APlus Translations

09/23/2025

Another Year, Another company trip. This year, four members of our boutique company met in Greece and spent a magnificent week in Santorini, and then another few days in Corfu. On these trips, I’m always grateful for how amazing my co-workers are!

09/08/2023

APlus girls in our new attire. We are on our annual company trip and we ended up having to don the long skirts and shawls inside the mosque area. It was about 40 degrees at 8 pm and when I slipped my shawl off, I was briskly reprimanded by the imam. Rebel me!

03/29/2023

I'm happy to be a nominee for this lovely award. I've been in business for 21 years and my company has been like my child. I have sincerely enjoyed the relationships I've built with my employees, our translators and clients. And believe it or not, I absolutely hate long weekends because I miss the action at work.

02/01/2023

I wanted to just take a brief moment of your time and introduce Vasily Dubinin who can potentially help you down the road with technical issues you may have. You may already know that Vasily has been one of our freelance collaborators and an excellent Russian translator and PM, but you may not know that one of his roles has been as our tech assistant. He has helped us with a variety of IT issues, including CAT problems.
I thought having his contact may be helpful to you one day. Vasily can help you to:
• Scan for and remove viruses and other malicious software that slow down your computer
• Optimize the system files and registry to improve the speed of your computer
• Test your computer components to identify which can be replaced to make your computer run faster
• Find a replacement component that you can order online
• Install and configure new software
• Resolve problems/glitches with existing software
• Fix network connectivity issues (no Internet or unstable connection)
• Fix driver issues (when you can't use a newly installed device or experiencing problems with it)
• Provide technical support for Computer-Aided Translation (CAT) software used by translators and linguists
• Set up and configure CAT software like SDL Studio and memoQ
• Locate solutions for file incompatibility and other issues with your CAT tools
Also:
• NEW! Learn how to use the latest AI tools to optimize your workflow. AI can proofread your texts in seconds, analyze and suggest style improvements, rewrite the whole text to change its style and tone. It can automate various tedious tasks, allowing you to focus on the creative process.
If you like to schedule a private educational session or need some urgent assistance, Vasily can help you at: [email protected]
He is based in the CET zone, but is flexible to help on US time too. He charges a reasonable rate based on time spent.
All of this can be done remotely, you just need Skype/WhatsApp/Telegram on your phone.
Please know that Vasily operates independently of APlus, so contact him directly and not through APlus.

APlus Translations Inc. High-quality human translators & localization agency in Vancouver Canada, UK & Ireland. Excellent, Fast Service, Guaranteed.

11/29/2022

Let me ask you a question: say you are a middleman and get a contract and you farm it out. Work is going really well and you deliver good work, on time, cause all your subcontractors are top notch guys. Your client’s real happy. And then invoices start coming in from those top notch workers. And then suddenly, your happy client, well, they aren’t so happy anymore cause something happened and they can’t pay you, the middleman.

Question: do you pay your subcontractors?

Here is my story straight from the raw business trenches.

It was 2010 and my translation agency was working with a super duper client. I mean we were getting so much content to translate daily that there were days when I’d have 300 emails download into my inbox in the morning. I was an email processing machine. Emails seeped into every nook and cranny of the day and night. And it was a real rush. It wasn’t a burden cause email translated to $$$. Heck, it was exciting.

Like, each day calendar day, we had up to 60-80 freelancers work on this ONE client alone. This client, the second largest online poker company in the world, just kept spewing out content and getting us to translate it into 20-some languages day in, day out. And they paid like clockwork. These guys had no cash flow issues, let’s say.

This went on for a good couple of years. Everyone made some good money and as the middleman, my company was thriving.

And then one day - it was a Friday, I recall, we were up to our eyeballs in work programmed for the weekend. I had taken a break and was out and about in town and happened to glance at my phone as we tend to do these days. An email popped up which would change everything.

Our super duper client had just been shut down by the FBI….

….But this story is not about an online poker platform getting shut down by the US gov’t, something that merits its own post, really.
This story is about the 5 figures that they owed me at the time of their demise in the US. Yeah, when the FBI pulled the plug on their playing platform, I had an unpaid invoice out of which I, in turn, owed about 80% to the freelance translators who worked day in, day out on poker stuff.

