Make It in Brooklyn: Eriksen Translations
Field: Language services
Est: 1986
HQ: 50 Court Street
From its early days in a Brooklyn loft to finding a long-term home on Court Street, woman-owned business Eriksen Translations has grown over the past three decades into a leading language services provider offering translation in more than 100 languages. Eriksen’s team helps prominent clients from The Daily Show to the Metropolitan Museum of Art convey their messages to global audiences with culturally sensitive translations of both print and digital content.
Three Decades of Growth
Founder Vigdis Eriksen, a Norwegian immigrant to NYC, started her business in the late 1980s with a small team specializing in Scandinavian translations. As business grew, the firm moved to 32 Court Street as one of the first creative tenants in the building, and later moved a block south to their current headquarters at 50 Court Street, where they expanded in late 2018. Over their 30+ years in Downtown Brooklyn, the team has grown to more than 20 full-time staff members with an extensive network of contractors across the world.
Diverse Range of Clients
Eriksen Translations serves a variety of businesses including nonprofits and NGOs, startups, and established firms, and the company is adept at working across sectors from education and healthcare to financial services. The firm spent a decade working with Skype to translate its software into more than 50 languages, and recently completed a project to help the National Gallery of Art translate its online learning program into Spanish, French, and Simplified Chinese.
Community Focus
The Eriksen team “feels like a family,” and enjoys connecting with one another in and out of the office at museum exhibit openings and awards events. One of the team’s shared values is an interest in leveraging translation work for positive change and supporting New Yorkers who speak languages other than English. To that end, Eriksen works extensively with the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, including projects translating COVID-19 outreach materials into more than 25 different languages. Last summer, the firm also published a pro bono glossary of 150 key pandemic-related terms to support organizations distributing critical public health information to broad audiences.
Read more about Eriksen Translations here, and find more Make It in Brooklyn profiles here.
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