When he graduated from Notre Dame University in 2003, Phil Wittliff knew he wanted to parlay two of his biggest academic interests -- accounting and Spanish -- into a career.

Wittliff, 26, whose father, Phil, is known throughout Wisconsin as a former player, coach and general manager of the Admirals, landed his "dream job" as an auditor for Johnson Controls. He traveled to distant lands. He met many interesting people. And then, something interesting happened.

The dream changed.

"I loved the travel and the sexier part of the job, but I discovered I didn't like the accounting," Wittliff said. "I just wasn't very good at it."

Sparked by his love of the Spanish language and culture, which began at Homestead High School and flourished during time spent in Spain during his undergraduate days, Wittliff decided to start his own business.

And that's how Precise Translation Services was born.

"I saw a need to be filled," Wittliff said. "I saw the need for translation with a global country. There was some being done, but it wasn't that good.

"I wanted to take a new, fresh approach to the translation industry. I didn't want to be just another guy out there doing translation. I wanted to find a way to improve the product and make it affordable and accurate for clients."

The company, currently headquartered in the basement of Wittliff's home in Wauwatosa, employs an internal network of translators who put documents through a thorough screening process similar to what Wittliff encountered during his stint as an auditor.

"The two things that make our company different are our approach to translation and our translators," Wittliff said.

"If you think about it, most people who do translation don't have focused skills in things like accounting, medicine or law. They work so hard to get the skill to translate that they don't know what a business ledger is. Words are different in all contexts. I realized that you need people doing translation who not only have language skills, but know-how in the industry.

"That's where I came up with the idea of multiple layers of independent translator review. In accounting, you audit some papers and you have given steps to go through. When you're done, you submit the work to your manager. She might send it back and say "Fix this up." Eventually, she submits it to her supervisor. By the time it gets to the top and is approved for the client, there usually aren't very many problems. It might not be perfect, but it will be very close. I wanted to employ an approach like that to translation.

"We want a fresh set of eyes over every document. The first person translates it, then a second person and sometimes a third. The skill set of each translator will change, depending on the specs of the document. You can't really proof-read your own stories. We want a fresh set of eyes over every document. The first person in our operation translates it, the second person looks at it and sometimes a third person will view it as well.

"The skill set of each translator will change depending on the specs of the document. If we have Spanish to English medical document, we're going to have the first two translators be native in Spanish and fluent in English. The first translator will get the source document and translate it and submit to me. I then give it to the second person, who looks at the source and the original translation and makes any changes deemed necessary and makes sure that all the content transfers from the source to the target.

"The third person is someone who might not even have skills in the source language, but that is OK because at this point the translation has already been done. But, the third translator would have a very focused skill in whatever the subject matter is. He may be a doctor or a medical student, somebody who is a native Spanish speaker. he'll go through it and make sure everything jibes. If he has comments, I'll pass them back to the first or second people and we'll make the changes.

"It's similar to what happens with accounting or even editing a story, but I've never seen it done in translation. Most companies will use certified translators and they'll use one per job. That's OK, but they can't really be up to speed on changes in specialized fields unless they are in those industries on a full-time basis. My translators are doctors and lawyers and business people. When we get a document, we see who in our network is the best fit for that document."

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