Thebigword is out for expansion with US drive

The Leeds company, which has a global network of linguists working in 77 countries, has expanded in recent years after winning major contracts with the American government and also with a major investment bank, which it said it was unable to name.

Thebigword, which expects to see turnover rise by more than 40 per cent to $78m this year, said a significant proportion of the new jobs will be in the firm's office on Wall Street, New York. It also has offices in Los Angeles, Copenhagen and Tokyo and clients include GE, Ford, Honda, IBM and MTV Europe.

Much of its recent growth has been in its "over the phone" interpreting service, which enables customers to talk over the telephone through an interpreter. It expects to have a global workforce of 1,500 plus 7,700 freelance linguists by end of the summer, making it the second largest interpreter in the world.

Josh Gould, chief commercial officer, said: "The interpreting industry is critical to the daily business of the US Government and the majority of the top global 1,000 companies. thebigword has emerged as a responsible business, driving down price whilst increasing quality standards.

"Some sectors of the language services industry have attacked thebigword for our aggressive pricing policy but we're defiant in our quest to make interpreting more accessible to businesses and world governments whilst protecting our most important assets – our linguists."

Thebigword has achieved 93 per cent compound growth in the past two years by expanding organically but Mr Gould has not ruled out buying other firms if they are available at the right price. "One of our major competitors has declared itself for sale. Buying them could in theory double our market share in one deal, but the competitor's high fixed costs and – in our view – inflated price tag mean it's not a great investment. We're more likely to look at strategic acquisitions in region of $10-20m."

The group's earlier purchase of Rainbow, a Beijing language services company, has spearheaded the company's push into China.