Category: About Eulogia

We are an association of like-minded experts who share a mutual understanding, shared identity and shared experience. That’s what makes Eulogia a one-of-a-kind collective that provides a range of benefits to our hand-picked members and helps us grow together, furthering our individual goals as well as the industry as a whole.

Belonging to Eulogia means support, shared knowledge and confidentiality, but read on to find out what that means in practice. 

Empowering each other through commitment

Belonging to Eulogia, just like belonging to any other organisation, requires commitment. To show up, participate, and contribute our knowledge when it’s called upon.

When you have that level of commitment from your industry peers – CEOs busy running successful businesses that reach across borders – it’s empowering. You know that every member has your back and will pick up the phone if you call and you have a network of people in similar positions who have likely faced the problem that’s stumping you and can give you pointers for overcoming it.

Knowing we’re all in it together empowers us individually and as a collective, and it is key when it comes to us taking the strides we so love to take. 

Group Insights through knowledge sharing

Eulogia lends itself to the deepest of knowledge-sharing practices. The all-important commitment we all share means we can be open about everything we do and share knowledge to build each other up. When individual business owners operate as a collective, focussing on collaborative benefits rather than competition, that’s when real strides are made – in companies, the wider industry and beyond.

We’re there for each other, providing new perspectives and viewpoints. Still, we also like to push our collective boundaries, attending training sessions held for Eulogia members on subjects that shed light on new issues for us all. We’re connected in our search for learning and growth, and when we learn together, the discussions that follow take us further in leaps and bounds. 

Growing through trust

Operating as a hive mind of peers, our members share a deep-seated trust. This hive mentality, in which we work together for the common good, breaks down any barriers we may have had because we know that what we share is safe and it will be implemented carefully and according to good practices. This openness and trust allow for strategies to be shared and replicated tastefully because we trust the information we get and trust that the knowledge we share will be kept safe so we can grow together.

All this and more are what it means to belong to Eulogia, and we couldn’t be prouder to lead the industry thanks to the collective we have created. Our hand-picked members are each selected thanks to what they bring to the table, so each one is valued in their own unique way, and in a way which helps us succeed even more.

Eulogia is a leading alliance of language service companies spread across Europe. It is an association of translation agencies, each brimming with local knowledge, that come together in a diverse consortium. It is a collective of industry leaders selected to represent their country in terms of language, culture and expertise.

In practice, however, Eulogia is so much more. It is a group of CEOs who step out of conference rooms to spend time together, engaging in real conversations. It is a phone tree of specialists who call each other when they need questions answered, methods validated or resources shared. Eulogia is a collection of open-minded individuals who recognise and prize the importance of knowledge sharing above all else and who are more than happy to pool resources, knowledge and expertise, benefitting each member, their clients and the advancement of the language service industry as a whole.

Eulogia’s Values

When you build an alliance that spans a continent, it would be all too easy to overflow with members, their voices vying against each other to be heard. So, to ensure proximity, personal connections and space for each member to provide value and learn from each other, Eulogia functions on the basis of country representatives. This means that each European country is represented by a member company steeped in local knowledge which is ready to provide services in their language and beyond. As established industry leaders, these companies are then represented by their CEO – hand-picked visionaries themselves, each of whom brings something new to the table.

These CEOs build personal connections founded on trust because that’s how Eulogia likes to do business, and that’s how we operate: with complete confidence that each member delivers the highest quality standards in every job or project because they’re driven by shared core values and are supported by a network that has their back in every way.

Strength in Numbers

Although a 20-member organisation may seem limited, when each member is carefully selected to add another piece to the puzzle, there’s a definite strength in numbers. It is a strength we feel when we come together for training sessions, knowledge-sharing and a few drinks to discuss developments on our end. When 20 individuals with different perspectives have the space to share their views on a subject, new paths are quickly forged, allowing solutions to be found and developments produced that further the industry in leaps and bounds. Not to mention the specific subject at hand.

However, our strength also comes from diversity. Linguistic diversity – in the languages we work in – and the diversity in our expertise and specialisations. We all work in language services, but our fields range from translation in all its shapes and forms to multimedia localisation and high-specificity engineering, MT to automation as well as DTP to interpreting. This means that, when you contact a Eulogia member, they may not be the right person for the job, but they’ll know someone who is and will put you in touch.

