“If a company turns 30, that means it must be doing something very right,” an experienced project manager once said. There really is something triumphant and amazing about this milestone. Logrus IT has been around for a whole generation now – it’s even older than some of our employees!
An anniversary is a great time to remember the good old days, take stock, and set goals for the future. We’d like to celebrate our anniversary by talking a little about how Logrus IT got started, how we’ve grown over time, and what we’ve learned. Let’s start from the beginning 😊
It all started in 1993, when the company was founded by a group of enthusiastic young scholars. Who would have thought that the little translation company they created would ever break into the international market and partner with some of the world’s best-known brands? At that time, the company’s founders (who had almost no experience and no startup capital whatsoever) had nothing to go on but brains, guts, and luck. They decided to swing for the fences and offer their services to none other than Microsoft, a corporation whose products were used by tens of millions of people. So the team went to Microsoft’s campus in Ireland, where their hosts heard them out and believed in them. And they weren’t wrong – Logrus has been Microsoft’s official localization partner for many years now, ever since we translated eight versions of Windows into twenty languages.
Companies like Lotus Software (IBM), Oracle, Symantec, and Borland quickly followed Microsoft’s example and entrusted us with major projects. By 2003, a company that had begun with four people, three computers, and one printer now had over 100 employees. We also realized that we weren’t going to be able to compete in this cutthroat market if we only worked on software localization, so we decided to branch out. We started translating and recording voice over for video games. We delved into the world of multimedia. We started developing and localizing websites and designing e-learning courses. As always, we went all-in on each new venture.
We also developed a reputation as a reliable service provider in a number of different markets – we opened offices in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, South Korea, China, and Turkey and assembled a large international team of experts.
We still do a lot of translating today. The selection of languages we work with is constantly growing – we’ve got about 130 now, including Afrikaans, Quechua, Luxembourgish, Inuktitut, and other less common languages.
Our areas of expertise include IT and software, heavy industry and energy production, advertising and marketing, economics and finance, aviation and auto manufacturing, and much more. We help people from various countries use products and services from giants such as Kaspersky, KIA, Samsung, Canon, Positive Technologies, Logitech, Dr. Web, and more.
What does Logrus IT translate? Just about everything!
We’ve massively developed our game localization department, translating, recording voice over, subtitling, and testing over 1,000 video games and mobile games. We’ve named cities and countries, become medieval poets, confessed our love in hushed whispers, and led troops into battle. Our actors have voiced characters from hit Ubisoft franchises such as Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and Watch Dogs, as well as Civilization, Might and Magic Heroes, ANNO, Halo Wars, Max Payne, and other equally famous series.
For us, doing a top-notch job is a matter of pride. So ever since we started, we’ve always performed multiple QA checks on our translations to make sure we’ve rooted out even the smallest mistake. The principle of TEP, which includes multiple QA phases (translation, editing, and proofreading), has become the translation industry’s gold standard. We’ve also developed the AssurIT application, which helps us find technical issues, typos, glossary mismatches, and a whole lot more.
By constantly evaluating themselves and each other, our specialists have identified three criteria for a good translation: it needs to be completely free of errors, it needs to be readable, and it needs to conform to the client’s requirements. Logrus IT CEO Leonid Glazychev has used these criteria as the basis for an original LQA (linguistic quality assurance) methodology he calls the Quality Triangle. The Quality Triangle can be used to test an extremely wide variety of content, including websites, app interfaces, and email campaigns. For example, we’ve used it to evaluate the Turkish online store Trendyol, names and slogans for Positive Technologies, and the interface for a certain major payment service.
We spent two decades localizing texts, images, videos, and e-learning courses, and the extensive expertise we acquired from the evaluations we did along the way helped us hone our skills. Then, early in our third decade, we realized that we were ready to offer our clients original texts and multimedia content of equally high quality. This is now one of the cornerstones of our business.
