CYPRESS — Argentine immigrant Marta Marquez had always dreamed of becoming a teacher, while her son, Alex, had his heart set on becoming a business executive.
So when the enterprising mother of four and her son started a language-translation and interpreting service in 1984, they counted themselves lucky to land 15 customers a month and ring up $10,000 in sales the first year.
But much to their surprise, Iberia Language Services Inc. grew so fast the following year that Marta Marquez, a homemaker most of her life, began working at the company full time. And her son quit his job as an advertising copy reader.
Last year, the Cypress firm averaged 500 assignments a month throughout California and registered sales of nearly $400,000. Since January, the company has been averaging 600 jobs per month and the calls just keep coming in, said Alex Marquez, Iberia's chief financial officer. The company has assembled a roster of 300 linguists to help fill the demand.
"We never imagined that we would be this busy when we started the business," Marta Marquez said. "I don't even have the time to cook anymore. Alex and I start the day very early, and we don't get home until late in the evening."
The Marquezes say they stumbled into a business that was ready to blossom in an era of expanding economic globalization and international trade, sweeping political and economic changes in Eastern Europe, and continuing shifts in the demographic composition of the United States.
Similar tales are being told across the country as companies and organizations that specialize in foreign-language instruction and translation and interpreting services report a healthy surge in business.
Spurred by international changes unfolding all around them, companies anxious to tap foreign markets are scrambling to get their technical manuals translated into Japanese or Russian and to hire interpreters to help their executives say "Let's do business" in Chinese or Spanish.
"Foreign competition has forced American industries to actively market their products overseas in a wise way," said Martha Geller, regional marketing director of Berlitz Translation Services in San Francisco, a unit of New York-based Berlitz International, the world's largest language-school operator.
"It's not just taking the product overseas and selling it; it's a matter of localizing the product to meet local needs," she said. "And language is essentially a part of localizing and marketing products abroad."
The growth of the translation and interpreting business is not just a U.S. phenomenon. During the 1980s, Berlitz, which operates 272 language centers in 25 countries, saw its worldwide sales from translation services roughly double. Company officials expect that trend to continue as global trade competition heats up.
As demand for translators and interpreters rises, schools around the country report that the study of foreign languages, which has been in decline for a number of years, is making a comeback.
Berlitz officials say Spanish and English remain the most popular languages for students, while Japanese has been the fastest-growing language in the United States during the past five years.
Outside the business world, language-service providers also have benefited from a growing demand for interpreters and translators in the U.S. court system. Since the mid-1970s, federal law has required courts to provide interpeters in criminal cases involving defendants who speak no English.
Most translators and interpreters in this country are highly educated immigrants who are attracted to the trade by high pay and flexible working hours. And many say they also get immediate recognition and respect from their peers. But not anyone can be an interpreter or translator, said Robyn Schlesinger, president of Japanese American Communications of Newport Beach.
Interpreters, for example, have to be sensitive to a culture and to the context in which a statement is being made, she said. "There are many ways to say no in Japanese and generally it's not the word \o7 no\f7 as translated . . . since it's very rude to come right out and say no in Japanese," she said.
While the key to translating and interpreting is making a foreign language understandable to all parties, the two services require different skills. Translators tend to work alone and deal only with written documents such as contracts, technical manuals and legal papers. Interpreting is a verbal exercise that requires instantaneous understanding and correct translation of a statement.
Of the two skills, the job of an interpreter is considered the most demanding. Interpreters are under considerable pressure to quickly and accurately translate often-critically important statements during business negotiations or a public hearing.
