Let me take you back to the late 1990s, in the prehistoric era of the language industry — when we still used paper dictionaries and hadn’t yet invented a jungle of acronyms for ourselves.
Back then, I had a small translation business called Lexis. A typical small Italian translation agency — what today we call LSP, LSC, LSI, CKC (Content and Knowledge Company), or GCSP (Global Content Solutions Provider – courtesy of CSA), and now even… LCFTMBUAID, my new acronym for Language Company Forced to Mutate Because of Unwelcome AI Disruption.
(I must have missed the moment when our industry became world champion in inventing absurd acronyms just to complicate our lives — and confuse both our identity and our clients.)
Anyway, back to the story. In the mid-1990s, Lexis joined an Italian association of translation agencies that no longer exists. At first, as a shy newbie, I spent a couple of years just attending meetings — which looked more like afternoon teas than actual business meetings.
The discussions were always the same: self-pity and complaints. “Agencies are the poor misunderstood ones, translators are our enemies, clients don’t understand us,” and so on. Nobody ever suggested we should face real market dynamics or actually do something to make change happen… Not exactly what I had expected from an association!
Also, the association’s focus was purely Italian. Nobody thought of expanding our reach, looking at what agencies abroad were doing, or even connecting with peers in other countries to see how the industry was evolving. (For fairness, let me say there are now two excellent associations in Italy doing a great job!)
Around that time — forgive me, I don’t recall the exact dates — I met my fellow association member and partner in crime, Susan West.
Susan is one of the brightest minds I could share ideas with. We talked about what an association could and should do to support the industry and create real opportunities for members to grow. Together we began attending international conferences, and our conversations always turned into very creative brainstorming sessions.
Back to the Italian association, Susan and I got tired of their narrative and inaction, and we decided to take a more proactive approach. We proposed shifting our annual national meetings into international conferences, so we could open up to the wider world.
Our biggest achievement was organizing an international conference — if my dinosaur memory serves me right — in Rimini, Italy, in 2001, gathering some 300 attendees from all over the world. It was a blast, and we were very proud.
But then came the post-mortem board meeting. We thought the conference success would be celebrated. Instead, we were told the event was “too far forward” for Italian agencies. Apparently, the topics — things like “localization” and “technology” — were too advanced and too uncomfortable for them.
That reaction killed our enthusiasm. Susan and I felt we no longer belonged there. So, we slammed the door and left the association. We wanted something different, more ambitious, more international.
In 2002, Susan and I attended the ATA conference in Atlanta. The ATA (American Translators Association) is a major language industry association in the U.S. Their conferences used to attract more than 1,000 attendees.
But translation companies couldn’t be real, full members. They could only join a separate chapter, the TCD (Translation Companies Division), but they had no voting rights and little influence on the ATA’s agenda.
At that conference, we got to know some very smart American LSP owners. They too were frustrated. They felt the ATA wasn’t the right environment anymore. So, they broke away and created their own association: the ALC (Association of Language Companies).
That moment inspired Susan and me. On the flight back from Atlanta to Italy, high above the Atlantic, we thought: if the U.S. can have its own association for translation companies, then Europe must have one too.
That’s how it all started. We believed Europe deserved a strong voice — at the time, everything in translation and localization seemed dominated by the U.S. We wanted to change that by creating a pan-European association, a platform for European LSPs to get together, grow together, and actively contribute to shaping the modern language industry.
Of course, once we landed, reality hit. Setting up an international association was a total mystery to us. How to turn the idea into something tangible and find enough companies to support it? (There were no social networks back then!)
Luckily, the ALC helped enormously — especially thanks to the generosity of Suzanne Robinson, who is sadly no longer with us. They shared advice, support, and even their bylaws, their articles of association — pure gold for us. Thanks to this, from day one, Elia and ALC became sister associations.
To find other companies in Europe ready to embrace the idea of Elia, we tapped into our own connections — LSPs we collaborated with or who were our clients — spreading the gospel one meeting at a time. Eventually, we succeeded in gathering 11 founding member companies from 10 European countries.
From the very first spark of the pan-European idea to the actual birth of the association, Susan and I — and later the other pioneers who joined us — worked hard for nearly three years. Everyone contributed, bringing in their own diverse perspectives, and together we shaped the foundations of what would become the first, and still the only, European Language Industry Association.
At last, in 2005, Elia was formally established. Two years later, in 2007, we introduced it to the industry with our very first Elia conference in Barcelona. A few months later John Terninko joined us.
Only about 25 participants showed up — curious, perhaps a little skeptical, but full of enthusiasm. Small in number, yes, but the energy in that room made it instantly clear that Europe not only needed but deserved such an association, one capable of grouping and representing the extraordinary variety of its language industry players.
That modest Barcelona gathering became Elia’s Big Bang — the spark that set everything in motion and eventually shaped the thriving community we are all part of today.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
This blog post is an adapted version of the keynote speech delivered by Roberto Ganzerli at the Elia Networking Days on 22 September 2025 in Budapest.
