UK-based firm opens office in Cebu

CEBU, Philippines - A UK-based translation company is opening an office in Cebu in the next few months, which will be its hub for its Asian operation.

Lingo24 is one of the world’s fast growing translation firms, which has operations in Europe and United States.

This time, while Asia is becoming more attractive the company decided to set up its Asia hub in Cebu, said Lingo24 managing director and founder Christian Arno.

According to Arno, the company is looking at hiring over a hundred people in the next two years.

Currently, Lingo24 is looking at people who have multi-lingual skills specifically Mandarin-Chinese, Japanese, Korean, with excellent communication and writing skills on English language.

“We found Cebu while we were browsing through the Internet, and it fits our requirement [for expansion in Asia]. We tend not to like locating in capital cities. Secondary cities like Cebu still has nice lifestyle,” said Arno in an interview.

Arno, who is a finalist in the “Entrepreneur of the Year” category at the 2009 National Business Awards for Scotland, established the Lingo24, 10 years ago and now his company is trying to help the Philippines find its way to take advantage the US$26 billion translation outsourcing market.

At present, Ling24 is serving translation requirement of big organizations such BBC (British Broadcasting Company) MTV, Burger King, among others.

Also, one of the company’s largest clients is those organizations which are into tourism and travel.

Although, the translation outsourcing is still new in the Philippine outsourcing industry, Arno believes that the country can leverage on this particular service because of the quality of manpower the country has.

According to Arno, one of the top three requirement for company’s manpower pool, include; advanced communication skills, ability to speak and understand other Asian languages, like Japanese, Korean and Mandarin-Chinese.

Lingo24 is so far the first multinational translation company to locate in Cebu. He said translation service is different from the call center operation, and it is regarded as high-value outsourcing service.

In a month, the company is expected to start its commercial operation in Cebu, Arno said.

Lingo24 is a leading translation agency providing translation services London-based and other organizations rely on from its UK bases in London, Aberdeen and Edinburgh.

The company also has operations in the United States, France, Germany, Romania, China and New Zealand. It has clients (international companies, public sector bodies and other translation agencies) in Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham and other cities throughout the UK.

Lingo24 also has a significant international client base from countries as diverse as Australia and Romania, Germany and Japan, Israel and the USA.  (FREEMAN)