Our Community

We love helping charities and sponsor the annual Polar Bear Plunge, which has raised over £25,000 to date.

Director Clare Suttie manages the St Albans Postboxes, bringing woolly magic to St Albans every Christmas – and raising over £115,000 for charities to date.

Clare also set up Exmouth Postboxes, which raise funds for Hospiscare every summer.

As a company (and individuals), we regularly support a number of charities.

A common interest is good food and good coffee – thank you, George Street Canteen and L’Italiana.

We also love Toast for coffee, and Per Tutti is another favourite spot for a bite to eat.

Atlas Translations is active in the local and national business community! Come and meet us at the St Albans and District Chamber of Commerce events, or perhaps the next ITI Conference.

So, to give you a snapshot, in 2016, our director, Clare, sent her husband to the North Pole. Not randomly, but to raise money for Cancer Research UK, Rennie Grove Hospice Care, Earthworks St Albans and the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust.

Yes, it was Mr. Clare who trekked to the North Pole. Fair point, but it was Clare who stayed home to look after their three children and run Atlas.

Before he left, Clare and Mr. Clare (also known as ‘Ed’) organised a ball, the Snow and Ice Ball, where many of you attended and supported the chosen charities. Thank you. We couldn’t have done it without you.

Also, before he left, (yes, there’s more), on January 1, 2016, there was the Polar Bear Plunge organised by Clare, (aka the Polar PA). With admin support from me, Anna, who shall now be known as ‘The Polar Plunge PA’s PA’ or ‘Pee-pee Pa-pa’ for short.

This gave people from across Hertfordshire, London and beyond the chance to jump into icy waters to raise money for charity. What a wonderful, chilly yet warm-spirited way to start the year.

The Plunge was such a success that it was held again on January 1, 2017, and January 1, 2018. Raising even more money for great causes, this effort has continued to flourish, with notable successes on January 1, 2019 and again in 2020.

It remains ongoing, thanks to the wonderful Earthworks St Albans.

Further afield, we support a child in Africa through WorldVision. Her name is Lightness Sambuya, and we ensure that she receives both educational and financial support to give her a better start in life.

We are dedicated to supporting local businesses. Even down to the coffee shop where we buy our Friday coffee treats (courtesy of Atlas – thanks, Clare).

It’s not part of a huge conglomerate chain but a small coffee shop called George Street Canteen. They are brilliant and their coffee and cakes are AMAZING!!

They have very kindly donated free cakes and coffee for our charity event, Breast Tea Ever.

We ran a Bra Bank for many years and are delighted to let you know that you can now take all your gently used, unwanted bras to—appropriately enough—a bra shop!

Gwendolen is a specialist lingerie and swimwear boutique situated at 6 Upper Dagnall Street (AL3 5EA) in the heart of St Albans.

They will happily accept your bras into the bra bank there.

We are dedicated to recycling.

Not so easy here in our office, so (those of us in the St Albans office) carry home our plastic milk bottles, gathered from our gallons of tea. We have a set of reusable coffee cups (thank you, George St Canteen).

And we recycle our pizza boxes from (L’Italiana, a local restaurant). We love Pizza Friday. Makes a change from our packed lunches. And it’s the only restaurant our Italian Project Managers love, which is a good enough endorsement for us!

Ryman is the lucky recipient of our used printer cartridges, although we are well on our way to becoming a paperless office.

Through our real-world work offering and delivering translation services internationally, we are actively engaged in the local business community.

While we speak the world’s languages, we understand the importance of our local communities and the charities that support them. We also recognise that all this work would not be possible without our incredible team of linguists who work for us. We host events at least twice a year that allow us to say a big, heartfelt thank you to them.

In the age of the internet, email, working from home, and even phone calls, it’s easy to forget that there is a person behind a name. We are eager to establish face-to-face contact with all Atlas employees.

Good relationships are essential for delivering high-quality work. Without these incredible language experts, there would be no human translation, and therefore, no real translation. This is a vital component of the service we provide.

There is much written about translation software and whether ‘human translation’ is needed anymore. By the way, ‘human translation’ means people who are highly qualified language experts who don’t just change one word for another. They understand its context, respect cultural sensitivities, and find a beautiful and succinct way of saying the same thing in an alternative language.

Translation isn’t binary; it isn’t a two-dimensional science or basic algebra. X doesn’t always equal X.  It’s far greater than that, and there are thousands of ways to say the same things. Our vast team of translators work hard to find the most appropriate words, because translating is more like art. Or poetry.

To show our appreciation for this, we like our translators to join us regularly and enjoy fine food, drink and conversation that isn’t necessarily about work. After these events, we sometimes have leftover food which we deliver to local homeless centres, so nothing is wasted.

Information on events and meeting us can be found here on the Atlas Translations website.

Although we aren’t a family-run business, we would never regard each other as just colleagues.

We support one another at various stages of life, including parenting, sickness, career development, and return to work. We offer part-time, flexible working, a 4-day working week, and the option to work from home, enabling us to spend time with our families (including our furbabies!).

We’re all very proud to be part of this wonderful team of incredible people.

You can see us in this promotional video.