Linguistic expertise lies at the heart of all our activities. Aradco was founded in 1958 by N. J. Dawood, a commercial and academic linguist of international standing. He holds degrees in English and Classical Arabic and was elected a fellow of the Institute of Linguists in 1957. He is probably most widely known for his bestselling translations of The Koran and Tales from the Thousand and One Nights in the Penguin Classics series.
N. J. Dawood is the chairman of Aradco and is closely involved in the running of the company, personally overseeing our Arabic department. On account of this in-house expertise we are particularly well-known for our specialist Arabic service – the longest established of its kind (Aradco was previously known as The Arabic Advertising & Publishing Company).
Since then the company has grown from a small operation with 10 staff to a large organisation with offices abroad and a large pool of in-house and freelance linguists both in the UK and around the world. From our headquarters in Central London we work with clients within the UK and overseas offering a one-stop-shop service for all language requirements.
| 1954 | NJ Dawood translates the “Tales from the Thousand and One Nights” for Penguin Books. |
| 1956 | NJ Dawood translates the Koran from Classical Arabic into contemporary English – 1st edition. |
| 1958 | The Arabic Advertising and Publishing Co. is founded – a specialist Arabic language service, including calligraphy and hand-drawn artwork. |
| 1962 | Contemporary Translation Ltd is founded – multilingual services specialists. |
| 1976 | Introduction of computerised phototypesetting in Arabic in partnership with Monotype Corporation - using the Monophoto 400/8 filmsetter, running on paper tape. |
| 1983 | Linotype CRTronic/laser phototypesetting introduced. Company re-branded as Aradco. |
| 1987 | Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and other non-Roman languages typeset on Mac. Multilingual font library development. |
| 1992 | Company moves to Hyde Park Gate premises. Unicode Standard introduced. |
| 1995 | Bespoke project management software running on Filemaker - Mac / PC. |
| 1996 | Unicode 2.0 launched. |
| 1998 | Company expands to purpose built premises at Aradco House – with improved email and internet resources. |
| 2000 | Company expands from 20 permanent staff to 100 within a year. |
| 2005 | Move to new Mac OS X operating system for all artwork requirements, with Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Professional integrated into artwork creation process. |
| 2006 | Launch of InDesign CS for foreign language artwork. |
| 2008 | Expanding client folio includes multinational pharmaceutical and telecommunications companies. |
| 2010 | Translation memory software resources upgraded. |
| 2011 | ISO9001 certification awarded. |
