This year Anglia Translations Ltd celebrates its 25 year anniversary, and this is an excellent excuse to look back at the changes since then. Just looking round the office here in Huntingdon gives an indication of some modest, yet far-reaching changes.
Back in 1992, there would have been half a dozen filing cabinets packed with work underway: the store room was piled high with boxes containing completed assignments plus invoice files.
The most high tech bit of kit, apart from the computers, was the fax machine which regularly disgorged the next dozen pages of the latest assignments.
And then there were the 3.5 inch disks, remember them? Many people reading this won’t have the faintest idea what they were and how important they were in the smooth running of the company.
Back then we received work in paper format so any delivery promises had to take account of the vagaries of the postal system. On many occasions the post caused most of the delivery delays, thus arousing the ire of our clients.
There were concessions to modernity thanks to the aforementioned 3.5 inch disks. Not only was work returned to the client in paper format but disks containing the work were also included, at no extra cost to the client. But things could only get better, to coin a phrase.
It was tedious to receive great bundles of paper from the client. This then had to be copied and re-posted to the translator(s), often at significant cost, and with a significant time penalty. Finally of course, the whole shooting match had to be posted to the client. It’s difficult to feel anything other than sheer gratitude that we don’t have to do all this now.
Whilst the little office in Huntingdon was buzzing with paper-strewn activity, momentous things were happening in the world outside.
Classic FM was founded in the same year as Anglia, and I suspect these classical maestros have brought slightly more joy into the world than our humble linguistic toilers.
More significantly, the UK left the exchange rate mechanism (no sorrow there), and the Maastricht Treaty created the European Union. Now, in 2017, the UK has taken the decision to leave. Talk about things coming full circle.
A portent of things to come occurred in that hot house of electronic discovery, Newbury, when, at a Vodaphone Christmas party held on December 3 1992, a 22 year old engineer called Neil Papworth sent the first text message.
In a regular series to celebrate Anglia’s 25th birthday, we’ll be looking at the changes both locally in our offices, and elsewhere in the world since those far-off days of 1992.
