Surprisingly few Czechs are aware of the existence of a Czech company having its head office in Brno and running successfully business on European, American and Asian markets. Such leading companies like Microsoft, Oracle and Autodesk belong to its clients. At the time being, it ranks among the four most important companies in the field of software localisation and among the first fifteen companies in the language industry worldwide.
In 1990 doing business was made possible again in Czechoslovakia. It was the period when Rudolf and Eva Forstinger established a translation company called Moravia Translations that became a workplace also for their daughters Katerina and Anna. It was also the period when Arturo Quintero, current Chief Corporate Strategist and co-owner, came from Mexico to Poland. This article is based on an interview with him.
In early 1990s, Arturo studied astronomy in Polish Cracow. Then he moved to Budapest in Hungary where he taught English. In 1991 he met Katerina Forstingerova and joined her family team in Brno. Under his influence, the company started to focus more on clients from the ICT field and on translations of software documentation.
Differentiation begins
Moravia Translations won its first important foreign clients - Hewlett-Packard France and Minolta Austria. On a market, it differentiated through its focus on translations into Czech, top quality and consistency (all translated texts are proof-read), a consistent selection of clients (as a result of higher prices), customisation and through an emphasis on glossary maintainance and project management.
In 1993 it invested all its profits from the preceding period into the purchase of the top technology enabling to look up and reuse already translated texts or similar parts of texts. Using of this tool led to a very successful contract with the Irish Oracle. This resulted in an international expansion to Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and other countries of the East European region in the role of the so-called ?multilanguage vendor? (providing translations into more languages).
From translation to the full localisation
At that time, the core business was still language translation when a supplier did not work directly with a source code. That started only in 1995 when the company finally carried out a full localisation for Microsoft and Corel. More than half of the turnover stemmed from business with foreign clients (today it is more than 95 %).
At the beginning of the new millennium, Moravia Translations became a strong regional player with an 80 % share on an East European market and expanded even further. It became one of four Microsoft premier vendors (selected strategic suppliers for the given area) and the key supplier for MS Windows and MS Office localisation into a still further increasing number of languages including Japanese, Chinese and Korean these days. The general manager Katerina Forstingerova won the Entrepreneur of the Year Award in the Czech Republic organised by Ernst & Young (the only woman to be awarded the prize so far).
Company activities gradually extended to include software testing and engineering. Moravia Translations founded a 100 % owned subsidiary company Moravia IT specialised in software localisation. As in earlier times, the company invests a significant portion of its profits from previous years into developing sales and marketing teams and hiring foreign managers (originally in the USA and Ireland). As Arturo adds, they have not always been lucky with the first choice of a manager.
Nowadays Moravia IT is a joint-stock company with an annual turnover amounting to USD 25 million employing about 400 people (out of them 280 in Brno). Other offices are in California, Tokyo, Nanjing (China) and in four European countries. It is, as a matter of fact, the first company from Eastern Europe opening its branch office in Japan. At the moment, it expands into Southern America opening its branch office in Argentina.
Cooperation offer
The company welcomes cooperation with potential partners (e.g. regarding a joint EU project) above all in the language industry (automatic voice recognition, natural language processing, machine translation, language analysers), testing and IT services or with companies operating call centres or active in the field of document management.
Arturo Quintero is responsible for the development of Moravia IT’s global strategies. He is based in Moravia’s HQ in the Czech Republic and spends extensive periods of time in other Moravia?s locations. Mr. Quintero is with Moravia Worldwide since the beginning, and together with Ms. Katerina Forstingerova has been the driving force behind the company’s growth. He has been an active member of the industry for many years and has had direct involvement in many industry initiatives and events. Currently he is member of TILP, the Institute of Localization Professionals in Ireland, and helps other non-profit associations in an advisory role.
Contact
Arturo Quintero
Tel. +420 545 552 222
E-mail: arturoq@moravia-it.com
www.moravia-it.com
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