However, our strength also comes from diversity. Linguistic diversity – in the languages we work in – and the diversity in our expertise and specialisations. We all work in language services, but our fields range from translation in all its shapes and forms to multimedia localisation and high-specificity engineering, MT to automation as well as DTP to interpreting. This means that, when you contact a Eulogia member, they may not be the right person for the job, but they’ll know someone who is and will put you in touch.

How we operate

Eulogia is the sum of all its members – an intangible web of knowledge that shifts and grows exponentially. From a client perspective, however, we operate as individuals who are leaders of our market, acting under a banner of excellence, trust and reliability but allowing our own colours to shine through as we work. We provide a range of language pairs between us but specialise in our own language and culture as separate entities, which means you’ll likely only work with one of us at a time. However, should the need arise, we’re well-versed in teamwork and cooperation, so we are more than happy to join forces if a project calls for it.

A benchmark of stability, Eulogia members go the extra mile as standard and have proved time and again that they are the very best in their field. Having stood the test of time over 25 years, we continue to stand firm together, taking on whatever challenges the industry has to throw at us.

Fast approaching its 30th anniversary, Eulogia has traced a long history. Over almost three decades, it has developed from a mere spark of an idea to a movement. Reaching ever further, enveloping ever more nations, it has grown into a fully-fledged alliance that operates seamlessly across borders, uniting companies in a culmination of shared knowledge and practices. Now, decades on, it has become so much more than was ever expected, and we couldn’t be prouder to have built our network into what it is today: An interconnected web of experts pulling together to strive towards furthering the progress of the translation industry at large.

But how did Eulogia come to be?

The Spark that Ignited Eulogia

Fittingly, Eulogia was born in a place of connections. As multicultural a place as can be, connected to the world at large via hundreds – if not thousands – of flight paths: Heathrow Airport, London. 

It was March 1994 when seven individuals, each from a different country, came together at the airport to form what would be the first meeting of Eulogia members:

• Peter Barber from Peter Barber Languages, UK
• Catherine Muller from Taalwerk Texperts B.V., the Netherlands
• Pål Mitsem from Translatørservice AS, Norway
• Ignacío Muñoz Garcia from ME&TA, Spain
• David Oliver from Traduçoes Oliver, Portugal
• Evangelos Spanidis from Lexicon, Greece
• Corina Hay from HIGH-TECH Hay GmbH, Germany

Instigated by Peter Barber, this meeting sought to form a European Interest Group of Translation Companies. One that would go on to apply for a 12-language contract with the European Community. The draw was obvious, and the members who gathered that day immediately saw the potential of a collaboration.

Fanning an Ever-growing Flame

From the first meeting of seven members, the group saw rapid growth as new members joined, each representing their EU country and language. Even though the combined strength of the group was unable to secure the contract that had initially brought us together – two applications were filed, and the group was only selected as a runner-up – over a short space of time, we found that our strength in numbers actually had much greater potential.

The potential to boost our individual growth and knowledge. To share practices and cement policies. To work together alongside each other. And so that’s what we began to do, year after year. 

In fact, we’ve made sure to meet at least once every year since 1994, sometimes twice, taking 3 days out of our busy schedules to gather in one of our member countries. For over a quarter of a century, we’ve been exchanging ideas and helping each other, becoming a dependable group of friends and partners that each gets out as much as they put into our alliance.

From a Bonfire to a Hearth 

20 years on, the world of translation has undergone substantial upheaval, with mergers and acquisitions leading to us lose some of our most valued, longstanding members in 2015. We were, however, unwilling to let go of the connections we’d built, knowing Eulogia could become so much more. 

In 2017, our gathering in Vilnius would set the stage for just that: Us taking on the challenge of reinventing Eulogia and ensuring that it became more solid and structured than ever before. This came to being in the founding of the Eulogia Alliance in Malta, where a board was established that would oversee operations and ensure that Eulogia continued to grow.

Ensuring an Everlasting Flame

The first step on the agenda was replacing the members we’d lost, a process that began with a search for strong, energetic translation partners who could bring new ideas and input to Eulogia. Some countries had never been represented, others had lost their representatives, and so the group expanded by invitation only, spreading across Europe…and beyond. 

The last decades have instilled strength and pride in every member of Eulogia, both new and longstanding, providing stability and security in numbers as we take on a globalised world. Every industry, not least translation, is facing immense change, but we know that, together, we are fully equipped to take on these changes, developing with the times to face new challenges and provide for new market needs. Working together, as partners, we seek to establish stable strategies to secure our own futures and further the world of translation, ensuring that our companies, collective and industry continue to thrive in our changing world. 

To Eulogia, past and future, may we continue to make communication open to all!