What the hell was I going to do?
A few weeks went by and still, I didn’t see a way to recover my receivables, unless I was going to hire an international lawyer and go after the mess that the company was in. It didn’t make sense to me.

And there, on my desk, glaring at me was that stack of dozens of invoices I needed to pay.

Business colleagues out there… What do you do in a case like this? I talked with friends-entrepreneurs asking for advice and what I heard was that if I, as the middleman, don’t get paid, then the contracted workers are out of luck too. An unfortunate chain reaction.

I was a little taken aback by this reasoning cause it wasn’t the freelancers who had a contractual relationship with the client. They had a relationship with MY company.

Still, the advice I was getting sounded enticing to accept cause it would mean keeping those extra figures in my company’s coffers!

Heck maybe if I just explained the situation to the freelance linguists, they would each just forgive the amount we owed them. And then I could walk away from the debt fair and square.

Really? For those folks the couple grand I owed each one of them meant their monthly budget, their rent, car payment, kids’ school supplies. Each invoice had a name on it that I was somewhat familiar with. Even though our only interacting with most of these people was online exclusively, we had gotten to know each other. I got to know that one of our Danish translators liked to throw temper tantrums, while N###x, one of our Japanese translators never complained about anything even if there was stuff to complain about. I was sometimes driven crazy by some translators, but in any case, each one of them was not just a name with an @ attached to it. Each one of them was a human being. There wasn’t anything fair about not paying them.

And then, I kid you not, I had a dream. In my dream I was in my coffin (but seemingly alive!) and above me, I could see dozens of people, each waving their own country’s flag. These, I understood, were the translators paying their last respects to me, after MY demise.

I woke up, my dear reader, and I felt the universe, my moral compass, or whatever it was, had spoken and dispelled uncertainty, indecision (cause that’s the worst state to be in!) and I marched down into my office that morning, and I took the stack of the damned payables, and I told Gerry, our then Payables guy, to pay them all. I also added that I had no desire to look at those invoices, to be reminded of them, OR to be gazed at by them any longer.

Well, there never was a moment of regretting that decision. Now, I am sure had I walked away with people's money, I would have likely found some way to justify it, but surely some guilt would remain.

Now, in such a situation is it ever justified to not pay "your people"?

And btw, no, I don’t expect the United Nations at my funeral one day!

11/03/2022

I learned from the Japanese the concept of taking company trips. I mean LEISURE trips. It’s when your boss takes you and your co-workers to a fancy ryokan hotel, where you spend one and a half days strolling in a yukata (casual cotton version of the kimono), taking a dip in a natural hot spring pool (onsen), and enjoy an exquisite multi-course kaiseki meal which lasts for hours, only to restart the next morning as breakfast courses roll in over a period of two hours. I remember at one of those fancy feasts, the lobster antennae were still moving as the creature’s belly had been opened to expose its meat; I picked away at the morsels with my chopsticks and it WAS the freshest sashimi I ever had. It may sound a little too exotic for some, but I was pretty wowed.

So fast forward a few years, now a business owner myself, and since my company has been on solid financial ground, I began to organize company trips for my employees. Except that instead of the Japanese-style 1.5 day trips, ours last up to two weeks. You see, each one of us lives and works in a different corner of the globe, so when we fly in to one location to spend a few days together, we want to make sure it’s worth that long commute. Over the past several years, we’ve gathered in Rio de Janeiro, happened to stay in Pablo Coelho’s old apartment before flying off into the Amazon where we swam with pink dolphins. One year, we went to San Fran and did a fun food tour in an elegant part of the city.

This year, to celebrate our company’s 20th anniversary, we did something extra special and all got together in Nairobi, from where we took a 14-seater plane to the Masai Mara and went on 4 days of safari rides. It was amazing to see herds of zebras, hippos, antelopes, giraffes, families of elephants, and the occasional wild cat. To see these animals in their environment where WE were guests, was truly astounding. After that, we flew to Zanzibar to rest in a beach house on the Indian Ocean.

Our company trips to me are not only a way to reward my employees for their dedication and care, but it’s like travelling with friends. We make a point, on these trips, to limit work-related talk. It’s just time for fun to replenish our energy for another year of work and service to our clients.

