From a speech by a former Secretary General of the United Nations to a quirky carstunt highlighting marine plastics pollution, leading language and translation company AaGlobal played a key part in communicating some of the highlights of Hull’s City of Culture year.

The company, a major supporter of the Chamber’s International Trade Centre, now hopes to work on future projects as the new-look Culture Company delivers the legacy programme. Kirk Akdemir, CEO of AaGlobal, said 2018 will also be a year of progress for the business which he launched more than 25 years ago and which expanded to an office at Hull Marina in 2011. AaGlobal provided sign language interpreters for The Wilberforce Lecture by Kofi Annan at Hull City Hall in September and for other events including the Gold Nose of Green Ginger urban myth display at North Point Shopping Centre, Bransholme, and Washed Up Car-go. This event saw three cars filled with debris from beaches and parked at The Deep. Other projects included translating event information and publications into Polish.

Kirk said: “City of Culture were looking for services to enable access to visitors to the city and to the local, multicultural community and we worked on about 12 assignments for them during what was a fantastic year. We wanted to be involved because it’s such a big thing for Hull and we wanted to help it be as good as it could be.

“It has been a good, prestigious project, as demonstrated by our work at the Kofi Annan lecture, and we look forward to being involved with the new programme as things move forward. We are also pressing ahead with our own expansion and development plans and we look forward to making some exciting announcements during 2018.”