The importance of getting a translation 100% correct can never be over-stated. Even the slightest deviance from the original text can convey an entirely different message to the one that was intended; and this only serves to underline the value of sourcing good quality, professional translators.

But what about translations that are 100% wrong? Well, besides the embarrassment suffered by the parties involved and the bemusement/amusement of those looking on, the main thing it reveals is that they have simply cut corners and haven’t bothered to do their foreign language homework.

The snowball effect of Lingo24’s recent media coverage has been fascinating to watch. Our recent appearance in the Sunday Times' ‘How I made it’ section was picked up on by Freelance UK, because of our strong links with the freelance fraternity.

Not one to shirk away from the latest new-fangled networking tools, Lingo24 can twitter, CrunchBase or YouNoodle with the best of them.

And it is fascinating how easily a company’s entire online activity can now be monitored with such ease. Earlier this year, YouNoodle – the online platform for the global entrepreneurial community – created a dynamic directory of active startup companies, compiled from its own proprietary tracking technology.

They say that no news is good news, but that’s not always the case. Lingo24 has been receiving some fantastic coverage lately and, following on from recent features in the Press and Journal, the Financial Times, the Edinburgh Evening News and the Brand Republic, the Sunday Times did a little feature on us at the weekend too.

As one of the world’s most profitable companies, it’s hardly surprising that Google has a pretty impressive office environment for its staff to enjoy. 

The Googleplex - located in Santa Clara County, California – boasts swimming pools, fountains, volleyball courts, slides and a replica of Space Ship One. And as if that wasn’t enough, it even has a full size dinosaur skeleton as part of its decor!

Of course, even Lingo24 would struggle to match that. But that’s not stopping us from launching our very own ‘Lingo-plex’ in our main operational hub in Timisoara, Romania.

Although Mandarin is the world’s number one language in terms of the number of native language speakers (almost 900 million, incidentally...), English is the most widely spoken language in terms of the number of overall speakers, estimated to be somewhere in the region of 1.5 billion people.

At a time when many businesses may be trying to protect what they have and limit any perceived ‘unnecessary’ spending, there is actually a strong case for taking a different approach by boldly seeking out new opportunities in untapped ‘emerging’ markets.

The majority of the internet is written in English; however, the majority of the internet community’s first language isn’t English, which means there is a clear gap there that many businesses could be using to their benefit.

He came, he saw and now he may well conquer. That’s right, Lingo24’s founder and Managing Director Christian Arno is a finalist in the Scotsman Newspaper-sponsored ‘Entrepreneur of the Year Award’ category at the 2009 National Business Awards for Scotland.

Any company that is truly global will communicate with its international clients in their own tongue - as far as is feasible.

Moreover, for a translation company, it’s probably fair to say that it’s even more important that we are able to communicate professionally in a number of languages. Indeed, one of the main reasons we chose to open offices in Panama and Timisoara (Romania) is because of the skill-sets in these two particular locations – chiefly, they are very multilingual places.