When I founded Alpha CRC in 1987, I had no idea I was stepping into an industry that would reinvent itself every few years. Looking back, I’ve been extraordinarily fortunate to have had a front-row seat to some remarkable changes in technology, communications, and business. Nearly forty years on, I find myself just as curious about what’s coming next.
My very first project was translating the user guide for Acorn’s BBC Microcomputer into German. At the time, 1987, it was an exciting opportunity to help an ambitious British technology company reach a new market. It also taught me that translation in a newly emerging field wasn’t just about words, but about finding the right voice for a completely new audience and a new way of doing things. Little did I realize that it marked the beginning of a journey through what was to become known as ‘localization’.
Following on from this early success, Alpha secured partnerships with companies such as Apple and NeXT, helping to bring some of the first word processors, spreadsheets, and databases to international users. As the number of languages and projects grew, so did we. We localized flight simulators, racing games, chess programmes, and role-playing games long before the gaming industry became the global phenomenon it is today.
A few years later came the brief but memorable CD-ROM era. Two projects I still remember with particular affection (as I am sure will those of our translators who were involved, too) were the official interactive guide to the Vermeer exhibition at the Mauritshuis in The Hague and a CD-ROM based on Sophie’s World, Jostein Gaarder’s wonderful introduction to the history of philosophy. So, all of a sudden we were involved in educational videos, subtitling, and voice-overs.
And technology never stands still. Just as we had become experts in some new areas, other opportunities arose. We diversified into medical technology, automotive, consumer products, premium fashion, and many other specialist fields, while growing our language portfolio and international reach. Along the way we opened offices across Europe, from Barcelona and Montpellier to Bologna, Brno, and Berlin. We welcomed new colleagues into the Alpha CRC family, acquired operations in Tallinn and the Far East, and more recently in Athens, strengthening our ability to support clients across Europe and beyond.
People often ask whether translation has changed beyond recognition. In many ways, it has. I’ve watched the industry move from manual typewriters and IBM Selectrics to floppy disks, fax machines, CAT tools, cloud platforms, and now generative AI and automated text-to-speech. Every technological leap has prompted predictions that translation, as we know it, is about to vanish. Yet every wave of innovation has ultimately reinforced the same lesson: technology changes the tools and the skillset.
Perhaps because we started out in software localization, Alpha CRC has always been keen on technology. We’ve never been afraid to adopt new tools if they genuinely help us work better. Today, AI is transforming almost every aspect of localization, from terminology extraction and quality assurance to translation, review, and testing. We embrace those developments enthusiastically. But experience has also taught us that successful localization has never been about pressing a button and hoping for the best. It comes from combining intelligent technology with experienced people who understand language, culture, context, and, above all, the client’s objectives and preferences. For me, the question isn’t whether to accept and use AI. The question is how to use it intelligently. How to complement it with what it doesn’t have: judgement, experience, common sense, and what decades of working with clients have taught us.
One thing that has remained constant throughout those decades is what I enjoy most about this profession. I still love finding the right tone and rhythm for a piece of writing. I still enjoy hitting on the one phrase that suddenly makes a cumbersome paragraph or a slogan sound alluring and exciting. And I still find myself trying to work out what the author of an obscure sentence was trying to say and then rendering it into something readers will easily grasp. You might be surprised to know how often that turns out to be part of the job – and increasingly so.
Wolf Schneider, Germany’s foremost champion of clear writing, puts it like this:
“If a complicated process is to be explained clearly, someone has to do the hard work: either the writer or the reader. Writers have a habit of passing that burden on to their readers.”
Wolf Schneider
Replace ‘readers’ with ‘translators’ and this becomes a wonderfully fitting aphorism that is even more relevant now, in the age of AI, where content is produced at ever greater speed. Models can generate endless fluent texts and translations in seconds. What they cannot do is guarantee that the cognitive effort has been put in by the writer. Clarity therefore often becomes the task of the translator. That has not changed.
Looking back, I’m grateful that so many clients have stayed with us for decades, while many new ones continue to place their trust in us. I’m equally grateful to the remarkable colleagues, linguists, project managers, engineers, and specialists who have helped shape Alpha CRC over the years. Any success we’ve enjoyed has always been a collective achievement. That’s something I’ve never lost sight of. Nearly forty years after that first BBC Micro manual landed on my desk, I still don’t know what the next week will bring. That’s one of the reasons I continue to enjoy coming to work. Every project is different, every client presents a new challenge, and every technological advance opens another chapter. But I know that we can always find a solution.
The tools have changed beyond anything I could have imagined in 1987. Our mission hasn’t. Our job is still to help companies communicate naturally and reach a wider audience in more countries. After four decades, I’ve learnt not to ignore new technologies, nor to see them as the enemy. The challenge is to understand them well enough to put them to good use.