and Benhoff have seen progress; more
and more clients are looking to an accred-
ited translation agency following national
standards.
REPRESENTATION AT THE
INTERNATIONAL LEVEL
“We are a trade association for compa-
nies. However, we play a bigger role rep-
resenting the industry,” Bendana said. In
fact, this role extends to an international
level.
Every country that is a voting member of
the International Organization for Stan-
dardization (ISO) has a technical commit-
tee related to translation, interpretation
and terminology, and in 2014, AILIA took
over chairmanship of Canada’s technical
committee with Benhoff as Chairman.
“I, with the Canadian delegation, go to
the annual meetings where many of the
decisions are made about the different
standards that are coming into effect in
the industry. Without AILIA’s support, this
wouldn’t have been able to happen,” Ben-
hoff said. Since this takeover happened
at a time when there were severe cuts to
government funding, Canada would have
lost representation at the ISO level if a
leader in the industry such as AILIA hadn’t
accepted the role.
Closer to home, AILIA houses some of the
biggest and best language companies in
the country, and yet many agencies go un-
represented. “In order to be represented,
you need to participate and I don’t think
a lot of companies realize that. We’re sort
of like this diamond that so many people
don’t know about. It’s to be discovered, all
the things that we can do for the industry,
for the clients and for the translation com-
panies,” Benhoff said.
ailia.ca
“We are setting benchmarks for quality with accreditation.”
Lola Bendana, president
SEPTEMBER 2016
H
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