“

If you can't feed a hundred people, then just feed one.

”

—Mother Teresa

David Stevens

Hallo, Bonjour, or Guten Tag!

David Stevens has been translating Dutch, French, and German for McElroy Translation for nearly 20 years! David brings with him degrees in math, physics, and chemistry, as well as language skills acquired both academically and on the job.

The work that David has done for us over the years has been invaluable, and we are so very pleased and honored to get to profile him at this time. Hope you enjoy reading his story as much as we did!

David Steven's Profile.

The McElroy HUB

Technology is bliss! Change is sublime! Finally, we reap the rewards of months of design, programming, testing, and implementation!

What's all the fuss about? It's what we call the McElroy Hub, a web-based portal for vendor management, project communications, and eventually a community gathering spot.

What's in it for us? First and foremost, it gets us out of our many e-mail boxes and onto a single, integrated dashboard internally, and website externally, to manage project communications, file transfers, and all things vendor related. Following behind in close second place are the productivity gains. Even before full implementation, we have saved the equivalent of one full-time position. We spend less time on repetitive tasks that lend themselves to automation, more time on the human aspects of our work that do not lend themselves to automation, and share an integrated system for multiple project managers to work with the same pool of contractors, consequently getting more work done with the same number of staff. Believe it or not, the Hub even files invoices—what a luxury!

What's in it for you? You win on several counts. The most basic is that your projects get assigned more quickly. We can store qualifications and performance data in an easily searchable database, thus making it quicker and easier to identify the translator that is the best fit for your project. We can even “assign” the project to a pool of pre-qualified translators in order to minimize turn-around time. The Hub also allow us to recruit for projects much more quickly. We can write rules to automatically hand off files from one step to another, eliminating time spent in the schedule simply waiting for a human to press the "send" button. We have a central location to work with teams of translators and editors. The bottom line is that we are better able to do more, with less, to manage the quality, schedule, and cost of your projects.

What's next? In the weeks and months to come, we will be adding functionality, integrating more fully with other departments in our company, and establishing a community space for translators, localizers, linguists, and others involved in our industry. We look forward to helping you reap the benefits of our investment in technology and change, as well as helping ourselves, and will continue reporting the upgrades to you.

Dutch

McElroy is continuing this series of interviews that highlight some of the characteristics of languages used in doing business globally. This month, we look at Dutch.

Dutch is a West Germanic language spoken by around 24 million people, 22 million of whom are from the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, but also including smaller groups of speakers in parts of France, Germany, and several former Dutch colonies. It is closely related to other West Germanic languages (e.g., English, West Frisian, and German) and somewhat more remotely to the North Germanic languages.

This month we dive into this language and learn some of the characteristics that are unique or different from English and/or other languages, pitfalls to avoid, and the influence that English has had over Dutch.

Read full Translator interview.

McElroy Gives Back—Ronald McDonald House of Austin

When a child becomes seriously ill or injured, the whole family suffers, particularly if the loved one must be hospitalized or receive outpatient treatment far from home for extended periods of time.

To be together, family members often sleep on uncomfortable cots or chairs, in their cars, or bear the expense of a hotel room. At a time when they want all their strength available, the simple demands of everyday life can seem overwhelming.

For these families, Ronald McDonald House of Austin is a temporary home-away-from-home where they can have a comfortable room and bed, kitchen and laundry facilities, and a play area. They can draw hope and strength from late-night conversations over a hot cup of coffee, sharing with other residents those experiences that may be difficult for family and friends back home to fully understand. A child's life-threatening illness brings much more than worry and financial hardship; it is a family's most heart-wrenching experience. While Ronald McDonald House of Austin cannot ease the pain sick children and their families experience, they can help lessen their burden.

While the scope of McElroy Translation's philanthropy program is global, we actively seek out worthy organizations in our community to discuss what we can do to assist, whether pro bono translation, donations, or hands-on volunteering.

We are pleased that we were able to offer free localization services for The Ronald McDonald House of Austin website, as well as providing a cash donation; if our pattern as a company holds true, no doubt at least one volunteer will also emerge. A tour of their facility revealed both happiness and hope, with a committed and wonderful staff whose work life revolves around helping others.

If you would like more information, please visit www.rmhc.com, which provides information about locations in your community, and how you can help.