Jaroslav

About Jaroslav Suk


Founder and principal owner Jaroslav Suk was born in Bohemia, his first language being Czech. He has studied in Moscow (journalism), Prague (Charles University, Russian and German), Uppsala (Slavic languages, sociology, sociolinguistics, computational linguistics, education) and at Teacher’s College in Stockholm. He is the author of dictionaries of Czech slang as well as textbooks in linguistics.

– It was mere fate that caused me to move from country to country – getting to know the cultures. Other reasons were an interest in languages, my parent’s journalistic endeavors and their political viewpoints, explains Jaroslav.

Even while enduring difficult years as a political prisoner in the former country of Czechoslovakia, he collected and recorded slang used by prisoners and other offenders.
Jaroslav was sentenced to prison because of his activities in the student resistance movement after the Soviet occupation in 1968. He then became a dissident, getting involved with groups like “Charter 77” and the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Persecuted (VONS). He was forced to leave the country in 1981 and ended up in Sweden. Starting in 1983, he worked as an interpreter and translator, quickly acquiring authorization as both as well as becoming an interpreter intermediary.

In 1992, he founded the family business known as EAST- WEST SERVICE. Right from the start, the company received a large order – translating the search engine AltaVista into 23 languages.
The translation business received an extra boost during this time due to increased emigration to Sweden and yet another boost when the Internet and e-mail entered daily life. The number of foreign translators has increased dramatically, resulting in today’s enormous numbers.

– I would like to illustrate some examples of how new technologies along with our contacts can accomplish almost anything, says Jaroslav.
– We had a proofreader at the customer’s company in Rumania who didn’t have access to e-mail but had access to a fax machine. Our contact in Borås, Sweden, who translated from Swedish to Rumanian, had access to e-mail but no access to a fax machine. We solved the problem by suggesting another contact in Bucharest who had e-mail and a neighbor of our translator in Borås who had a fax machine!
A translation from French to Albanian? We were ready with our bid after 30 minutes.
Traditional Chinese? We turned to our translators in Peking who said, ‘Contact our colleagues in Taiwan!’
This is how we operate, over any distance, any wall or any boundary, says Jaroslav.
– But the most important thing for us at EWS is not versatility or speed, but competence. Without it, everything else would be worthless. Speed and reliability at a reasonable price are also important elements that are integral parts of the EWS philosophy.

Translation