After a few years, like a bird leaving its nest, Glyph moved out of the Fremont offices to its current home, Spokane, Washington. At the same time, Glyph established an admirable record of client retention by consistently delivering high quality, meticulous, and timely translation services. There, Glyph continued to diversify, gain clients and grow in sophistication by developing and adopting rapidly improving localization technology. In 2006 both SLA and Glyph moved out of their cramped, rather rustic but deliciously fragrant quarters above a bagel deli and Labanese restaurant into a shiny-new office building on the tree-lined banks of the Lake Washington Ship Canal in the Fremont neighborhood. Glyph quickly prospered, picking up some extraordinarily prestigious accounts among the marquee institutions of Seattle (think of the world’s largest software and e-commerce companies, not to mention a Seattle-based global coffee company, e.g.) business diversified, Glyph’s staff grew and Aaron was promoted to CEO. At the same time, they combined forces with Mark Truluck, who joined Glyph’s board, bringing valuable technology and business expertise. So, Marc and Tyler decided to spin off the translation business and, in February, 2002, took the steps needed to incorporate Glyph Language Services. Before long, SLA’s translation activity became quite profitable, and, thus, problematic in light of the school’s non-profit status. In fact, translation became such a popular request that SLA began charging fees for this service and in 2001 hired its first full-time project manager, Aaron Schliem. Their assumption was that there would be some linguist on hand who could translate them and very often that assumption was correct. What’s SLA’s connection to localization? From the beginning, members of the public, lacking other options at the time, brought items they wanted translated to SLA. SLA has since closed its doors, alas, but in its day it was the premier private language school in Seattle, offering classes and individual lessons in a huge range of languages from Arabic to Turkish, and, no surprise, Latin and Ancient Greek. When in 1996 they established SLA in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, Marc and Tyler were bringing to bear that profound and energetic love for culture and linguistic heritage implied by the study of Classics. The vastness of that sweep takes in a multitude of interacting and overlapping yet distinct modern languages, an idea which is beautifully captured by the interlocking branches, leaves and acorns of SLA’s original oaktree logo. In fact, the geographical area happens to encompass most of Western and Eastern Europe and a lot of Northern Europe and also parts of that ill-defined continent, Asia, and the Indian subcontinent and North Africa. Because Greeks founded cities all around the Mediterranean and Romans built an empire that extended from Britain to Iraq, the time period and geographic area that Classics covers is vast. Marc and Tyler were not really business people when they founded SLA, rather they were idealistic graduate students and teachers who had been at the University of Washington together, working towards postgraduate degrees in Classics.Ĭlassics? For those who are not sure, Classics is the field of study of the ancient world, specifically the Greek and Roman cultures and languages. SLA was an institution that sprang from the passion for language, history, culture, and literature of its founders, Marc Mariani and Tyler Lansford. One way to see Glyph is as the profitable offspring of a not-for-profit public service organization, Seattle Language Academy, or SLA. Moreover, to know Glyph’s prehistory goes a long way to grasp certain qualities of Glyph’s present culture, particularly our dedication to service, our passion for language and culture, and our sense that “mean what you say” is our higher purpose. Indeed, the required papers and bureaucratic checklists were finalized in Seattle twenty years ago however, Glyph’s roots reach a good deal deeper into the past than that.
That is, on February 12, 2022, Glyph will have been in business for twenty years … a long time in LSPyears! And an inspiring milestone for all of us who work here. According to the Washington State Certificate of Incorporation, which I must say looks rather important yet unassuming in its dusty black frame, Glyph Language Services, Inc., came into being on February 12, 2002.