Q&A with Yuri Kucherenko, general manager of the A.B.C. Group of companies
Yuri Kucherenko is the general manager of the A.B.C. Group of companies, which was founded in 1995 and is based in Kyiv. Kucherenko holds degrees in linguistics and international management. In the past he worked for Baker&McKenzie, one of the biggest international law firms as a legal translator and a business development manager. Kucherenko began managing A.B.C. in 2002, and promptly developed its activities and transformed A.B.C. into a group consisting of six companies: three translation agencies, two language teaching centers and a training center. The A.B.C. Translation Agency is at the core of the group and focuses on quality written translation in legal, audit, banking and finance; technical and pharmaceutical and medical fields.
In his interview to the Post, Mr. Kucherenko said that contemporary translators are expected to be much more computer literate and IT-savvy than in the past.
KP: Please describe some of the most important trends currently being observed in the translations services market. Have the requirements and approaches to translation changed?
YK: Currently we are receiving more translation orders related to IPOs, securitization, project finance, secured lending, syndicated loans, IT-technologies in the banking and finance sectors, software localization. Such orders have become more and more sophisticated and require the services of highly professional translators. The requirements for translation agencies are becoming higher, for example: translators must use Trados translation software and simultaneously work in FrameMaker, PageMaker, InterLeaf, and other similar computer publishing programs.
KP: Has there been a marked increase in demand for higher quality or faster translation services?
YK: We usually have two types of assignments. The first are very urgent translations mainly in the legal & banking sector. The second are less urgent translations but which require high quality work: different presentations, procedures, reports, training materials, financial statements and software stuff. The sector dealing with urgent translation has grown at an unbelievable pace, and it could be called the “emergency translation service.” As a result of the growth, a special “night and weekend translation team” was created at A.B.C. It has been successfully operating for three years already.
KP: As Ukrainian business expands into new international markets, interpreters with a wider knowledge of world languages are needed. With regards to your practice, what languages, besides English, are in highest demand today?
YK: Today, according to our statistics, French and German are the leaders. Also, the demand for Italian, Spanish and Portuguese translations have been growing. Besides these main languages, we started receiving more Polish, Czech-Slovak and Dutch translations. In terms of sophisticated rare languages, Chinese, Japanese and Turkish are leading. A particular positive growth is seen in terms of Greek translations. The growing demand for more languages is reflective of fresh investment into Ukraine, and translation agencies – just like a litmus paper – truly feel the influx of new capital into our country.
KP: Is there a lack of qualified translators and interpreters? How easy is it to find and hire a good interpreter these days?
YK: We feel a real deficit of qualified translators and interpreters. In particular, this deficit stems from huge developments in banking, IT and software areas. In this respect, we are cooperating very closely with our own training agency in order to quickly and effectively train new translators. Today, training new translators is promising, whereas the alternative of finding highly-qualified professionals is usually time-consuming. What I mean is that A.B.C. has created a professional development department that is responsible for developing professionals inside our company.
KP: Has the demand for translation services increased in the last few years? Will the sector continue to grow?
YK: Again, we believe that “foreign investments” and “foreign languages” go hand-in-hand: as one increases so does the other. Therefore, in the last two years, the demand for translation services has increased by 20 to 30 percent. Due to further foreign investments and the upcoming Euro Football Cup in 2012, the demand is expected to grow even more in the next couple of years!
KP: Taking into consideration the large number of translation agencies competing, do you feel that this market segment is saturated?
YK: The competition is rather tough on this market; however we are sure that there is a niche for any new translation agency that is able to provide a quick and high-quality translation.
KP: Considering the increased demand for translation and interpreting services, are the prices for these services growing?
YK: The prices for translation and interpreting services are growing at a constant rate, and at the moment they are still much cheaper than general European prices. In the last two years, the cost per translated word in our agency has increased from 3 to 3.5 cents to 4 to 4.5 cents per word for English translations and from 4 to 5 cents to 7 to 9 cents per word for rare languages. In terms of interpreting services, the increase in their cost in just the last year could be called unprecedented: about 50 percent!
KP: Describe the main problems and challenges which exist in the translation sector in Ukraine. What factors hamper your work, and what factors constrain the growth of the general market today?
YK: One of the main challenges is connected with the fact that, as we believe, the translation sector mostly depends on the number of foreign investments, as well as the export activities of Ukrainian companies. In addition, translation agencies require a number of licensed software programs which are rather expensive and take a huge part of the budget of any translation agency. Connected to this is the burdensome tax regime in the country. Today, we try to work closely with higher educational institutions to educate translators and interpreters and would like to improve our cooperation with them through a system of internships. This year we accepted 50 percent more trainee translators than last year. Also among the more serious problems is a sensitive one: the existence of numerous pseudo-translators, people and agencies providing poor quality translations and therefore letting the entire professional translation community down by downgrading our overall image.
