Do you have $23,4 million to spare? How about bidding farewell to 4% of your last year’s global turnover? No? Setting up your online meeting via Zoom or Skype is fast and easy. But if you do business with the EU, your online platform must comply with GDPR. Or else—well, $23,4 million.

What is GDPR?

GDPR is an EU law and stands for General Data Protection Regulation. It was implemented in 2018 to regulate how companies working with anyone from the EU must safeguard their data. It defines principles on data protection and privacy rights of EU citizens. It requires any organization to implement technical and organizational measures to protect personal data, e.g., by encryption.

But GDPR is an EU law. My business is in the US.

GDPR is a law on data protection of EU citizens and residents. So the fact that your company is not registered in the EU bears little importance. As long as you process personal data of people from the EU, you must comply with GDPR. 

Bear in mind that “processing” and “personal data” are broad concepts. For instance, tracking visitors on your website already means you’re processing their personal data. You might be based in Houston, Texas, and do business mostly locally. But if someone from Germany lands on your website, you’re breaching the law if you’re not GDPR compliant.

By analogy, the law extends to online meetings. Let’s say a few attendees from your online meeting hail from the Old Continent. Their names, eye color, and opinions are shared via an online platform. You’re processing their personal data.

How can LingPerfect help with GDPR?

Minding international regulations is bread-and-butter for us. We set up online interpreting sessions daily for our clients doing business with the EU on a daily basis. So when GDPR came into force, we knew we had to find a compliant solution. 

While others played with twisting Zoom or Skype into an interpreting-ready scramble, we took things more seriously. We offer our clients an online interpreting platform that is easy and intuitive. But most importantly, it’s secure, and 100% GDPR-compliant. 

Care to give it a test ride? Get in touch and we’ll show you how it works.

Business interpreters are savvy beings. They marry language skills with the art of negotiation, diplomacy, and etiquette. They can help you ace your meeting objectives like strike a new deal or negotiate better prices. 

Are you in charge of organizing your next multilingual business meeting? Follow these five simple steps, and you can put the champagne in the icebox. We guarantee your meeting will be a success.

1. Talk to your participants

“Lost in translation” doesn’t happen when you have an interpreter in a multilingual meeting. It happens when you ask non-native speakers to express themselves in a language other than their own. 

Give your overseas  participants the chance to speak in their language with the help of a business interpreter. You’ll be surprised to see how many people will accept the offer. Better still, compile a list of language variants. Your business partners from Montreal most likely use a different business jargon than they do in Paris.

2. Plan for extra time

With simultaneous interpreting, the timing remains unaffected. If you use a liaison interpreter, your meeting will take twice longer. Sometimes, the language expert will need to reword or clarify. Especially if you express a concept that isn’t easy to explain in the target language. Don’t fall into the trap of seeing your participants disconnect in the middle of a great discussion just because you underestimated the time needed.

If your meeting agenda compiles to an hour’s worth of discussion, plan double.

3. Choose an business interpreter with experience in your industry

Good business interpreting isn’t just about knowing two languages well. Healthcare industry, automotive, insurance sectors: they each contain a plethora of industry-specific terms. That’s why many interpreters specialize in a few fields over time. 

Ask your language partner to find a business interpreter with subject-matter expertise. That way, you’ll both be concentrating on the important stuff: the meeting’s objectives, not the glossary.

4. Prep your business interpreter

We can’t stress this point enough. Even if you get an interpreter who knows your business well, spend some time on prepping. Send your language agency the agenda and any presentations you will use during your meeting. Explain your objectives. Share insights on the history of your relationship with your business partner. Answer any questions you might be getting from the interpreter. 

Your business interpreter is your aide, not a talking box.

5. Meeting’s online? Here’s some extra advice

Most of our meetings have switched to remote in the last few months. Is yours happening over a video call, too? Pen these few tips down:

• Ask the attendees to join from a quiet place. Your business interpreter has a tough job to do. Trucks in the background won’t help.
• Ask everyone to turn on the camera. Gestures, eye movement, facial expressions often reveal more than the words themselves. Give your business interpreter the chance to catch these non-utterances.
• Make sure everyone has a good internet connection. Don’t let freezes and cutoffs sink your meeting.
• Keep your business discussions confidential. Choose a secure interpreting platform. Don’t know which? Head over here. Or call us to learn all about our secure online interpreting platform.

