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Lindsey Cambardella, CEO of Translation Station (Photo: Ryan Fleisher)[/caption] Lindsey Cambardella left her wills and estates law practice last year for a business role: CEO of Translation Station Inc., a Chamblee-based company that puts interpreters and translators together with people who need them in courts, schools, hospitals and other settings. As it turns out for Cambardella, the move wasn’t as big a leap as it might seem. “As a lawyer, I was interpreting the law for my client,” she said in an interview this week. “Our interpreters are interpreting language. I felt I was an interpreter of legal language into lay language.” She said she still is able to enjoy what she considers one of the best parts of practicing law: “helping someone to navigate a situation where they feel helpless.” She added, “There is an extremely fulfilling side to this business." The job might entail translating an asylum application, interpreting testimony, sharing life-saving medical information or simply leveling the field in a parent-teacher conference. Translation Station offers services to interpret spoken language and translate documents in 200 languages, with more being added continuously, Cambardella said. Phyllis Stallman started the business from her home 20 years ago after recognizing the need in her work as an employment specialist—first for the Georgia Department of Human Resources, Division of Family and Children Services Refugee Employment Resource Center, then for Bridging the Gap Project, recruiting bilingual personnel for interpretation and translation in law enforcement settings. “All I needed was a new computer,” Stallman said in an interview Thursday as she recalled starting the company. “I went to a couple of court administrators I knew, thinking they would talk sense into me. Instead, they became clients. That was the birth of the company.” Though the translation business was a new idea then, Atlanta was already home to a significant and growing community of refugees and immigrants. Now the company has a dozen employees and hundreds of independent contractors in 38 states, according to Stallman. And it’s part of a rapidly growing global community. But the industry is changing dramatically, with technological advances and new demands for credentialing and registration of translators and interpreters. Just as Stallman, now 75, began thinking about hiring someone to help manage the company, Cambardella was looking for ways to pursue her dream of moving from law into business. She ran into an old friend from Dunwoody High School and the University of Georgia School of Law—Jeremy Stallman, now a commercial litigator with Kasowitz Benson Torres. He suggested meeting with his entrepreneurial mom to brainstorm. Cambardella dropped by the Translation Station office in Chamblee to talk with the elder Stallman. They kept talking—often running into each other through a Chamblee business leaders' group Cambardella was organizing. Eventually, Stallman asked Cambardella to join Translation Station instead of starting a new business on her own. First Cambardella had to wrap up a one-year commitment she had made to work as a staff attorney for Gwinnett County Probate Court. That followed four years in the wills and estates practice at Bryson Law Firm in Suwanee, and one-year clerkship for Christopher Ballar in Buford, who became a Gwinnett County Probate Court judge. Cambardella joined Translation Station, part-time at first, then full-time as CEO as of last October. In her first year on the job, Cambardella has been “sitting in every chair,” she said—looking closely at each job and function in the company to learn how it works. In a way, she created a general counsel chair, reviewing and updating the company’s many contracts—all written by nonlawyers, since the company had no GC. "Lindsey is doing a great job," said Stallman, who remains owner and president. "She is bringing us into the 21st century." Cambardella sees plenty of growth still ahead for Translation Station. "There are approximately 6,500 languages spoken in the world today, some with very few speakers," she said. "This makes our job interesting and challenging." What Stallman calls “the language community” is what makes the day-to-day work “so hard to let go.” She said interpreters and translators are some of the best, most empathetic, compassionate people anywhere. So Stallman still comes into the office a day or so a week to stay connected. As she put it, “It’s a sweet industry.”