Says M L Sudheen, director, operations, CHL, ``We offer complete communication and translation services in 16 international languages and all the Indian languages.''

CHL is among the largest linguistic service providers for Indian and global languages in the country. Its 50-member workforce is spread over three divisions-translation and interpretation, designing and printing, multimedia and Web services. ``We are providing language services to organisations from all walks of life, throughout the world. These include multinational corporations, agencies of the government of India, UN bodies, corporations inthe private as well as public sectors, advertising agencies, publishing houses, etc.'' boasts Sudheen.

French company Air Liquide, world leaders in industrial gases, got their user's manual translated into regional Indian languages to help truckers transporting their cylinders. So did Norwegian conglomerate Norsk Hydro, when it had to launch its water soluble fertiliser in Bangladesh.

``We translated our brochure and technical display leaflet into Bangla. Later, we also got them translated into Marathi to make it user-friendly for rural markets in Maharashtra,'' says Prabhat Bhardwaj, deputy manager (administration), Norsk Hydro.

Translation certainly helps in market penetration in unfamiliar terrain, says Birla Yamaha senior publicity manager Ashish Chaturvedi.

``The diffusion of the merits of a product happens relatively quickly if you do it in the native tongue. Our brochures in Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada and Tamil gave us an edge over competition,'' he says.

A big chunk of India's businesstransactions are with partners from countries particular about conversing in their own tongue and to whom English may sound a tinge impersonal. ``The French, Germans and Brazilians are a few of these. After spending lakhs on travelling to, say, Hamburg, an Indian entrepreneur may still fail to strike a business deal for lack of fluency in German. That vital business presentation, if done in their own tongue, may leave a warm impression,'' says Sudheen.

Crystal Hues claims to take extra care while accepting projects to maintain the quality of the service they have extended to Air Liquide, A C Nielson, Andersen Consulting, GE Capital, Dabur India, KPMG, Larsen & Toubro and the Indian Travel Development Corporation (ITDC).

``Every project is first scrutinised for content, format and any other instructions that it may accompany. The facilities are geared to receive assignments in various forms, be it a document, a CD, a floppy, or an attachment to e-mail. We accept and deliver files through our FTP server,too. The files may be of any origin-right from simple office tools like MS Office, to complicated page-layout software,'' says Sudheen.

The text for translation is separated from the contents to facilitate easy project handling. After translation, the text is integrated back with the graphics and other layout components to ensure consistency. This procedure is doubly filed, supported by hard copy back-up to prevent accidental data loss.

CHL translates Arabic, Italian, French, Russian, German, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, Dutch, Nepali, Thai, Sinhalese, Vietnamese, Polish and Hungarian into English. ``The tariffs for these vary for running matter, magazines, tabulations and newsletters. But the range is between Rs 75 to Rs 450 for every page of A4 size. For translations from English to international languages, the charges begin at Rs 145 per 100 words for French and go up to Rs 400 for Japanese,'' informs Sudheen.

CHL's panel of 300 translators comprises at least five translators for eachlanguage. ``They are screened for basic requirements such as specialisation in their field, professional commitments and diligence and familiarity with electronic proofing tools such as dictionaries and thesaurus. The translators are put on the panel only on meeting academic and proficiency levels in both the target as well as the source language. They should also meet the requirement of being a native of the country of the language or at least have stayed in that country for 5-10 years,'' explains Sudheen.

CHL's client specific inventory of a million plus terms ensures uniformity of presentation by allowing cross-matching with previous texts. With each project, a necessary glossary update and verification process is carried out. The company helps MNCs overcome the linguistic barrier, after they set up shop in a new market. ``They have to bridge the cultural gap, too. But they can leave their language worries to us,'' he claims.

Translated into profits, alien tongues never sounded better!