It’s good to dip one’s feet out of one’s comfort zone, they say. Spend time with people outside your picket fence. It freshens perspectives. Brings new ideas into life. But there are times when peer support brings fresh ideas, too. When flocking together with birds of a feather means exchanging good practices, learning new things. And why not—raising the bar of the trade that unites you. But you need to choose your peers wisely. Aim for the best. We did. We became members of ATA, the American Translators Association.

ATA members: much more than just translators and interpreters

ATA is the largest and one of the longest-standing associations of translators and interpreters in the States. 

Brought to life in 1959, it grew to reach over 10,000 members today. Its band goes well beyond American language experts. Currently, ATA members come from over 100 countries.

ATA members are not just translators and interpreters. There are educators and software developers. There are agencies, government offices. Even hospital representatives. This mix of professions proves translation is so much more than just knowing a foreign brogue.

ATA members have access to a myriad of webinars and workshops. They can also get ATA-certified in more than 15 language pairs.

But ATA’s most notable event, however, remains the ATA Annual Conference.

ATA members’ annual conference: the language industry’s finest mob

The ATA Annual Conference is a three-day event attracting language mavens from all four corners of the world. Participants can choose from over 100 different sessions with top-notch panelists and industry experts. We don’t discuss theory. There’s a lot of practical knowledge shared. Here’s a quick bite of a few topics from this year’s program, which will be exceptionally held online, for you-know-which reasons:

• “Translating for the Pharmaceutical Industry and Language Access”
• “Localization for Applications on Voice Assistants”
• “Legal Translation: How Hard Can It Be?” (sarcasm intended)
• “Terminology Management”

ATA + LingPerfect: what’s in it for you?

The easy answer would be: we can certify our translations with ATA’s rubber stamp. This seal means a lot when you need official translations from us. But that’s just a nibble.

It should be clear by now that ATA is not a trade union. With peer members, we discuss the recent developments, share new technologies. We put our heads together to solve the language industry’s biggest conundrums. We do this to deliver better, faster, and smarter language services to you. 

If there’s anything new and exciting in the language market, ATA members get to know it first. So you are first in line to benefit from it, too.

Winds of change are blowing across the Chicago translation services scene. 

It’s been some time in the making, but it’s finally here. We are proud to inform you that we opened our new branch office in Windy City.

Chicago is the biggest city in the Midwest and the third largest in the US. It’s also an international hub for finance, commerce and industry. Several Fortune 500 companies have settled their headquarters on the shores of lake Michigan. Among the prominent names, we find Boeing, Exelon, and United Airlines.

This diversified industrial hub has been ranking as one of the most productive areas in the world for years. In 2018, the Chi-town area generated a whopping $689 billion of gross domestic product (GDP).

What will we bring to the Chicago translation services landscape?

Expanding our reach to the Midwest came naturally. We’ve had a major growth in translation services for engineering, legal, and finance industries. And many of our clients have their headquarters in Chicago.

Our focus on quality and technology brought shorter turnaround time. Our clients like that we listen to their needs and structure our development along their own strategic axes. So we diversified our portfolio of services, too. A good example is our recent boost in growing our remote interpreting services.

Our localization expertise is yet another benefit we bring to the Chicago businesses. Launching an e-store in Colombia? We can do it. Localizing it for Chile? Sure. Need to tweak your UI to fit with the new locale? No problem there, either.

We are a one-stop-shop who can assist large corporations with localization projects across their global footprint. This is key to streamlining projects and cutting down turnaround time. 

And it’s not just technical text translation we are known for. Across years of work experience, we helped many of our clients with translating marketing collateral, as well. Product pitches, landing pages, video subtitling need a creative approach. Our expert linguists will make it feel like it was written in the target language originally.

Want to schedule a meeting to discuss your translation and localization projects? Our team is here to help you ace your next translation project. 

To get in touch with our Chicago team, hop over here.