AdHoc Translations’s 30th Anniversary: What Changed and What Stayed the Same

When we opened our doors in 1990, we had two secondhand desks, a landline that rang maybe three times a week, and a fax machine we’d bought from a company going bust in Copenhagen. The Muppet Show was still on television. Kermit the Frog had been doing his thing for years. We thought it was clever to name our modem after him because, well, it connected files by croaking across phone lines. That modem is still sitting in our Copenhagen office, though it hasn’t worked since 1998.

How translation used to work

Back then, if you wanted to send a document to England or the United States, you posted it. The paper arrived three days later, sometimes a week. We translated it, typed it up, and sent it back the same way. Danish companies needing Kermit barely existed. They chose us anyway, maybe because we answered the phone, maybe because we were cheap. The text on the paper disappeared once the recipient had it. There was no cloud, no backup, no file history. You finished the work and it was gone.

Change preparedness gets talked about constantly now. It sounds like something you plan for, something you build systems around. We didn’t prepare for change. We just kept the door open and dealt with whatever walked through it.

From Copenhagen to five continents

Copenhagen was where we started. Then we moved to Selivagate in Oslo because a client needed us closer. After that, Paris, because the work pulled us there. Around 2018, we opened in Barcelona and later in India. We didn’t sit down and strategise expansion. Someone needed us somewhere, so we went. You can read more about our offices and presence across Europe and beyond.

The technology that transformed everything

The deadlines have always been shorter. Clients used to give us two weeks. Then it became one week. Now they want it tomorrow, sometimes today. The file formats have changed too. We’ve handled everything from typed manuscripts to WordPerfect files to PDFs to Google Docs to things uploaded straight into translation management systems we’d never heard of until a client sent us login details. The hardware gets upgraded, the software gets replaced, the staff expertise shifts because people learn new tools or they leave and someone else arrives.

What machines can and can’t do

But the processes haven’t really changed. Someone sends us a document. We work out what language it needs to be in, who’s going to do it, and when it needs to be done. Then we do it. A skilled translator reads the source text, thinks about what it means, and writes it again in another language. Machines can’t do that, not properly. They can spit out words, but they don’t understand context, tone, or the small decisions that make a translation feel right instead of just accurate.

We’ve had clients stick with us for decades. Some of them started when they were small, and now they’re massive. They’ve changed software, changed staff, changed entire business models. But they still send us their work. That’s because when they send something over, it comes back done properly. We don’t make them chase us for updates. We don’t send back half-finished drafts or charge them twice because we misunderstood the brief the first time.

Why clients stay

Everyone has a mobile now. Communication happens instantly. You can email someone at 9pm and they’ll reply by 10pm. We added offices in Barcelona and India partly because clients expected faster turnarounds, but also because the translation industry itself got bigger and more competitive. If you’re not available across time zones, someone else will be.

The work itself hasn’t gotten easier. A bad translation is still a bad translation, whether it’s on paper or in a cloud-based platform. The difference now is that clients notice faster, and they have more options if you mess up. Thirty years ago, switching to another translation company meant finding their number in a directory and posting them a sample document. Now it means clicking a different website.

The fundamentals that never changed

We’ve survived because we kept doing the same thing, which is: translating documents properly and getting them back on time. That sounds basic, but plenty of companies in this industry don’t manage it. They overpromise. They use machine translation and hope the client won’t notice. They hire translators who aren’t qualified because they’re cheaper.

We don’t do that. If you send us a legal document, a qualified legal translator handles it. If it’s medical, same thing. If it’s technical, same thing. The person working on your file knows what they’re doing. That’s been true since 1990 and it’s still true now.

Looking ahead

Thirty years is a long time to be in business. We’re still here because clients keep coming back, and they keep coming back because we do what we said we’d do. The tools changed, the offices changed, the speed changed. But the work itself? That’s stayed the same.

Today, we use SmartDesk to manage projects from start to finish, giving clients full transparency and control. We handle website translations, e-commerce content, and complex multilingual projects across dozens of languages. The platforms evolved, but what matters to clients hasn’t: someone who answers the phone, does the job properly, and delivers on time.