Over 20 of our in-house employees, including designers, artists, sound directors, video editors, programmers, copywriters, and methodology experts, take on an extremely wide range of creative projects with the support of our scalable team of trusted contractors. We write and edit news stories and articles for experts, as well as technical documentation and advertising materials. Our writers recently spent two days reporting on an international cyber-security championship in real time. The tournament was incredibly dynamic and jam-packed with events, so instead of the two news stories per hour we’d signed up for, we ended up writing between ten and sixteen!
We create visual aids to accompany many of our text-based materials, including illustrations for articles on company blogs and easy-to-understand infographics for social media posts. We also love tackling unusual projects, like when we developed art assets for Earth 2050. This was a Kaspersky project about the future as seen by scientists, science fiction writers, and ordinary internet users – their predictions about things like the Morocco of the future, or athletes in VR – and we developed 360-degree panoramas based on them.
We also make videos – we write scripts, shoot videos ourselves, edit client-provided video material, and create animations. For example, we’ve created over 70 training and promotional videos with pseudo-3D graphical elements for a KIA mobile app since 2018.
Our e-learning courses are a special point of pride for us. We help our clients’ specialists with every aspect of course development, including developing a methodologically sound learning plan, writing scripts, recording video and audio, creating exercises and tests, and implementing and configuring learning management systems. As an example, we created a separate e-leaning portal for Kaspersky from scratch and filled it with e-learning courses related to cyber-security and digital hygiene.
We love working on content to order, and we always seek it out – we can do more than just translate a document, draw a cartoon, or write a blog post; we can also develop a full-fledged informational product from scratch. Fore example, we can launch and run news media in multiple languages, including looking for newsworthy events, writing articles, selecting illustrations, and analyzing and implementing reader feedback. Or we can translate a game into ten languages, provide active tech support, and develop videos and banners for promoting the product. We also work closely with our clients every step of the way and choose the most effective strategy to help them achieve their goals.
Sometimes the projects we develop to order might seem fundamentally impossible at first glance. One of the most memorable examples in our company’s history is probably the “Nightloc.” Two nights in a row, over 100 people (including translators, editors, project managers, and technical specialists) quickly and efficiently translated subtitles for a certain international gaming conference. We’d get subtitles from the conference’s hosts, and they’d want them translated and ready for broadcast just two hours later. We assembled and trained a team, prepared instructions, and coordinated the efforts of all the team members. In the end, we managed to translate several hundred thousand words and meet all our deadlines in just two nights. It was an experience we’ll never forget!
The world is changing before our eyes – new technologies, best practices, and even whole new professions are appearing all the time. But we never stop – we’re actively working on developing agile localization, implementing neural-network-based voice over (we even helped train the neural network), testing popular machine-translation engines, and keeping up to date on the latest innovations in IT. We always offer our clients cutting-edge solutions and tech.
Logrus IT is currently at the height of its powers. Thanks to processes that have been honed by years of experience and an individualized approach to each and every client, we’ve earned a reputation as a reliable service provider, and we take great pride in that.
Our regular clients have acknowledged Logrus IT’s work with numerous awards, certificates, and thank-you notes. We occupy leading positions on high-profile international and regional ratings: we’re one of the top 100 largest localization companies in the worlds according to CSA Research.
For our part, we’d also like to acknowledge and thank everyone who’s helped us grow and improve over the years.
No matter what we do, we’re constantly reminded of one thing: Logrus IT is, first and foremost, the people who work there. Our employees form a dependable, tightly-knit team of experts who can be trusted with any project, no matter how challenging or how tight the deadline. Thanks to their enthusiasm, drive, and personal investment in their work, our company can overcome any challenge.
If our people are our greatest resource, then our partners are our main pillar of support. By investing in each other, collaborating on shared objectives, and moving toward a common goal, we’ve developed real bonds of mutual trust and camaraderie. We see teamwork as a living thing, an ecosystem in which every link is equally important and irreplaceable.
We’re especially grateful to our clients – after all, you’re the ones who’ve helped Logrus IT reach the heights we currently enjoy. Thanks to the challenging, outside-the-box projects you’ve entrusted us with, we’re still growing as a company and getting better every day – and it’s all for you.
But for Logrus IT, the best is yet to come. Let’s set out on this exciting journey together!
