MECATRAD

French translation agency

meca trad

French translation agency

Technical and scientific translation represents MECATRAD’s core business, but its competence extends to other specific sectors such as legal, marketing and institutional.

MECATRAD grew out of a change in direction for the OPTI THERMIE ENVIRONNEMENT research bureau in 2000, but it still benefits from the technical and scientific skills of its founders (initially trained to PhD level in engineering).

Combining technicians and linguists (translators-interpreters) in this way facilitates our understanding of even the most specialised content, and ensures translations are highly reliable and accurate.

With more than 20 years’ experience in the field, MECATRAD can bring added value to a diverse range of content (manuals, brochures, training guides, PLC programs in machine code, functional specifications, sequential function charts and more). This means we can offer services across specialist areas such as analysis (physicochemical measurement and control), mechanical engineering (machine tools, robotics, cutting tools), metrology, industrial valves, food processing, tourism, environment, engineering, and industry and business services more generally.

MECATRAD is primarily a company with a human touch, open to new communication technologies and deeply rooted in its ethical values.

Today we are faced with a new form of “translation automation” invading the market, taking its toll on quality and, more particularly, the translator as a source of huge added value.

Indeed, as they try to handle larger volumes of work and grow their profits, many of the major players in the translation industry have chosen to go down the road of automating the work, using artificial intelligence, and leaving professional translators to handle the subsidiary tasks of proofreading and validation. Needless to say, this kind of approach to the work only leads to pedestrian, even “word for word” translations, with no room for semantics…

MECATRAD, with its professionalism and ethical values, has decided to take a stand against that, and only uses its many translators who have worked with it since the business took its very first steps. These people are our colleagues and friends too, and have always risen to our expectations; so we have a duty to support them in their work. However, that does not stop us introducing tools to aid translation and manage projects (known as Translation Memories, or TMs), using professional applications like Trados™ and Wordfast™. These tools actually reduce the cost of translation for the end customer by re-using repetitions and content which has already been translated previously. Not only does this reduce the final bill, but it also rewards loyalty!

We are always keen to seek your views when finalising glossaries. After all, who knows your products better than you yourselves? We keep these exchanges as brief as possible, but they allow us to keep our work faithful to the culture within your company. It is often said that you learn from your mistakes… that goes for us too! But we know how to respond quickly and do everything it takes to make any corrections needed, in line with our internal quality assurance policy.

We are aware that the projects you ask us to take on are the shop window for your company, that we are just as responsible for the results as you are, and so we always work with the same specialist translators and interpreters. With their proven experience and a passion for their work, they will find the solution to each and every one of your linguistic problems.

MECATRAD does everything in its power to become the embodiment of your in-house translation department.

made in Voges

The Mecatrad
Team

Marion

Coordinatrice – Chargée d’affaires

Marion is the latest recruit to the MECATRAD team, working as a Project Coordinator and Project Manager. Having honed her skills at the IUT (Institute of Technology) in marketing and commerce, Marion’s responsibilities will include overseeing new projects and managing relations with our translator partners. Marion loves the simple pleasures of life: spending time with family or friends, or countryside walks with her two children and her wonderful dog Higlou.

Damien

Coordinator – Business Manager

Damien started his translation career with the OPTI THERMIE ENVIRONNEMENT technical research bureau in 1997. He founded MECATRAD and has been its manager since 2002. Rigorous, exacting, and a perfectionist, Damien translates more than a million words a year in complex sectors such as industrial valves, machine tools and robotics, control and analytics, metrology and more. He lives in Éloyes and has two children, Nathan and Thalia. His favourite sports are football (particularly amateur, as he runs an Under-15s team at the Éloyes club), rugby and KAPAP (a variant of KRAV MAGA, a combat sport that originated in Israel).

Maxime

Communication manager - DTP and web design

Maxime lives in the Vosges. After having studied marketing and then communication, he joined the MECATRAD team where he developed new communication tools. He manages all graphic designs and creates websites. He is a herbalist.

Matthew

Technical and Scientific Translator (FR-IT>EN)

Matthew lives in Rayleigh in the southeast of England. After studying at the University of Exeter in England he worked as a secondary school teacher for 11 years, before launching a new career as a translator. He has been translating professionally since 2003. Outside work, he loves music. He sings tenor in the choir of Chelmsford Cathedral, and also in a number of local amateur choirs. He also plays the organ and the piano. He takes physical fitness seriously and trains at the gym three or four times a week.

Christophe

Technical and Scientific Translator (EN-DE-RU>FR)

Creator of the OPTI THERMIE ENVIRONNEMENT technical research bureau in 1997, after research work on process engineering, Christophe now undertakes many translation projects covering industrial analytics, machine tools and agri-food. As manager of a number of engineering departments, he specialises in renewable energy, energy management and environmental quality in construction. Now an associate lecturer of the Nancy School of Architecture and a teacher at ESPI, Christophe is passionate about the experimental research he undertakes with his students on ecological transition.

