An Interview With Thomas Shou, The Founder & CEO At Words Over Seas

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Below is our recent interview with Thomas Shou, the Founder and CEO at Words Over Seas:

Q: Thomas, can you tell us something more about Words Over Seas and its history?

A: I started Words Over Seas (WOS) at the end of 2018 as a rebranding, relaunching of my former legacy company SinoTrans International that I started in 2005. It was about time to change my company name, logo, look, website after 14 years….so I hired a professional high-tech marketing agency to help me with the revamp that you see now. Working in conjunction with my marketing agency Traverse Strategies Inc, Words Over Seas launched a new brand and corporate website to offer professional and consumer translation services to a global audience. Words Over Seas currently delivers the highest quality services to industry leaders in technology, law, public relations, creative arts, and commercial services.

Words Over Seas is a Silicon Valley-based translation agency that specializes in providing Chinese/Asian<>English language services as well as most other world languages for the booming Asian marketplace and beyond. The company has a proven track record of providing high-quality, reliable, and accurate Asian translation services for the high-tech, creative arts, public relations, legal, as well as most major industries.

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Q: Thomas, can you tell us something more about yourself? How did your company come into being?

A: As long as I can remember, I have always had a strong passion and love for languages, playing with words and a fascination with the power and beauty of words! How blessed I am to be working in a job where I actually get to use my love for languages and people every day! As a serial entrepreneur and Chinese language consultant, I now have over 25 years of translation and interpretation experience in the US and Asia, as well as over 5 years of experience in managing high-tech marketing communications projects. After working for various high-tech companies, starting in telecom then moving to semiconductors after graduate school, I decided I did not enjoy working under demanding slave-driving high-tech bosses who didn’t value or fully leverage my creative and multilingual talents. That’s when I took my leap of faith and embarked on the scary adventure of becoming an entrepreneur. My first foray as an entrepreneur was founding my first bilingual marketing/tech communications agency called Steadfast Communications after I was laid off from my first Chinese DSL startup in early 2000s, the unstable dot.com bubble era where the internet economy tanked!

In the summer of 2005, I officially established SinoTrans International, a full-service Chinese/Asian localization agency that specialized in delivering high-quality, reliable and accurate Asian document/website/software localization solutions for high-tech, legal, commercial and most major industries. Later, I also developed an international team that could take on most major world language projects, such as German, Spanish, Russian, etc.

In 2018, I founded Words Over Seas, my third company, with a brand-new international team of Asian experts. Building off the experience of SinoTrans International, Words Over Seas provides high-quality Asian translations with an emphasis on high-tech and creative multimedia projects.

Prior to founding SinoTrans International and Words Over Seas, I began my marcom career in Chinese high-tech startups in the 90s. I then worked for six years as a marketing communications specialist in the high-tech industry. During this time, I also founded my first company, Steadfast Communications, a full-service marcom and technical writing consultancy, and served as a senior marcom specialist at KLA-Tencor, where I oversaw all marcom projects for the firm’s entire lithography-related product line.

I have a master’s degree in Modern Chinese Literature from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Reed College in Portland, Oregon. I currently live happily with my bride of over 15 years, Lucy Wang, in Palo Alto, CA – the heart of Silicon Valley. I love Jesus, tennis, the wild Southwest (TX/NM), and writing my own articles and songs!

Q: Can you walk us through your process? How does it work?

A: We generally run on a global outsourcing model since most of our top production centers are located in Asia. We work with local account managers as contractors who help us secure clients in US, then we send out the work to our Asian partners who have their own meticulous QA process. After they deliver their post-QA target translation to us, we then let our native expert reviewers do a final check before it goes out to client. See more detailed process below.

We therefore pride ourselves on our very thorough, crucial QA process of each translation project which I coined TEPR: Translate/Edit/Proof/Review by native linguist expert per project

At each level, we have individual linguists do their part, so at the end we guarantee the most excellent native language product for our clients. For example, if we do a Chinese-English job, the final reviewer will be a native English expert, etc.

This also allows us to check and monitor where the process breaks down at each level at a granular level when needed.

Q: What types of services do you provide to your clients?

A: Our main localization services for Asian languages and most world languages:
From tattoos, biz cards to 200pg user manuals and historical novels, we do it all….
Document Translation/Review
Website Translation
High-Tech and Creative Multi-media Translation
Software Localization
Interpretation services (Simul and Consec)

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Q: What are your plans for the future?

A: We hope to grow our staff so we can find a team of reliable, long-term full-time project managers and Account managers to help us procure larger clients and bids.

We are always looking for long-term, large volume direct clients, especially in the area of creative arts, which will be our future focus vs. just high-tech, etc.