Liz Elting and Phil Shawe met at New York University Stern School of Business in 1991. Having spent several years working in the translation industry, Ms. Elting felt there was a need for a service-minded enterprise that could deliver complex projects quickly and accurately. In 1992, Elting and Shawe founded TransPerfect to fill that gap. Their mission: to provide the highest quality language services to leading businesses worldwide. With no external financing, TransPerfect grew from its beginnings as a two-person company operating out of a dorm room into one of the world's most reputable language and business services companies.

Over the years, TransPerfect and its founders have won numerous awards. TransPerfect was recognized as one of the fastest growing privately-held companies in the US by making the Inc. 500. TransPerfect's founders have been recognized as Ernst and Young's Entrepreneurs of the Year. Co-founder Liz Elting has been recognized as Woman of the Year by American Express and Entrepreneur and has won the Working Woman Award for Excellence in Client Service. The company is also recognized for developing the industry standard for linguist certification, the TransPerfect Linguist Certification (TLC) program, which tests linguists for language proficiency and subject-area specialization.

Today, TransPerfect has over 800 full-time employees, a network of over 4,000 certified linguists and subject-area specialists, and over 50 offices on 4 continents, making it the third largest language service company in the world. TransPerfect is also the only translation company among the global top five to be ISO 9001:2000 certified for all offices and production centers, ensuring that every translation undergoes the highest level of quality control. TransPerfect completes over 50,000 projects per year, and works with many of the world's most recognizable enterprises including Sony, American Airlines, and BP.