Belfast interpreting firm reaches 75 language milestone including latest languages Telugu, Nuer and Tigrinya

Now offering clients access to 75 global languages including latest languages Telugu, Nuer and Tigrinya, the company has also witnessed a 12% increase in its translation languages since 2020.

Diversity have also increased their bank of Tetum, Dari and Pashto Interpreters, which are growing in demand in Northern Ireland.

Established in 2010, Diversity, headed up by Bulgarian native, Paolina Hawthorne, has a team of 10 based in its east Belfast headquarters, and a wider team of 700 interpreters and translators based across Northern Ireland.

Managing multiple public sector contracts and business for private clients, Diversity experienced a turbulent 2020 when the pandemic descended.

However, as clients began to look at new solutions, Diversity pivoted its services introducing virtual interpreting and focused on growing its private sector business.

Paolina Hawthorne, managing director of Diversity, explained: “Like many businesses we had to radically adapt our business model over the past two years, find solutions and educate both clients and our team in our new way of doing business. Offering virtual interpreting would never have been an option that we’d have considered before, however, due to necessity, we introduced virtual interpreting and it’s been very successful, now accounting for 40% of our services. We delivered over 2,000 virtual sessions in 2021 alone!

“Born out of necessity, it has also introduced new opportunities to the business. In the virtual world, we now have access to a huge pool of linguists regardless of their location, and for our clients, we can turn around any immediate interpreting needs within a short time frame, avoiding the need for interpreters to travel to clients’ business premises.”

Virtual interpreting is now the new normal for Diversity, and it marks a real sea change within the language services sector. The new service offering significantly contributed to Diversity’s growth, with the company securing new business within the health, housing and legal sectors.

Paolina Hawthorne established Diversity, in 2010, following a period of delivering freelance interpreting and translating services for businesses. In addition, Diversity specialises in the provision of accredited training programmes. To date, Paolina has trained over 450 people to become interpreters.

The company is the only business to operate a Chartered Institute of Linguistics exam centre in Northern Ireland.

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