To better serve international clients, XTRA Translation Services is expanding its language offering to 30 target languages. Through cooperations with in-country Localization Partners, XTRA is targeting clients in the information technology sector who wish to outsource to multi-language vendors (MLVs).

Since the founding of the company in 1993, XTRA has been serving the German subsidiaries of global IT companies as a single-language vendor (SLV) for German translations. According to Stefan Lampert, founder and Managing Director of the company, XTRA's decision to offer multilingual services was mainly triggered by the desire to satisfy the increasing need for clients to assure quality in projects requiring more than one target language. "Many clients told us they would like to cut down their internal project management effort by using MLVs, but hesitate due to concerns about maintaining quality."

Mr. Lampert maintains that this hesitation is justified. "Localization vendors with local subsidiaries often seem to suffer from poor communication and high employee turnover, both of which strongly affect quality. Globalizing a translation business is a tricky task. In theory, buying up a small translation company to gain access to local resources seems to be a promising solution, though in reality it is often very different. Those who were formerly the backbone of a small translation company quickly lose motivation once new decision makers begin ignoring the culture and strengths of the local subsidiary."

Mr. Lampert says the main objective of the Localization Partnership Program is to enable clients to receive the same level of quality from XTRA as a multi-language vendor as they do from one or more good SLVs. Through the partnership program, the standards set for projects apply across all languages.

The Managing Director of the German-based company says XTRA's quality-driven business model fills an industry gap. "We strongly believe that independent and locally owned localization vendors with highly committed and responsive staffs are best suited to meet high client expectations." He added, "To us, both vendors and clients are partners. Basically, our job is about people, processes, technology and communication. In other words, we make sure that the right people are well managed, use the best tools and exchange the appropriate information."

"Our expansion strategy," he continued, "will be in three phases. The top priority single-byte languages, French, Spanish, Italian, and Brazilian Portuguese will be accompanied by the double-byte languages Japanese, Chinese (Simplified), and Korean. In the second phase we will expand our offering to the languages of European Union member countries, and in the third phase to languages of developing markets. Since our localization and QA Partners will add the localization, internationalization, and testing expertise and resources for the miscellaneous target locales, XTRA will be able to provide tremendous multilingual expertise for international clients."

When asked about the clients targeted in XTRA's partnership plan, he replied, "We do not meet the needs of every company. Instead, our specialization allows us to cater for clients from the information technology sector who are looking to centralize their multilingual operations without compromising their high-quality standards."