When Marta Reyes launched Spokane International Translation 10 years ago, she knew Italian was a romance language, but didnt realize it would lead her to loveand a new partner in both life and business.


Shortly after starting the company, Reyes needed just six words converted into Italian for a project, but couldnt readily find anybody who was willing and able to do the minor job. Finally, she found a Seattle guy named Eric Anderson, who for 35 cents a word, completed the translation. After that, Reyes began to fax him other Italian translations when the need arose.


In the fall of 1997, they met for the first time.


After that, the faxes coming over werent business anymore, Reyes says.


The professional acquaintance quickly blossomed into a personal relationship, then evolved into a business partnership.


Now married, Reyes and Anderson co-own Perciba Inc., which operates a language school and a translation-and-interpretation service with some prominent Spokane business customers. Reyes oversees the translating and interpreting end, which still does business as Spokane International Translation, and Anderson manages the Perciba language school.


Perciba means perceive. More specifically, Anderson says, its the command form of the verb percibir, which means to perceive, and in use, its the Spanish equivalent of telling someone they must perceive something.


The company had $410,000 in revenues last year, and Anderson expects that to rise to between $500,000 and $600,000 this year.


Perciba recently moved to a 2,400-square-foot office-and-classroom space at 502 E. Third in the former Harry Os building, which Storhaug Engineering Inc., of Spokane, bought last year and converted into office space.


Translation and interpretation work accounts for 75 percent of Percibas revenues.


Reyes, who speaks Spanish and English fluently, says translation refers to converting written words from one language to another, while interpretation concerns oral communication. Most of Spokane International Translations work involves interpretation, she says.


In that field, Reyes says the company has a contract with Group Health Cooperative to provide all the interpreters for its patients and medical staff in Eastern Washington to communicate.


The company does similar work for Community Health Association of Spokane and Spokane Mental Health, among others.


Most such medical work is during doctors appointments and is scheduled in advance, but the company does send interpreters to Spokane-area hospitals in emergency situations in which a patient doesnt speak Englishor, at least, doesnt speak it fluently, Reyes says.


The company also has a contract with the Washington state Department of Social and Health Services to help state workers communicate with people for whom English is a second language. That work extends to Tri-Cities and Moses Lake.


Another large chunk of the companys interpretation work is for the superior and district courts here, helping plaintiffs, defendants, and witnesses communicate with attorneys and judges.


The translation jobs the company does typically are for Spokane-area businesses that have customers or clients who primarily speak other languages, often in other parts of the world.


Customers for which the company has provided those services include Washington Trust Bank, Avista Corp., and Itron Inc., among others, Reyes says. Mostly, that work involves converting English into other languages.


The company has built up a network of more than 140 interpreters in Eastern Washington that it uses as independent contractors. For its translation work, it has even more people around the world who handle jobs on contract as well. Reyes says that as was the case with Anderson initially, she hasnt met many of the translators.


Interpreters specialize in one language, and nearly all are natives of the countries in which the non-English language they focus on is spoken. Most also are state certified as interpreters as well.


The school offers services in 47 languages. In Spokane, most of the demand is for Russian, followed by Spanish, Bosnian, Vietnamese, and Chinese, Reyes says.


In addition to the independent interpreters and translators, Perciba employs two schedulers.


The school employs 12 part-time instructors in addition to Anderson, who teaches Spanish classes and speaks Spanish, English, and Italian fluently. In addition to Spanish, the school offers classes in Italian, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, French, and German.


Each class uses a proprietary system of teaching language. That system was developed by Anderson, who has a masters degree in romance linguistics and a doctorate in Spanish linguistics, both from the University of Washington.


Called the natural language acquisition process, the system concentrates on teaching a language orally through listening comprehension and by developing oral fluency, Anderson says. He says the process is much more similar to the manner in which a person learns his or her native language as a toddler.


Each class involves 100 hours of instruction, typically with two, 2 1/2-hour sessions a week over 20 weeks. Anderson currently is working to have Perciba become accredited as a continuing-education program. Already, Anderson says, Whitworth College sends students who are seeking masters degrees in international management to Perciba for language instruction.


While the school accounts only for a quarter of the companys revenues currently, Reyes and Anderson see it as the area of greatest growth potential for the company. Anderson hopes next year to begin developing programs overseas, using the system to teach English as a second language in other countries. He hopes to target Asia, specifically China.


Anderson first developed his language-instruction method 25 years ago while teaching English as a second language in Panama. He was stationed there for three years in the U.S. Army and moonlighted as a teacher during that time.


Reyes and Anderson have different backgrounds, but their lives followed similar paths before they met.


Anderson was born in Seattle, but his family moved to Venezuela when he was 5 years old. They only stayed for a year, but Anderson learned Spanish in that time.


While he was in Panama with the Army, he met and married his first wife, and they lived there until 1987, when they divorced and he moved back to Seattle.


Reyes was born in Spokaneher maiden name is Boydbut her family moved to Colombia when she was 2 years old. They stayed there until she was in high school, when they returned to the Inland Northwest.


In my heart, Im Colombian, she says.


She returned to South America and married a Colombian, but divorced in the late 1980s and returned to Spokane.