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Magazine
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At Home in TokyoToday, Moravia IT is one of the most highly regarded localization companies in the world, providing software localization, product testing, and translation services into more than 48 languages for IT and the life sciences. Software localization is an industry that has been developing rapidly, especially since the late 1980s. It basically consists the translation and adaptation of User Interfaces of computer software into target languages, verification of the functionality of the localized versions (testing) and also the translation of the accompanying product documentation, be it online or printed. Since the beginning as Moravia Translations in 1990, the company has had a strong focus on technology. Today, it has an advanced IT infrastructure and engineering staff, providing customers with a complete multilingual solutions and centralized project management. Customers include global companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Symantec, Tektronix and Toshiba. In addition to a number of awards the company has received from its customers, the General Manager and CEO of Moravia IT, Ms. Kateřina Forstingerová, received the Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2000. This international competition was founded by Ernst & Young in the United States in 1986 and continues to be the most important competition of its kind in that country. The prestigious title of the Entrepreneur of the Year, dubbed the "Oscar for Entrepreneurs," is awarded in more than twenty countries around the world, and in 2000 it was presented for the first time in the Czech Republic. Moravia IT maintains its global headquarters in the southern Moravian city of Brno and has more than 250 employees worldwide, particularly in Europe but also in its American office and since 2002, in China. The Chinese subsidiary is located in the city of Nanjing (the capital of the Jiangsu province) and is primarily a fast-developing software testing and engineering centre. These services are marketed under the brand name of QASight. In the spring of this year, Moravia IT became the first Czech company to open a representative office in Japan. Moravia IT Japan is an integral part of the company's strategy for East Asia and offers the whole range of services in software localisation particularly into Japanese. Additionally it is set over time to become the hub for the multilingual management of other Asian languages, especially Chinese (traditional as well as simplified) and Korean. This is now one of the fastest-growing market segments for the company - supplementing traditional target languages such as French, Italian, German, Spanish, and of course Czech. Japan and the Japanese language have a special place in Moravia IT's international strategy. As the world's second largest economy, Japan has a very high number of exporting producers who need to translate content for their foreign markets worldwide. In this sense, it is on a similar footing as the United States. At the same time, Japanese customers and consumers are very sophisticated, often with very specific requirements. Coupled with the sharply growing demand of translation into Japanese experienced by Moravia IT over the past two years, opening the Japanese branch is a step which will provide the company with the local presence and the capacity to meet this demand. In establishing its presence, Moravia IT worked very closely with the Japanese government agency for supporting foreign investment - JETRO - and before moving to its permanent offices made use of JETRO's Invest Japan Business Support Center (IBSC) facilities for 50 days. These were provided without any fee for rent, Internet use or consultations with JETRO's subject area experts. JETRO has also facilitated the support services of companies such as accounting firms, lawyers, recruitment agencies, etc. JETRO's support has been invaluable for the company. Their assistance enabled Moravia IT to begin operating in Japan almost immediately. In this respect, compared with the previous opening of offices in the United States, Ireland and China, the establishment of the Japanese office was probably the smoothest and fastest of them all. Since mid-July 2004, the company is based in permanent premises located in Tokyo's modern Shinjuku district. |
