Larry Gould formed thebigword (originally known as the Link Up Group) in 1980 to provide clients with the highest quality customer service across both recruitment and language services.

 

The language services industry was very different 30 years ago, when both our clients and thebigword were reliant on postal and fax services to receive and deliver our translation documents.

 

The growth and success of thebigword is due to Larry’s vision and understanding of the role that technology would play in the future and how the Internet would revolutionise the process for translation and localisation. This vision has seen the company grow from a small UK-based service to a multinational corporation, establishing a global network of 7,572 linguists working in 77 countries across the world.

 

In 1996 thebigword decided the direction and focus for the company would change and that our future would be in providing language services alone; the recruitment division was sold and thebigword began to establish our place as one of the world’s leading global language service providers.

 

As technology advanced, so did thebigword, with the development of our international teams and secure and sophisticated systems and processes to effectively manage translation and localisation workflows.

 

thebigword has always been a pioneer within the language services industry; always looking for the most cost effective and timely solutions for our clients. We were the first language services company to achieve ISO 9001:2008 certification and have consistently demonstrated our commitment to quality and meeting regulatory requirements across all industries.

 

Our people and teams are the best in the industry, developed through world-class training and development programmes. thebigword was also the first language services company to achieve Investors in People, and we continue to find the best people to support our clients.  

 

In 2005 thebigword became one of the world’s top ten translation companies, based on revenue and 2007 saw us ranked as the fastest growing language services company in the world, based on organic growth.

 

Our focus on developing technology saw thebigword launch LanguageDirector® in 2007, a new ultra-secure, web-based system for managing each element in the translation workflow process. In 2008 LanguageDirector® was ranked as the 2nd most effective translation management system in the world within just twelve months of its introduction into the language services industry.

 

The development of LanguageDirector® continues and we believe the new features introduced in 2009 will see us hit the number one position.

 

The future vision of thebigword is to be recognised as the world’s most efficient language services provider, supported by the best technology in the industry.