT/Telecoms, media or gaming services, with three years experience
• Have a minimum of two references from previous projects

We will always use translators who live in-country as language is an evolving entity and therefore any translator who has been out of the country for a reasonable length of time will be unsuitable to translate material for that target audience. The exception to this rule is where the material is aimed at communities living outside of that country. In these circumstances a translator from the target country will be used wherever possible.

Work with us

If you would like to become one of our translators, please send your CV to suppliersALS@appliedlanguage.com and a member of our team will be in touch to talk to you about full time or freelance opportunities.

Translators