Glyph’s Roots: History, Culture and Language

When in 1996 they established SLA in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, Marc and Tyler were bringing to bear that profound and energetic love for culture and linguistic heritage implied by the study of Classics. SLA has since closed its doors, alas, but in its day it was the premier private language school in Seattle, offering classes and individual lessons in a huge range of languages from Arabic to Turkish, and, no surprise, Latin and Ancient Greek. 

What’s SLA’s connection to localization? From the beginning, members of the public, lacking other options at the time, brought items they wanted translated to SLA. Their assumption was that there would be some linguist on hand who could translate them and very often that assumption was correct. In fact, translation became such a popular request that SLA began charging fees for this service and in 2001 hired its first full-time project manager, Aaron Schliem. Before long, SLA’s translation activity became quite profitable, and, thus, problematic in light of the school’s non-profit status. So, Marc and Tyler decided to spin off the translation business and, in February, 2002, took the steps needed to incorporate Glyph Language Services. At the same time, they combined forces with Mark Truluck, who joined Glyph’s board, bringing valuable technology and business expertise. And Aaron became Glyph’s first employee. 

Glyph quickly prospered, picking up some extraordinarily prestigious accounts among the marquee institutions of Seattle (think of the world’s largest software and e-commerce companies, not to mention a Seattle-based global coffee company, e.g.); business diversified, Glyph’s staff grew and Aaron was promoted to CEO. In 2006 both SLA and Glyph moved out of their cramped, rather rustic but deliciously fragrant quarters above a bagel deli and Labanese restaurant into a shiny-new office building on the tree-lined banks of the Lake Washington Ship Canal in the Fremont neighborhood. There, Glyph continued to diversify, gain clients and grow in sophistication by developing and adopting rapidly improving localization technology. At the same time, Glyph established an admirable record of client retention by consistently delivering high quality, meticulous, and timely translation services. After a few years, like a bird leaving its nest, Glyph moved out of the Fremont offices to its current home, Spokane, Washington. 

In 2017, Aaron left Glyph and Glyph’s board of directors (still, as now, consisting of Marc, Tyler and Mark), sought new leadership among Glyph’s talented staff (“Glyphers”, as we call ourselves). On a good hunch they promoted to CEO the Director of Production, Viktoriya Reed. Viktoriya, or Vitta, as we Glyphers call her, is a native of Russia who immigrated to the US as a little kid. She was originally hired by Glyph to be a Project Manager, but her background was big-picture international business and business administration, and her experience was as Executive Director of the Spokane International Trade Alliance. At Glyph, she added to that worldly background a minutely detailed knowledge of localization operations, learned in the trenches, and she absorbed the Glyph ethos with which she guides the company today. 

Now, it’s 2022, and Glyph has been in business long enough to look back and take stock of itself. Over these twenty years, Glyph has gained a vast array of new clients and, for twenty years, has retained a lot of the same marquee accounts that formed its book of business back in the early zeds. In every case, our clients’ needs have become exponentially more sophisticated. And their linguistic requirements are literally all over the map! The questions I ask myself at this moment are – How has Glyph, the little language school spinoff, succeeded so long and so well? – and – Why do I love working here so much?