MultiCorpora CEO Pierre Blais pre-briefed us on the acquisition earlier this week. Because both companies are family-owned and privately funded, Blais wouldn’t disclose the dollar amount of the deal but did say that MultiCorpora was paying for Beetext with cash on hand and would not need to borrow any money. The two firms will merge operations and staff, but the Beetext office in Montreal will remain open. Beetext president Benoit Desjardins will take a customer-facing strategy and support role at MultiCorpora. Blais said that MultiCorpora intends to integrate the two company’s products, its own MultiTrans and Beetext’s Flow MMX, in the next couple of months. He also said that MultiCorpora will also sell both solutions separately for buyers that would like to integrate either solution with commercial off-the-shelf or homegrown solutions.

Why did these two language technology suppliers come together? Blais said that MultiCorpora felt that it needed core workflow and project management components to MultiTrans so that it could participate in some deals. Previously, it had partnered with Plunet, but without MultiCorpora controlling all the technology, it could not offer prospects the level of language and project management integration that they were seeking. Many corporate buyers and language service providers evaluating TMS solutions don’t want to have to become integrators of disparately sourced technologies to get the full assemblage of language, project control, connectivity, business data, and system oversight they need to run their operations.

All told, the combined products add up to a strong TMS contender. In our assessment of translation management products, we found that MultiCorpora scored well with its language support, but fell down on project, financial, and vendor management. Conversely, Beetext has done very well on the business management axes, but was missing the language component. The performance of both firms on these language and business issues hearkens back to their original design centers, with each focusing on a different part of the TMS puzzle. Putting these two products under the same roof has the potential to create a much stronger product, without any of the “finger-pointing” problems associated with the arm’s length couplings so prevalent in the industry.

Who will buy this conjoined product? Translation companies certainly will take a look. Our report on “Tech-Savvy Language Service Providers” (Aug10) demonstrates that most translation suppliers seek a more unified platform on which to operate. On the end-buyer side, MultiCorpora will certainly push the technology into its traditional government, non-government organization, and business buyers, especially those with in-house translation departments but also the pure outsourcers. Blais specifically flagged the SDL (né Idiom) WorldServer community — he said that current WorldServer users want MultiTrans’ advanced leveraging technology (that is, sub-sentential segments, as discussed in “Beyond Global Websites,” Mar05), while other users simply want a replacement. It’s telling that 2-1/2 years after Idiom’s acquisition by SDL that the market still seeks an independent TMS solution.

MultiCorpora faces the classic challenges in bringing two software vendors’ code bases together. Besides the obvious issues of unifying interfaces, application programming interfaces, support and training, and vision, the newly expanded MultiCorpora will have to pump up its marketing and sales efforts to get a hearing in a marketplace against TMS contenders such as Across, SDL, STAR, and TransPerfect. However, the merger of products with clear strengths in their respective sectors bodes well for MultiCorpora’s offering.

No, these aren’t the alleged blood diamonds that recently “inconvenienced” Naomi Campbell, but rather, the 887.24 carat gems that were stolen from a recent jewelry show in India. What’s language got to do with it?

Quite a lot. Apparently, four of the individuals who have been detained in connection with the heist speak Spanish. Since Spanish<>Marathi interpreters cannot exactly be found on every street corner in Mumbai, investigators are using a process known as relay interpretation, in which one person interprets from Spanish into English, and then another interpreter renders the information from English into Marathi.

While this addresses the language barrier for purposes of taking the statements from the alleged diamond thieves, more language services will inevitably be needed as the case proceeds forward and justice is sought for all, including the rightful owners of the diamonds, Israeli firm Dalumi Group. Will the language pairs evolve to include Hebrew<>Marathi?

While diamond heists are often the themes of  Bollywood and Hollywood films, the very real and growing demand for less common language combinations only stands to increase as globalization continues. In today’s world, all people — including criminals — are more connected than ever before, making language services an essential component of battling international crime.

These 14 LSPs are translation and intepreting firms, all categorized under Inc’s “Business Products and Services” tab. The following table includes their Inc. 5000 rank, the company name, its three-year growth rate, and revenue for the last year.

Because the magazine’s ranking methodology focuses on rapid increases in revenue, smaller companies with strong growth over zero score higher than more established firms. Thus, adaQuest’s nearly 500% jump over the three-year rating period trumps the impressive doubling of TransPerfect’s much larger revenue base over that same period.

Inc’s approach differs from Common Sense Advisory’s market sizing report, which ranks LSPs not by rate of growth, but by total revenue. Our May 2010 list of the top 35 LSPs includes Language Line (#4 in revenue on our list), TransPerfect (#6), Welocalize (#15), and Language Services Associates (#32). Certified Languages International did not qualify to appear on our global ranking, but it did take the 15th spot in our regional ranking for North America. Both Inc.’s and our rankings are voluntary, meaning that there may be faster-growing or bigger U.S.-based LSPs out there — all they need do to be considered is make themselves known to Inc. and Common Sense Advisory and participate in the respective application processes.

However, success in global or domestic multicultural business requires more than just translating text, interpreting spoken materials, or localizing code. Going beyond the business services category, we give a language services shout-out to representative companies in a few other categories for their growing role in supporting multilingual business initiatives:

• Multilingual call centers. The Spanish-language call center Listen Up Espanol (#27 on the Inc. list) clocks in with US$14.9 million in revenue driven by a numbing 6,914% growth rate. Further down the list, the multilingual call center firm VXI Global Solutions (#1,110) earned US$97.6 million in revenue, an increase of 271% over the last three years.
• Advertisers, design firms, and strategists. The Inc. list includes a large category of advertising firms, many of which we assume work on transcreation and even translation projects, but probably just call both of them “creative” for local markets. Firms in this category include companies like Shift Global (#2,145) that build websites and marketing campaigns — its three-year growth rate was 121% with US$3.4 million in revenue. Much larger Apco Worldwide (#4,469) focuses on public affairs and strategic communications — it has grown at 19% and booked US$100.3 million. The list also includes specialists, such as Just Marketing International (#3,806), which clocked a 39% growth rate and earned its US$79.5 million by marketing motorsports worldwide, and hospitality industry-focused TIG International (#3,752), with US$31.2 million in revenue and a 41% increase over three years.
• Law firms. Baker & McKenzie (#3,826) is present in 39 countries, generating US$2.1 billion in revenue and a growth rate of 39%. Faegre & Benson (#4,647) billed US$283 million for a 14% increase. Morrison & Foerster (#4,643) focuses its Asian operation on public offerings, booking US$884 million as it, too, grew 14%.
• Educators. GlobalEnglish Corporation (#2,294) made the list with its US$33 million in revenue and growth rate of 110%. While this company focuses on better business English and no other languages, transnational companies and global virtual teams demand a common tongue for efficient internal communications.

These firms are only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Many of Inc’s fastest-growing firms in media, retail, software, and IT services will need to rely on LSPs to grow beyond their English-language domestic markets with global and multicultural offerings — as the world of language services just keeps getting bigger.