David

Translator interpreter (FR, RU, BG, MK>EN)

David studied Russian and French at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom where he later taught classic Russian literature. He was awarded his PhD in Linguistics at the University of Sofia in Bulgaria, where he also teaches semantics. David also works as a translator and interpreter of French, Russian, Bulgarian and Macedonian into English. David is an avid horse lover. He owns three and when he’s not in front of his computer translating technical texts for Mecatrad, you can find him in the equestrian arena training his horses for dressage competitions.

Pawel

Translator interpreter (EN-FR>PL)

Pawel has been a translator since 2003. He lives with his wife, 13-year-old daughter and 18-year-old son in the countryside, in central Poland, not far from Łódź. He loves the active life and nature, and he favors holidays in the mountains. Pawel specializes in technical fields: automotive industry, energy, electromechanics, IT, food processing, logistics and transport.

Nicole

Traducteur Technique et Scientifique (EN, DE>FR)

Nicole holds a master’s degree in Portuguese literature. As the daughter of Portuguese emigrants, she has always been immersed in Portuguese culture. At the age of 24, she decided to settle for good in Portugal, where she teaches French in language institutes. Alongside this, she has established a career as a translator/interpreter for more than 21 years. Nicole also teaches cake design, travelling frequently around the French-speaking world. This is a hobby that brings her great satisfaction. She has sat on an international judging panel on three occasions. It is an artistic environment that fascinates her.

Eleonora

Technical translator (FR-EN-ES>IT)

Eleonora is 39 and originally from Italy. She holds a diploma from the Forlì Scuola Superiore per Interpreti e Traduttori (University of Bologna). Her preferred languages are French, English and Spanish. A professional translator since 2008, she specialises in the field of technical translation and proofreading. She works from her home in Mirandola, in Modena province, Italy. She is married to Nico, who owns a car dealership. They have a cat called Gigia, who has proved to be a great help in reducing stress at work! Eleonor loves travelling, cooking, art and photography exhibitions, and taking long walks in the country.

Christoph

Technical translator (FR-EN-ES-PO>DE)

Christoph lives in Mannheim, in southern Germany. After studying language and literature (English and romance languages) and completing industrial clerk training, he worked for a while as an accountant. Christoph has been working as a freelance translator since 2004, and as a MECATRAD business partner since 2006. He translates many documents from English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Latin into German. In his spare time, Christoph reads a lot, listens to music, enjoys computing and collects stamps and coins.

Yury

Technical and Scientific Translator (FR-EN>RU)

Yury has been a language teacher, translator and interpreter since 1976. He was born in the former USSR, then settled with his family in Béziers (France) in 2011. Yuri loves French culture and civilisation, is a great connoisseur of cinema and chanson, and is passionate about photography and computing. He is also a real football fanatic. In Russia, he worked with others on the music for one of the most famous productions of “The Maids”, a play by Genet. One of his former colleagues, a specialist French teacher in Moscow, still uses the phonetics lessons recorded at that time by Yury. Yury also worked as an interpreter for Edith Cresson and Renaud during their travels to Moscow.

Carmen

Technical and scientific translator (EN-FR>ES)

Carmen has been working as a technical translator since 1998. Having completed her accountancy studies at the University of Salamanca, she moved to Madrid. She works internationally in administration. With her knowledge of English and French, which she developed from childhood, she often receives translation requests from her colleagues. Her taste for finding the right word, and her pleasure in creating faithful and well-written texts, led her to take a decision: to abandon accountancy and embrace languages. She trained as a translator at the Estudio Internacional Sampere, and embarked on the adventure of translation.

Franca

Translator (FR>IT)

Franca is Italian, and comes from a small village a few kilometres north of Rome. She arrived in France in 1990 and started teaching Italian in 1992, to both adults and students, chiefly in the Auvergne. In 2000 she became a freelance translator. In 2017, for her own personal fulfilment, she gained her C2 level Brightlanguage certification in French. She loves TV series, world cuisine, travel, and reads avidly (detective novels, preferably). Her dream would be to translate one someday. In the meantime, she has co-written her first Italian handbook, “Buon viaggio”, published by Ellipses.

Our commitment
to our clients

01 Quality

Translators and interpreters specialising in your business area, operating in harmony with equally specialised editors and proofreaders, all working into their mother tongue exclusively.
More than 18 years’ experience.
Our translations are adapted to your corporate culture.

02 Responsiveness

A rapid response to your requests. A detailed estimate within 24 hours. Short delivery deadlines, with contact persons always available.

03 Confidentiality

MECATRAD undertakes to respect the confidentiality of the documents entrusted to it.

04 Pricing

Accurate and reasonable pricing, from as little as 0.08 euros per word.

05 User-friendliness

A single coordinator assigned to your account, to deal with all your requests.

Translating means expressing your message with just the right tone, considering the business and cultural environment into which the text will be launched.

Mecatrad

French translation agency

meca trad