08/17/2022

How I scored a great employee...

What I most remember about the first time meeting Albert is his hair. He would tell you himself that his Spanish Afro framing his angular face makes an impression. It’s our there. You see the hair before you see Albert.

And the next thing that struck me was his suit. He was wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase. I opened the door wearing pyjamas at that point in the am!

It was 2008, my company was undergoing a boom and I needed bodies. So, I filled my basement suite with capable friends and friends of friends who:
A - could type and
B - were computer literate.

We would figure the rest out later. Yup, that was HR at APlus Translations back then.
Albert was a wiz at typing. He knew his way around the basics on the PC. AND he spoke like 5 other languages, including his native Spanish. He was also way over-qualified for the project manager job at hand I was offering. But he was new to Canada and for some reason, back then, during the 2008 economic crisis, they weren’t hiring environmental engineers. Albert holds a master’s in environmental engineering. And here he was, knocking on the door of a translation agency looking for employment.

It was a no-brainer. Both my sense of need and instinct screamed yes! 🤝🤝And Albert came to work the following day. He knew by then, too, to strip his elegant suit and get into the scruffs that we were all wearing working online, away from clients’ eyes. Gosh, my son Nathan was about 6 then and he would sometimes come flying into the office in his underwear screaming and pretending to be Thomas the Train, or Bob the Builder, or whatever his cartoon obsession of the moment was. Daily, around 2/3 pm, I’d come down the stairs, teetering in some pair of Italian heels, and distribute a quintessential glass of wine to everyone. I believe that a glass of wine can spur creativity and oil social relations at work too! And then sometimes, we would stay past working hours and I’d make a fabulous meal and more wine would flow. We worked damn hard. But we had fun. And we were all making loads of money.

No one worked harder than Albert. Man, that guy, he will review a document three times, top to bottom, before he sends it in. You must understand that that document has already been reviewed by two other people. But he is going to do it again. And again. It’s a bit of an obsession, I reckon, that of checking and rechecking. As is his need to explain things so well that my dog could learn to deliver a project to a client after listening to Albert long enough. He is that precise. That detailed. He has taken my company to a whole other level, quality-wise.

We were flying high for a while. Money and wine were flowing and then one day, it all came crashing down…. I’ll talk about that another time, in another story.
My company suffered about a 75% decrease in sales very suddenly. I had to let go of some employees. I even let go of Albert for a couple short weeks.

Soon after, I fired up the marketing engine and starting building back up. I needed Albert back on board. He was happy to Start to rescue to sinking boat. Months went by. A year… two… three and business was afloat just bopping up and down, up and down, in a constant ebb and flow that sometimes defines private enterprise.

Albert knew what the company was bringing in. He knew that there were times when I couldn’t pay myself. And you know what happened one day? He came to me and said very naturally, as if it were the most normal thing in the world, that he is aware of my financial problems, and would like to split his salary with me……. Yeah, you understood that correctly, but just to make sure you did: my employee was offering to pay me back half of what I’ll pay him, to help me out!

Who does this?

I’ve met some incredible people in my life, people who really truly put their needs behind those of others, and Albert is a stellar example of such altruism. We’ve worked together for 14 years now and I’m grateful for every year that he chooses to stay.🙏🙏🙏

12/18/2019

Every year for about 10 years, this little company, APlus Translations, has given 1% of its revenue to a cause. This year is no different. As part of our "helping out" campaign we decided to LEND money to other entrepreneurs in other countries. The organization that enables Lendwithcare.org carefully selects farmers, estheticians, cooks, hairdressers, etc. who wish to expand their business by borrowing money. You lend them an amount and as their business grows, they pay you back, and you can either keep the funds in the system and lend to someone else's project or simply take it back. I simply LOVE this concept!
Check out their website below!

CARE International's new microfinance lending initiative — your chance to make loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries and help them work out of poverty

08/18/2019

One of the stops along our cruise has been Kagoshima. We got off the ship and found a Kaiten Sushi. You order your food on a touch screen and the conveyer belt brings each item to you, one by one as an announcement on the screen tells you what’s coming. Food was yummy as it always is in Japan.