Introducing “The Voices Behind the Words: Member Spotlight” – an exciting new interview series where we shine a light on the diverse stories and experiences of our members.
As part of our ongoing commitment to celebrating the richness of our industry, we invite you to join us in getting to know our community. Each interview will delve into the unique perspectives of industry professionals like yourself, offering insights, anecdotes, and reflections on their journey within the language industry. Get ready to meet the faces and voices shaping our community, one conversation at a time.
Our first interview is with Jerry Froggett, Managing Director of First Edition Translations
- Please can you share with us three interesting facts about your company?
First Edition (FE) was founded and is based in the wonderful City of Cambridge. We’ve been around for a very long time, first starting in 1981, and were a founding member of the Institute of Translators and Interpreters (ITI) in the UK. We’ve been proud ELIA members since 2016. We were really thrilled to be the first recipient, anywhere in the World, of the ISO20228 legal interpreting standard too!
- What aspect of your company do you believe sets it apart from others in the industry?
First Edition has a really special and unusual role as a leading provider of language services to the publishing industry. For more than 40 years we’ve worked with leading publishers, authors and agents all over the world on books and other publications, with a strong focus on arts, museums and cultural institutions. It is really challenging and highly detailed work, but something our team is extremely good at. It is a niche which we are really proud of.
- What is something about your role that people might be surprised to learn?
I combine my role as First Edition’s MD with also being CEO of its parent company, Cintra Language Services Group Ltd. Cintra is predominantly an interpreting provider to the UK Government and wider public sector, providing over 40,000 face to face assignments each year as well as over 1,500,000 minutes of telephone interpreting, video interpreting and other services such as sign language, so as an entity we are much larger than just First Edition and we have a really good experience of the wider language services market too.
- If your job had a theme song, what would it be and why?
Tough one! I asked some of my team and some of the answers were un-printable! In the end we settled on ‘On top of the World’ from the Imagine Dragons – it touches on the fact that life can go up and down, and also if you keep at it, you’ll get there. Just, of course, like any good business.
- If you could choose anyone as your mentor, who would it be and why?
I was incredibly lucky to have had a superb mentor in my early career (which was in the airline industry, a long way from what I do now) and she gave me an incredible amount of guidance and support. I still look back at what I learned from those experiences today and so much of it is incredibly relevant to any commercial enterprise. It is difficult to know who I’d choose now, but if you were to push me I’d probably look to one of the great tech entrepreneurs who have radically disrupted the modern business landscape with new trends and ways of working, but I’m not going to name one!
- If you could change one thing about the language industry today, what would it be?
I’d want the wider industry to properly accept that we are in a fast-changing era, and to embrace the opportunities presented to us by AI in particular. It really worries me when listening to a group of linguists recently to hear some still think that nothing will really change – it will and it is, and quickly. There is an element amongst some of ‘heads being buried in the sand’ and this needs to stop. Change is incredibly difficult for everyone to manage, but we need to realise that if we don’t change and develop then others in our industry either already have or are in the process of doing so. I’d hate to see parts of the language services family become irrelevant by not seizing the myriad of opportunities available to us.
Company name: First Edition Translations Ltd.
Company website: www.firstedit.co.uk
Name: Jerry Froggett
Job title: Managing Director
