Pierre Leonard 'Transl...
Turn Language Barriers into a Competitive Advantage

pierre leonard 'translations'

• http://www.virtual-words.com

• Skype: pierreleonard7

Virtual Words, my translation company, has two offices: one in Denver, run by Valerie Steinier (http://biznik.com/members/valerie-steinier), and one in Europe (Brussels). We turn language barriers into a competitive edge for our clients by getting their message across in about 50 European and Asian languages. Of course, I don't speak all those languages myself - French, English, Dutch and some rusty German are enough for me. That's where the team comes in - an in-house staff of 8 and a large, international network of more than 1500 translators. As a result, when we're asked to translate something, well, we just do it. It can be marketing stuff, technical documentation, online catalogs, and even your brand new video on YouTube. Fortunately, the results don't have anything to do with the cheap bits of... fishy babbling... you can snatch away for free from certain sea creatures that swim about in search engines. My biggest challenge in my business is to explain that a good translation is an asset, not a liability. You don't buy it? Hmm - Let's oversimplify for a second: Would you like to reach 27,000,000 new customers nationwide? ... Well, that's about the amount of Spanish-speaking people living in the US. See? Now you want your online store in Spanish too (-: Let's connect! You will also find me on LinkedIn, Xing and Viadeo.

Business: Translation, simultaneous translation, website localization, subtitling, dubbing. Personal: Networking, connecting, listening, soft selling, getting things started. Also: Co-author of the book "BusinessWise - Words of wisdom for small businesses with big ambitions"

We're best friends with copywriters, web agencies, content managers, PR specialists and video producers, as they can merge our services with their own expertise and turn them into an advantage for themselves and their own clients. If you have good connections in larger or global corporations, with directors of HR, PR, Marketing, Communication or Purchasing departments, and CIOs as well, we should talk, too.

Degree in translation, Isti, Brussels - 1987

I got my degree in translation in 1987, and spent two years doing temporary jobs ranging from lorry driver to packer, journalist and even - yes - translator. After that, and before I founded Virtual Words, I worked as a freelancer for many years, translating, rewriting, subtitling and dubbing all kinds of written and audiovisual material from English, German and Dutch into French, my native language. If you ever have a chance to watch a BBC World or National Geographic documentary in French, the odds are good that this humble translator has done the job.