The translation business on the Stock Market
Affari & Finanza (La Repubblica) 03/04/2000

Logos, May listing for THE TRANSLATION COMPANY FOUNDED BY THE FORMER CHILEAN EXILE RODRIGO VERGARA


Modena
A torrent of words is about to engulf the Stock Market. A torrent of words that flows every day through the computers of the Logos Group, owned by Rodrigo Vergara, a forty-eight year old Chilean exile who fled from the carabineros of Pinochet that were hunting him down in Santiago. He is now the founder of the largest European online translation company. "We are going to be listed on the Nuovo Mercato (New Market) of the Stock Exchange in May. We have already submitted our application to CONSOB (the Italian securities and exchange commission). This is the natural place for a company like ours to be, with a business that has literally exploded thanks to the Internet. Our sales are increasing at the rate of 20 per cent a year, and over the course of the last 20 years, the company has managed to fully exploit the appearance of new technologies to the full: from the telex to the simple fax, from the computer to the modem, all the way to the Internet," comments Vergara. "And if there is a company that now embodies the concept of teleworking, well, that’s us. So, being listed on the Stock Exchange first means fulfilling an obligation to our clients, and only secondarily a way to raise fresh capital for acquisition of translation companies scattered throughout the world, linked together in a network of operating offices capable of consolidating our leadership in the translation business."

Credit Suisse First Boston Europe and Unicredit Banca Mobiliare are handling the listing of Logos on the Stock Exchange, in their capacity as sponsor and specialist. In anticipation of the May listing, Vergara, who owns 61.5% of the company - with a further 28.5% split between five other managers at the company - has made room for new partners on the board of directors and in company share capital. Mauro Mauri, chairman of Cambria Tech, a holding company specializing in equity stakes in hi-tech firms, which in turn represents, among others, the interests of Letizia Moratti and the Luxembourg companies Ctnet and Ct-A&A, which, with an outlay of about ITL 30 billion and an exclusive capital increase, have underwritten a quota of 10%.
"Twenty-five per cent of the shares will be listed on the Stock Exchange after a special capital increase for a maximum of Euro 372,565 upon issuance of common shares with a par value of one Euro," explains the Chilean entrepreneur, now Modenese by adoption. "However, a percentage of the shares will be reserved for our employees and collaborators."

With only about ten employees, an army of 3000 collaborators-translators spread around the world, turnover that hit ITL 25 billion in 1999 (60% generated abroad), and with net profits of ITL 4 billion, Logos has a super-technological core that makes it possible for 500 texts to be translated every day and to maintain one of the most visited Web sites (www.logos.it), with over 100,000 hits a day. What it amounts to is an out-and-out multimedia translation network, including the largest virtual library in the world: Wordtheque, which contains about 10,000 literary texts in 46 different languages that can be consulted in their entirety. They’re just sitting there, waiting to be read or browsed through for free. "But we have also put the largest online dictionary, which used to be available for use by our translators only, on the Internet: it covers 140 different languages, including dialects. It is an "open" dictionary, since anyone can contribute updates to it by adding new words via Internet," Vergara tells us. He and Logos also conceived multilingual crossword puzzles, a natural development of traditional games in the digital era.

What was a virtually unknown company with three partners in 1979, when Vergara applied for work as a translator in his native Spanish (after doing a string of humIn the Year 2000, just as in the time of the ancient Egyptians, the traslator’s job consists of reading, interpreting with his or her mind, reviewing, and serving the client. Language belongs to everyone, the mind cannot be shackled."
This is the gospel according to Rodrigo Vergara, who fled from Chile when the coup led by Pinochet banished the word "freedom."





Gianluca Pedrazzi