Found in translation
New Ottawa Translation Company offers Businesses More than Just Words

By Christina Friedrichsen

Published on April 11, 2007 in Ottawa Citizen


Three thousand dollars. That's all it took for Ottawa’s Huiping Iler, 32, to start Wintranslation.com, a translation service, which eight years after its humble beginnings, grosses over $1 million a year in annual revenue.

Not bad for someone who at the age of 20 arrived in Canada from China knowing barely a soul. Not bad for someone who, after graduating on a scholarship with a masters in communications from the University of Windsor, had no idea what she wanted to do with her life.

"I never even considered being an entrepreneur until several months before I started my business,” she says.

What she did know, however, even before she graduated, was that she relished her freedom and didn’t want to give it up at a job behind a desk in somebody else’s office.

It was after working at a non-profit centre that assisted new Canadians and immigrants in Windsor, Ontario, that Iler saw an opportunity.

“There were no business to business translation services in Windsor,” she says.

Iler set up shop in her tiny one bedroom apartment and before long she was making enough money to pay her living expenses. A contract with the Canadian Consulate Detroit led to bigger contracts and soon the work began pouring in.

Now, eight years later, the service provides translation in everything from websites to training manuals in over 100 languages. Although there are only two employees, there are 150 active contractors throughout the world. Clients include Maple Leaf Foods, Leap Frog, Caterpillar, the RCMP and the Ontario Court of Justice.

Just recently, Iler moved her family and wintranslation.com’s head office from Windsor to Ottawa.

“What I like about Ottawa is that it has a lot of natural beauty and green space. It is a great city to raise a family. At the same time, because the federal government is here, there are a lot opportunities for a business like mine,” she says.

She says her decision to relocate is already paying off. In the six months that she has been here she says she’s already hired talented staff and made some excellent contacts.

“On the business development front, I am working on some very exciting opportunities. They will take some time to close, but I can already see that having a presence in Ottawa helps a lot,” she says.

According to Iler, there are more translation companies here than in Windsor, but she believes her company has filled a niche that other local companies are not filling. Iler explains that aside from offering translation, her company helps clients creates international web presences.

“There is a lot of competition here in Ottawa, especially in the English to French language category. But my company focuses on opportunities related to doing business with China as well as international online marketing such as search engine optimization and cross-cultural usability,” she says.

Search engine optimization, a form of marketing that helps businesses achieve high rankings in search engines and gain more exposure, is still in its infancy, says Iler. This is especially true when it comes to companies with international websites. Many companies that have invested in developing multilingual content for their international customers simply are not effective because nobody can find those sites.

“There is a knowledge gap. P eople don't know too much about what it involves to promote through search engines, especially in another language. They don't know even some of the basic practices,” she says. This is a big problem considering search engines refer more than 80% of traffic to a web site on average and also 60% of all internet searches are conducted in a language other than English.

However, she’s noticed that more and more of her customers have a keen interest in the topic once they realized that higher rankings in search engines bring increased sales.

“We’ve been finding that when customers ask us to do a web site translation, they want to make more sales from their target market. In that situation, translation is only a part of the whole process. That is why we decided to offer multilingual search engine marketing service so that our customers' sites can be found more easily and therefore generate more sales,” she says.

Making a web site user friendly and giving customers a good experience is another aspect. There is nothing more frustrating for a potential customer to land on your site, only to find your content irrelevant or offensive. Communicating on the internet across cultures only adds to the challenge. Iler’s company helps customers identify problems on their multilingual sites before they are launched.

Iler is eager to explore the many opportunities she sees in Ottawa. She says the Government of Canada, for instance, has many initiatives involving China, and that she believes her services could be of great value. Agriculture Canada, for example, is working with China to train Chinese farmers, she says. She believes her company could provide the government with support services such as culture and protocol training as well as translation. She also believes there are untapped opportunities in the tourism and high tech industries in Ottawa.

Iler says she has yet to find any other translation companies that promote search engine optimization capabilities along with their translation services. This, she says, gives her business an edge.

“I think globalization has definitely created more opportunities for the translation industry. It is a service that people and businesses will always need. But like any service, you have to adapt to the changing needs of your customers. To thrive, you need to be on top of the trends, and not be afraid to reinvent yourself,” she says.

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Published with the author's permission.

wintranslation.com in the press:
Multilingual by Multilingual Computing (No. 1 trade publication in the translation industry):
Business metrics for language companies

Business Edge:
Expertise maximizes global web presence- High ranking on search engines can pay big dividends (pdf)

CBC Radio Canada International “The Link”
Profile of WTB Language Group Inc. (click to listen)