This article was originally published in the Milton Keynes Citizen in January 2003.

It's hardly likely that the founder of a company that translates 20+ million words a year would ever be tongue-tied. And Rosalba Venturi is not.

In fact talking to her soon clears up the mystery of how one woman can set up a business in her spare bedroom and 17 years later, own one of the top ten translation companies in the UK (and the only one that is privately owned). She did it by being passionate, hardworking, driven and incredibly clever at spotting where the next opportunity is coming from. Probably by being Rosalba.

K International plc is based in the Carina Building at Linford Wood and turns over £1.7m a year; its 31 staff, of whom 14 are bilingual or trilingual foreign nationals, are backed up by a virtual workforce of 2,800+ translators around the world, and between them they can handle 150+ different languages. In fact one of Rosalba's proud boasts is that K International has "never, ever" been unable to translate any language into English.

Whether you want to get your message across in Twi (an African language), make an appointment in Mandarin or sell your product with instructions in Arabic, K International plc can handle it.

A bilingual Italian speaker herself, Rosalba was always going to be an entrepreneur. Her first venture was a hair salon in London's Barbican, which she ran successfully with her sister until her marriage. After her son started school she was looking for another opportunity and began translating because it was something she could do from home. "I was a one man band but you soon realise you need an awful lot more than one person can do. After the first year I was so busy marketing that I had some people working with me part time," says Rosalba. "That meant Bedroom Two got taken over.

"By the time the business had moved into Bedroom Three her husband had moved out and Rosalba responded with a new house with an office built on.

"For a year all I did was put the company into working order," she remembers. "I sat down and rewrote my marketing plan - I did so much research I must have been working 23 hours a day! But I needed to understand the industry and to look at the elements involved so that I could start to develop some form of strategy; I had to understand where the market was, what it was and how I was going to sell this product. You have to be totally focused. People often say to me 'You're so lucky, everything comes to you and there is always luck involved, being in the right place at the right time - but there's an awful lot of work too'."

The explosion of directives from the EU will not find many detractors at K International; the growth of the Internet and the consequent globalisation of business have also fed demand for translation services.

Rosalba and her second husband Malcolm Brooks brought K International to Milton Keynes in 1997 and have no intention of moving it - recent research shows the facilities and parking here are still the best in the area, she says.

Apart from working for many HM Government Departments, which accounts for some 50 per cent of their business, Rosalba reckons, they also translate for many household name blue chip companies, and a substantial number of locally based businesses too.

Their heaviest investment recently has been in telephone interpreting which allows subscribers to dial into a native speaker of any language who will translate backwards and forwards in a three-way loop. "It can be useful for so many things - even simply setting up an appointment," Rosalba explains. "The person you want to speak to may well speak English, but can you get past the switchboard?"

K International is very much a family business with Rosalba a hands-on Client Services Director, Malcolm MD, stepsons Richard (currently doing an MBA at Cranfield University) and David managing the complex IT systems keeps this very global company in touch. Rosalba's son Richard Kazandjian works in the design studio, which ensure that brochures and documents in other languages retain their clarity and visual coherence.

Plans for the future include growing the company still further - and converting more companies to the benefits and convenience (and economies) of telephone interpreting.

"It's extremely flexible and I think most companies who haven't used it yet have just not grasped its importance," says Rosalba

One feels they will soon be getting the message.