In the translation industry, Intermark is synonymous with the name of its founder, Thomas West.
Thomas West graduated from the University of Virginia Law School in 1990 and was admitted to the State Bar of Georgia that same year. Prior to his law study, West received a B.A. in French, summa cum laude, from the University of Mississippi, where he was a Taylor Medalist, and an M.A. in German from Vanderbilt University, where he was a Harold Sterling Vanderbilt fellow. From 2001 to 2003, West served as President of the American Translators Association, an 11,000-member organization based in Washington, DC. During his tenure as ATA President, West was interviewed in Inc. Magazine and on national television on Fox News about the importance of translation in the United States.
West is the author of the Spanish-English Dictionary of Law and Business and served as a consultant for the Harrap-Dalloz French Law Dictionary. He has conducted seminars on civil procedure and corporate law for linguists at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Netherlands and at the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington, DC, and has also lectured on legal translation in Argentina, Belgium, France, Mexico, Peru, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. He is ATA-certified for translation from French, Spanish, German and Dutch into English and has also studied Danish, Swedish, Portuguese, Afrikaans and Russian. In 2011, West was interviewed about translation and Intermark on Blog Talk Radio. In the fall of 2013, he was featured in The UVA Lawyer. Most recently, in 2016 West traveled to South Africa, where he lectured on legal translation at the University of Johannesburg, Stellenbosch University and the South African Translators Institute, and was interviewed by the Afrikaans-language website Maroela Media on how he taught himself to speak Afrikaans.