We are delighted to learn that Bla Translation has been shortlisted for the Daily Post Business Awards 2018! This is the second year in a row that we've been shortlisted and we will attend the Awards Evening at Bangor University on 29 November, competing in the "Best Business up to 10 Employees" category!
Two members of staff here will shortly complete their M.A. courses as Aberystwyth and Bangor Universities repsectively. Meleri will complete here M.A. in Translation and Elin will complete her M.A. in Creative Writing.
As they complete their courses, another member of our staff, Anna, will begin here M.A. in Translation at Bangor University. We’re lucky to have such academically talented staff!
Having an experienced Information Technology company is vital to any business, and this was proved in August. With all our work requests for translation coming in by email and returned by email, we must ensure that our connection with all our customers is available 24/7. This connection was lost recently as one of the main servers went into meltdown. Following a good degree of panic, our IT company Catalyst Systems from Denbigh (and indeed some help from Dylan Jones from D13 Creative, our web designer), succeeded in rectifying the problem gradually over a week of hard graft. We were extremely grateful! This is what Fiona McGough from Catalyst Systems has to say about the importance of back-up:
It is always worth highlighting the importance of a managed support and backup regime. The problem in a way is that with the ever increasing reliability of electronics people can become complacent about how to recover when something goes wrong. A good question that businesses should ask themselves is do I have a compliant DRP (Disaster Recovery Plan) or BCP (Business Continuity Plan) in place. Surprisingly when we visit a site for the first time we find that not many do.
The DRP / BCP should include all eventualities such as fire, flood or theft. While various elements of a system can fail, e.g. hard disk, keyboard, router, data switches etc. and are relatively easy to recover from; fire, flood or theft would constitute a catastrophe or disaster so consideration must be given as to how you can recover from this scenario. So daily backups that you can rely on are essential. A copy of these also need to be kept off site and if coupled with a cloud backup of essential data only (accounts, databases, spreadsheets etc) costing no more than typically £10 per month will more than adequately provide the DRP that company’s need.
Businesses will also find that their Insurance companies are increasingly likely to ask for their clients to have a DRP / BCP in place before providing cover.
Thanks to the work of our Accountants, we have installed a new accounting system which will hopefully make our lives a lot easier. We have now switched to the new Quickbooks programme which, so far, has been very impressive!
The company contiunes to grow! A very warm welcome to Anna who has joined the team. Anna has just graduated with a first class degree in Welsh from Bangor University and lives locally in Rhosybol. We hope she’ll be very happy here at Bla!
Congratulations to one of our staff members, Meleri Jones, for winning the third prize at this year’s Urdd Eisteddfod in the translation competition!
Elin Rowlands joins the team this month as a translator. Elin is slowly reaching the end of her M.A. in Creative Writing and will be working two days a week with us until she completes the course in September, and will then be with us full-time. We are really pleased that Elin has agreed to join us as our workload steadily increases!
We very much look forward to welcoming Ceri Hughes very shortly who will join us as an Administrator. Ceri has a wealth of experience in the translation sector, having worked for many years in the translation unit of the Courts Service at Caernarfon.
Just a short note to explain that Bla offers two levels of service for translation work for our clients. In addition to the standard invoicing for longer pieces of work, we also offer a ‘credit’ service, whereby customers can buy a number of credits up front and use them gradually against specific tasks. This has been devised for shorter pieces of work, to avoid having to invoice the customer for small amounts.
This is the time to start planning your work at the beginning of a new year. Don’t forget to get in touch should you need any translation work completed - large or small.
Bla Translation Ltd
Town Hall
Bulkeley Square
Llangefni
Anglesey
LL77 7LR
Telephone: 01248 725730
Mobile: 07920 052818
Out of hours and weekends: 07920 052818
Email: office@bla-translation.co.uk
Website: www.bla-translation.co.uk
