Business name: Language Fusion.
Owner: Olga Lafayette.
Address: 2500 Main St., Suite 110.
What the business does: Language Fusion provides an array of language services to corporate, medical, legal, nonprofit and governmental agencies in more than 150 languages including American Sign. The company’s services include the translation of a variety of documents. Language Fusion also provides on-site and over-the-phone interpretation in a variety of settings such as medical visits, legal hearings and depositions, public meetings and school conferences. Lafayette’s systems can contact scores of interpreters to find one who’s available, often in less than five minutes.
How has the economy affected your business: Lafayette said some of her corporate clients have scaled back on their projects and a few government contracts have been re-negotiated to reflect new budget realities. Her early investment in technology has always allowed her to do more with less. This has been very helpful in the current environment and has made her company an attractive alternative to businesses seeking to trim the costs of their existing language services.
Greatest challenge: Some clients who have a single person in a single location who is responsible for all their language service needs and others have multiple people in multiple locations. Lafayette’s company helps clients organize their requests to reduce scheduling errors. The challenge is that everyone operates at different levels technologically — some schedule through the website and use Internet feeds to monitor projects, while others prefer to use e-mail, the phone or faxes to make a request and follow up — and Language Fusion has to keep everyone on the same page in a way that provides the accuracy and efficiency that customers expect.
What’s ahead: Language Fusion has been expanding its website for the past few years and now offers many services online. The website helps customers, especially businesses, check the details of all their transactions with the company to avoid scheduling confusion.
