TALKING THE SAME LANGUAGE:  INTERNATIONAL TRADE A BOON TO TRANSLATION

Indianapolis Business Journal article
September 14, 1986
By Tawn Parent
Excerpt follows:
Christian Gecewicz, a French native, started the bureau, the city’s oldest translation service, in 1975 as a one-man, free-lance operation…

The need for such services has grown along with the city’s increasing involvement in foreign trade and other international activities, as well as the heightened cultural sensitivity that comes along with it, Gecewicz said.

 “It was a real educational process in the beginning,” he said. “Most executives thought they could take a secretary, hand them a dictionary and get a decent translation. Now there is a bigger understanding that the need for a quality text or talking at least a little bit of the language is important enough to invest a little bit of time and money.”

In addition to the traditionally popular French, Spanish and German, the company receives many requests for Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, Korean and increasingly, Russian, Gecewicz said.

Indianapolis offers a plentiful supply of consecutive interpreters – those who listen to what the speaker says and then summarize it. But the company must look outside the city for its simultaneous interpreters, those who interpret word-for-word as the speaker progresses.

International Bureau of Translations has purchased its own interpretation equipment, which enables it to handle language services for large groups. For example, the company served 400 participants at a U.S. – Japan trade convention at the Indiana Convention Center last year. The equipment includes booths, transmitters and individual receivers for audience participants.

HIS KNOWLEDGE TRANSLATES INTO A BOOMING BUSINESS
The Indianapolis News article
September 14, 1986
By Linda Gillis
Excerpt follows:
In this information age, Christian B. Gecewicz’s 10-year-old business sheds new light on the art of communications.

“Translations which are done well ease the way for better communications,” he said.

IBT served as chief translator for both the 1982 and the 1986 International Violin Competitions – interpreting rules and medical questionnaires for contestants and making sure everyone’s names were pronounced correctly.

It also played a key role in wooing the Pan Am Games. Gecewicz said IBT was recruited by the city to write the initial proposal in Spanish to the Pan American Sports Organization. “We described all the sports facilities and highlights of the city in detail, including translating and recording the voice over of a video showing the best of the city,” he said.

Established in 1976 primarily as a linguistic service for businesses seeking overseas markets, IBT has since expanded into the realms of cultural events and high-tech videos.

Gecewicz insists on using only the best to translate important documents or serve as interpreters at international functions.

“They must have a very good knowledge of the language – be natives or almost as good as native,” he said.

Gecewicz is proud of IBT’s ability to produce documents that read as if they were produced in the country in which they are being sent.
“I don’t like reading material that sounds choppy and has obviously been translated,” he said. “Little details mean a lot when trying to make a good impression.”

…“ We haven’t missed a deadline yet,” said Gecewicz.
When competing with other countries for business, being able to address companies in a personal manner can make all the difference in a sale.
“Sending correspondence or pamphlets in a country’s languages is well received by foreign companies,” said Gecewicz. “It may make them decide to buy.”

IBT’s clients have included Kiwanis International, Jenn-Air, RCA and U.S. Steel.

It has also produced pamphlets in several languages for the Indiana Department of Commerce, translated Christmas messages for Eli Lilly to send around the world and created an international poster for the American Lung Association.

TUTOR HELPS FOREIGNERS FEEL AT HOME ON THE ICE
The Indianapolis Star article
October 14, 1992
By John Shaughnessy
Excerpt follows:
It was bad enough trying to explain the peculiar American curse of Ed McMahon to the Czechoslovakian hockey player and his wife.

“One day, they received one of those Ed McMahon letters and they were so excited that they might have won a million dollars,” says Christian Gecewicz. “I had to tell them, ‘Yeah, you and millions of other people.’ That put a little damper on their party.”

Yet even harder to explain were all those inventive English-language obscenities that opposing hockey players shouted at the Czech player whenever he played goalie for the Indianapolis Ice.

“When we’d meet the day after a game, he’d sometimes ask me, ‘What does this word mean?’” Gecewicz recalls. “Sometimes they were pretty bad words. There were days when it was embarrassing, explaining it in front of his wife. Those weren’t words I could point to in a dictionary.”
So there you have it – two nightmares in an otherwise dream job for Gecewicz. A man who loves hockey, he’s responsible for teaching foreign hockey players with the Ice how to speak English and survive life in America.

