Trouble-free mobility

What with the worries of moving house, language difficulties, and the plunge into an unfami-liar culture, expatriation can quickly become a real ordeal. The ETC Group, specia-lists in language training, translation and the management of geographical mobility, offers a particularly comprehensive range of services, taking in hand all the everyday worries, both professional and personal, attendant on this kind of experience.
“Our core business is language services, translation and interpreting, but we also try to provide an overall solution to managing the expatriation process,” explains Éric Castelain, managing director of ETC. “Our aim is to become the client’s main contact for all matters relating to the discovery of his new environment.”
More than 60% of its clients are major companies, the rest are SMEs whose business is conducted at international level. “They are companies who want to market their offer abroad or who are already present in other countries. In every case, they are involved in foreign trade or employee mobility,” says Éric Castelain. Information technology, the automobile industry, catering, and supermarkets; almost all sectors are represented.
The Group’s offer has no limits. House-hunting, leasing formalities, and telephone and electricity connections are all part of the ETC package. All the expatriates new administrative obligations are taken charge of from obtaining residence and work permits to enrolling the children in school or opening bank accounts in the new country. “It is essential that the family feel at home. The main cause of failed expatriations is when the spouse does not integrate. This is why we also provide practical information such as cultural events to visit, possible leisure activities, nearby shops, health systems, etc. We have a help-line open 7 days a week to deal with problems,” explains Castelain. This level of proximity is now the principal feature setting ETC apart from its rivals.
He also explains the importance of help through cultural training, since “knowing a language is not enough to communicate effectively. Understanding others and their culture is of prime importance in negotiations. To be effective, one must know how to decode subtleties. Companies are gradually becoming aware of this. In France as in China or elsewhere, it is always an ETC employee that the client will have at the end of the line,” adds Éric Castelain.
To ensure its quality requirements are met, ETC delivers its own services. “With regard to language training, we intervene ourselves over the whole of the country unlike many companies in this sector. It is always our services that are used, which enables us to know and understand the clients’ needs better,” he says. For translation, ETC specialists have solid experience and often live abroad, because “being inside a culture is indispensable for understanding linguistic developments especially when these are constant and fast as in India, Russia and China.”
The Group already has a strong presence in the eastern part of France and now hopes to extend westwards. Since May 2007, it has had representatives in Bordeaux. New branches will open shortly in the Touraine and Toulouse. Abroad, other premises are planned: Moscow and Saratov in Russia, Bangalore and Dehli for India. In China, ETC is now exploring the interior of the country, which is developing rapidly.