JLife’s Evangeline Spachis spoke to Leeds-born international business entrepreneur Larry Gould about his multi-million pound translation and interpretation service, thebigword.
First of all, congratulations on your new £120 million contract with the Ministry of Justice.
The contract with the Ministry of Justice is to provide linguists, which covers all the business services and all the courts and prisons in the UK. So it will involve about 3,000 interpreters and translators and it will increase the staff at the Leeds headquarters by over 100 staff.
We’re the largest interpreting company in Europe, so we’ve been looking to see what we can do better than anybody else and try and put something together so when the bid came up, we would be chosen.
Something we’ve noticed is that there is a lot of stress involved in being an interpreter. When you get someone who is from overseas and is a limited English speaker in the UK who gets arrested or are sent to court, innocent or guilty, there is huge stress on the person who is being apprehended and the interpreter, who has to listen to some very difficult stories in an uncomfortable environment. Because of this we’ve spent a lot of money on working with the International School of Linguists (ISL) to create a whole host of courses to help interpreters understand the different situations.
How did thebigword get started?
thebigword was started by myself in 1980 and was a very small part of Link Up Group which was mainly an employment agency. In 1995 we sold off the recruitment side, worth around £20 million, and by 2000, thebigword was just a relatively small language company with a turnover of about £400,000. However by the end of this financial year, we will have grown to around £52 million.
Part of that has been fuelled by an astonishing amount of investment in technology. It has been a gamble, but without that technology and investment, we wouldn’t be winning these big contracts. We are now dealing with well over a million minutes over the telephone and about 35,000 face-to-face interpreter bookings on a monthly basis across over 11 countries around the world.
What is your business background?
I was the international manager for American Machine & Foundry (AMF) in the 1970s and I worked mainly in Europe selling textile machinery in factories in the former Soviet Union. I was very aware at that time at how we lagged behind our European competitors by not bothering to translate brochures or trying to speak other languages, and that made me quite frustrated. Because I was involved with linguists in my job, from that I decided to start a business. The main business started as recruitment and language translation.
Why do you think there is a boom in the need for interpreter services?
The boom has been fuelled by lots of political and technological factors. Politically, with the European Union and the gradual breaking down of barriers and borders, meant that people could trade and sell within Europe. Because of that, there was certain rules enforced about what had to be translated like instructions on items you buy for example, so that automatically gave us more business.
The most exciting thing that happened was the web. If you want to book a flight online or you are using sites by massive corporations, very often we are the ones translating the page and content for you. So it’s a combination of the internet, the political aspects and the technology has been like an explosion for languages, and for us.
Do you think the Brexit decision will have an impact on the industry?
We are seeing an increase now in people being concerned about access to Europe and so are looking elsewhere beyond the EU to trade, which means more languages and communications which is a great opportunity from our point of view. The downside is about whether it will affect the whole country, but thankfully we’re rather protected from it by being based in 11 countries.
What made you keep thebigword’s headquarters in Leeds?
Well I was born in Leeds so I think Leeds is fantastic. It has a number of surrounding academic centres including the Leeds universities and colleges and Huddersfield, Sheffield, Bradford and York, meaning the catchment area for educated young people is very high, while the transportation and communication links are very good also.
We like the Yorkshire grit, and we find that the people here are fabulous. In fact, we bring work back into Leeds because the talent pool is so high. We’re very established here and have now been in Leeds for 36 years.
You’ve kept the business in the family [Larry’s son, Joshua, is chief commercial officer]. Is it hard to keep a familial atmosphere while being business colleagues?
I’m probably more formal with the family and less familial with the business partners! When I’m not at work I am in family mode and when I’m at work I’m in business mode. People will tell you there are two buttons: the dad button and the other is the CEO button. I have an ability to turn that on and off.
Also there are a lot of people who have worked at thebigword for nearly 30 or 20 years and they’ve become family too.