…“You have to prepare them for the shocks they find here,” says Gecewicz, who owns the International Bureau of Translations here. “One of the shocks is living in an apartment and finding all the things we take for granted – like a refrigerator, a stove, a washer and dryer, a coffee maker. …

“Then there are the grocery stores. There’s so much food on the shelves. … In their countries, you have to stand in line for bread and meat. …”
Gecewicz has been handling the shocks and surprises since 1990, when the Ice asked him to tutor their Czech goalie, Dominic Hasek. Since Hasek was new to America, the Chicago Blackhawks organization decided he should spend some time at their minor-league affiliate in Indianapolis.
“Dominic came here a little sullen: ‘What am I doing here?’” recalls Ice President Ray Compton. “But the Blackhawks like to send these players to a city like this so they get a chance to adjust to America before they go up to the big show and the pressure.”

While Hasek has since been traded to the National Hockey League team in Buffalo, N.Y., Gecewicz now works with three foreign Ice players. Milan Tichy and Ivan Droppa of Czechoslovakia both know some English. Compton jokes that the only English word Alexandr Andrievski of Russia knows so far is “money.”

Gecewicz meets with the players several times a week for two-hour sessions. He starts with words and phrases that will help them communicate with their teammates and coaches during the game. He continues with the slang and the everyday language that will help them at the store, the bank, the post office.

“Chris is my best friend in Indy,” Tichy says about his teacher. “When he start teach me, I did not speak English – nothing. He explain everything to me.”

Gecewicz is just as thrilled.
“I’m so proud of teaching them and then seeing them in what they do best,” Gecewicz says. “To see Dominic now playing in the NHL, it’s quite a thrill. It’s something I can tell my grandchildren someday: ‘Remember the great hall of fame goalie Dominic Hasek? Everything he learned in English, he learned from me.’

10-YEAR-OLD FIRM SPOTLIGHTS COMMUNICATIONS
The Indianapolis News article
September 21, 1987
By Linda Gillis
Excerpt follows:
... At IBT, a team of translators works to proofread and fine tune all transcripts. The installment of computers and software complete with the appropriate punctuation marks has really improved production speed. Not that IBT had problems meeting demands before. It just meets them faster now.

“We haven’t missed a deadline yet,” said Gecewicz.

When competing with other countries for business, being able to address companies in a personal manner can make all the difference in a sale.
“Sending correspondence or pamphlets in the country’s language is well received by foreign companies,” said Gecewicz. “It may make them decide to buy.”

He contends American companies who don’t make the language effort may find foreign businesses getting their products elsewhere.

“It’s an egotistical approach to only communicate in English, and it often makes a bad impression,” Gecewicz said. “Investing a little money to have materials translated can pay off in the long run.”

IBT’s clients have included Kiwanis International, Jenn-Air, RCA and U.S. Steel.

It has also produced pamphlets in several languages for the Indiana Department of Commerce, translated Christmas messages for Eli Lilly to send around the world and created an international poster for the American Lung Association.

AMERICAN DREAMER
Indianapolis Business Journal
September 4-10, 2000
By Laura Goodenow
Excerpt follows :
Christian Gecewicz and his company, International Bureau of Translations, Inc., have both come a long way, figuratively and quite literally speaking.

A native of France, Gecewicz, 51, began teaching French in South America after leaving his family in Canada when he was just a teenager. He traveled for eight years learning Spanish and taking in the sights. “I wanted to see what other countries looked like,” Gecewicz said. “But then I decided to move on to something, hopefully, better.”

Hope landed him on the shores of Florida in 1972 at age 24, and like many, he lived and learned in Miami. “I thought I was going to conquer the world there,” Gecewicz recalled. He was working in a record shop when a jewelry store owner who had planned to buy a $200 stereo walked out with a $2,000 purchase. The jewelry store owner was impressed that Gecewicz could talk him into buying that much, so he offered him a job. That job eventually brought Gecewicz to Indianapolis in 1974. “I really liked Indianapolis’ size and the people were great,” Gecewicz said.

... Gecewicz came up with a translation business idea. “I didn’t want to lose the languages I’d learned,” Gecewicz said. Despite a lack of faith from friends and relatives, he started his business in a one-room apartment with a typewriter and the Yellow Pages. “My biggest obstacle was speaking with heads of companies and explaining that they really needed translations,” Gecewicz said, “that not everyone speaks English.”

