Two practitioners, one long conversation

How it started

Aaron and Olivier met at an online ATA mixer in June 2023, got to talking, and simply never stopped — it's a conversation they're both still in. Olivier is the Chief Linguist of TRANSLATIX, the French-language specialist firm he's run since 1997, serving France, Canada, Belgium, Switzerland, and the francophone markets of Africa. Aaron came up through the operational and localization side of the industry. Two people running language businesses from different angles — and for about three years now, a standing exchange that keeps proving its worth.

What we talk about

Running a translation or language-services business means constantly making calls in areas no one trains you for. These are the ones Aaron and Olivier keep working through together:

• Rate-setting and pricing — what to charge, how to structure it, and how to hold the line.
• Tools and efficiencies — CAT tools, workflows, and getting more out of the same hours.
• Machine translation and AI — arguably the biggest shift our field has ever faced, and one they think through in real time: where it helps, where it hurts, and what it means for a language business.
• Marketing for small language businesses — what actually brings in the right clients without a marketing department.
• Finding and working with linguists — sourcing, vetting, and building reliable relationships across languages and regions.
• Interpreting operations — the practical side of finding and delivering interpreting work.
• The judgment calls, big and small — the questions that don't fit neatly anywhere else. Is a credential like ATA certification worth pursuing — will it actually raise your rates or your reputation? Is this conference worth the time, or just a nice trip? And the one people rarely admit: when you're already at capacity, does it even make sense to chase more work? Knowing what not to pursue is often worth as much as knowing what to.

The value isn't that either of them has all the answers. It's that each can test his thinking against someone who genuinely understands the business — before betting real money or time on a decision.

The accountability underneath it

Underneath all of it is a kind of mutual accountability. We don't always walk in with perfectly defined goals — but we hold each other to actually thinking things through and following through, rather than letting decisions drift. Sometimes the most useful thing is simply knowing someone's going to ask how it went. That's what turns good conversations into real progress.

Why it works

What keeps this going is that it's a real exchange, not a one-way street. Aaron brings deep experience from the operational and localization side of the industry and a genuinely practical way of thinking about the business. When I'm weighing a decision — a pricing move, a technology question, how to respond to what AI is doing to our field — he's one of the few people I can talk it through with who gives a straight, informed answer instead of a generic one. It's the kind of professional relationship every business owner needs and few actually have.