About us
One of the UK’s longest-established translation companies – and much more
Accredited to both ISO 17100 and ISO 18841, we’re one of the UK’s most capable – and friendliest – language providers, offering everything from marriage certificate translation (lots, and lots, of those…) through to re-creation and translation of Arabic mathematics courses.
Lynn, our MD, started Lifeline back in 1990 on her dining table, with a fax and typewriter (yes! a typewriter! And a fax! Remember those?), helping local trucking companies work in France and Spain.
In fact here she is featuring the company in the papers a couple of years later… LOVE the gear, how 90s is that??
And no, we had no control over the headline – hence the glaring error in “Olé“!
We’ve come a long way since, acquiring three companies and with a wholly-owned subsidiary in France.
Our people
A surprising number of language providers claim no serious language – or other – qualifications in-house at all. And any provider not willing to share its professional qualifications is in our experience best avoided!
So what about us? Well, our Managing Director is a highly-qualified and well-respected linguist holding BA (Hons) in Modern Languages and MA (Dist) in Translation Studies. She’s also both MCIL – a Member of the Chartered Institute of Linguists – and MITI, a Member of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting.
Our Production Director is actually an engineer holding BSc (Hons) in Chemical Engineering and MSc (Dist) in Engineering Business Management, as well as being a Chartered Engineer and a member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology. So what’s he doing in a language company? Well, as well as building our marketing and uniquely-capable systems and managing a number of larger projects, he provides the technical input to ensure that our technical translation is outstanding.
Our Project Managers are all capable and experienced linguists, either themselves bilingual or holding good language qualifications. The only exception is our DTP specialist, who is Adobe-certified.
That all this works is demonstrated by our accreditation to not one, but two language ISOs: ISO 17100 for Translation Services, and ISO 18841 for Interpreting Services.
We believe that service providers should be qualified to deliver those services.
Our services
Today our skilled expert linguist team delivers projects in 100 languages from our top-floor Preston offices, working in almost every format ranging from text files and Word, through to the full gamut of multimedia – from simple audio recording to foreign language voiceover, and from business cards to 100-page InDesign catalogues.
We also provide interpreting solutions across Europe, ranging from a phone call to a 100-delegate 10-language research conference.
That’s not all – in addition to translation, our services also include multilingual transcription, copywriting, back-translation / proofreading and foreign language voiceover / subtitling as well as accessibility support – BSL / SSE / Braille.
We’re here for you.
We work with household name businesses and NGOs, with tiny SMEs, with private individuals, with the public sector, with leading healthcare providers, and many more.
We’re proud to have a reputation as a trusted, friendly and knowledgeable partner. We’re here to help, which is why we share our knowledge with our clients instead of hoarding it like so many providers do. Because if our clients do well, they bring more business to us – and their success is every bit as important to us as our own.
So if you’d like a better solution for your project, please just drop us a line (in total confidence of course) and we’ll get straight back to you. Or call our helpful team on UK Freefone 0800 783 4678 (Intnl 0044 1772 558858)