January calls for a recap of what 2021 was for us at BeatBabel: a year full of opportunities, new projects, growth, changes, and great achievements. 2021 was also about supporting the associations that contribute so much to the industry, as well as supporting the causes that are dear to our hearts. Take a look at BeatBabel’s 2021 milestones!
Q1
The first quarter of 2021 was a busy one for BeatBabel! The year started with our COO, Marie Flacassier, becoming Chair of GALA (Globalization and Localization Association), placing her international, management and organizational expertise at the service of the industry. Although it has been a challenging year due to the COVID pandemic, GALA has been bursting with activity, hosting webinars, conferences, training, and all sorts of industry-related events.
In February, we moved our office to a greener district in downtown San Diego, next to the famous Balboa Park. Shortly after, the State of California reissued BeatBabel’s Small Business Certification.
At the end of the quarter, we released a new version of our online translation management business platform, B@BL, with new features to further connect our growing online community of customers, team members and vendors.
Q2
BeatBabel has been a leader in eLearning since its inception. The increased demand for eLearning training and classes was also the result of working from home in Covid times during 2020. The influx of projects continued in 2021, which allowed us to expand our LatAm and European teams. We grew our team, adding 24 new Quality Assurance, DTP, and Subtitling specialists to keep up with the demand for multimedia, app validation and subtitling projects. We also adopted new multimedia and quality testing tools and developed new processes for linguistic and functional quality assurance.
Training is at the core of our business, and we provided many TMS and tools-of-the trade trainings for our linguistic team and partners, which allows us to continue providing great support to our clients. By the end of this quarter, BeatBabel expanded its partner offices in France, Germany and Spain.
The summer was the perfect time to take Mildred, our BeatBabel VW mascot, on a European tour to meet with all our team members in our various partner offices in Europe. The cherry on top was the reunion of part of our team in Nice, France. We were delighted to meet face to face!
Q3
Our team renewed its support of associations worldwide, as we participated in over 25 online industry events held by different associations: GALA Connect, ALC (Association of Language Companies), EUATC (European Union of Associations of Translation Companies), ELIA (European Language Industry Association), Slator, GALA SIG (Special Interest Groups), GlobalSake, WomenInLoc, LocLife, Locfromhome and LocLunches, to name a few. This was also a time to strengthen our university partnerships worldwide by sponsoring GALA Global Talent Rising Star and continuing to support internship programs for European localization students with CaWeb, Universidad de Alcalá and Anhalt University of Applied Science Köthen, hosting new team members in our San Diego office.
In September, we celebrated our 12th anniversary in the localization industry.
Q4
After having worked remotely from Leipzig for some time, we welcomed our new project coordinator, Juliane in October to the San Diego office. We also sponsored several local causes, such as Adopt a Reader and Buena Onda’s Walk for los Niños, to make sure children and students in the US and Mexico can have access to books and education.
By the end of December, our linguistic teams had grown by more than 50% in one year. All our hard work allowed us to strengthen our position as eLearning Localization and Quality Assurance (QA) Leaders with over 18 million words under our belt in 2021.
We are thankful for everyone who was a part of this rewarding year for BeatBabel and we are determined to keep up the good work. We expect 2022 to be full of new and exciting projects and are looking forward to more in-person events.