... He incorporated in 1978, and business started picking up. From 1979-1985 Gecewicz also attended IUPUI and Indiana University-Bloomington to get his B.A. in Liberal Arts and a graduate degree in French Linguistics....
Gecewicz’s company, now a language translation, interpretation and instruction business, is thriving and expanding as the economy goes global. “I look back and think, ‘oh, that was risky,’” Gecewicz said, “but [success] takes luck and a lot of hard work.”
His advice to immigrants would be to believe in themselves and work hard. “When we first started,” Gecewicz said, “I couldn’t have imagined what we have now.”

NAME SAID CORRECTLY IS MUSIC TO HIS EARS
The Indianapolis Star
September 14, 1986
By Dan Carpenter
Excerpt follows:
Adjourn with us behind the scenes, if you will, and meet one of the key figures in the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. His name is Christian B. Gecewicz, he was born in France to Polish parents he moved to Indianapolis from Quebec, and he seems to have chosen the right line of work. When he is not teaching Spanish at DePauw University or French at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, Chris Gecewicz [gets-SEH-vitch] operates the International Bureau of Translations, Inc.

“Translations of the rules and schedules and so on, Gecewicz says.“We had a meeting with some of the personalities on the radio. We went thoroughly one name at a time and made sure everybody had the phonetics correct. It turned out to be more arduous than we expected.”

IBT has been in business 10 years and has under contract 80 translators with proficiency in 24 languages.

LANGUAGE TRANSLATION CAN BE CAREER CHOICE
Indiana Daily Student
October 16, 1985
by Siok-Hian Tay
Excerpt follows :
Translating is more than just homework done for a foreign language class. It also can be a lucrative career option. Government agencies that need translators include the U.S. Information Agency, the Central Inteligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

A translation in the U.S. Army can earn a starting salary of $20,000 a year, said Christian Gecewicz, assistant instructor in French and president of the International Bureau of Translations, Inc. in Indianapolis.

Gecewicz once worked for Pan American Translations where he was paid 2 cents a word. While there, his first assignment was translating an RCA Corp. manual. “That was real exciting,” he jokes. The 83 translators he currently has on contract are paid 7 and 8 cents a word, he said. This type of work demands intense concentration and translators seldom work more than a half hour at a stretch, he said.


A DUCK TALE, A THREAT OF JAIL AND A TOUGH TRAIL TO SAFETY
Indianapolis Star
October 21, 1992
By John Shaughnessy

Running a-fowl of the law
As head of the International Bureau of Translations in Indianapolis, Christian Gecewicz is sometimes called to provide interpreters for foreigners who have to appear in court. One case stands out to him.
“We were called to help two men arrested for stealing ducks in Broad Ripple. They didn’t speak anything other than their own language,” said Gecewicz, who declined to name their homeland. “We sent an interpreter, and their story was they had always done this in their own country. When they saw the ducks in Broad Ripple, they thought this was a great place to hunt. They couldn’t believe how easy it was to get ducks here, compared t how hard it was to get food for their family back home. For them, it was a natural thing to do.

“They got a warning, and the interpreter had to tell them it’s not something you do here.”

DOES NOT TRANSLATE
Indianapolis Star
February 27, 1987
By Robert A. Titlow

Speaking a second language or third language is so specialized that few of us are able to speak more than a few chopped phrases. Americans cannot and do not communicate effectively with other cultures. How does Indianapolis reward this rare ability to communicate fluently in foreign languages? It continually asks for volunteers for the Pan Am and World Track and Field Games, etc. I have yet to see a call for 250 volunteer electricians or lawyers, surgeons or concert violinists. Why focus on linguistics?

LE COIN DE LA PRESIDENTE
Indiana – AATF Newsletter
mai 1992
numéro 3

Au programme de l’assemblée annuelle de I-AATF qui aura lieu de 9h30 à 10h30 le vendredi 23 octobre nous avons M. Christian Gecewicz, fondateur et président du International Bureau of Translations à Indianapolis. M. Gecewicz nous entiendra sur le dévelopment des affaires internationales dans l’Indiana au cours de ces quinze dernières annèes et sur ce que nous, professeurs de français, pouvons faire pour aider nos élèves et nos étudiants à exploiter après leur études cette nouvelle dimension de l’économie et de la vie de Indiana. La conférence de M. Gecewicz conviendra parfaitement au thème de la réunion deu IFLTA cette année, “Springboard to an International Indiana.”