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SlatorPod is the weekly language industry podcast where we discuss the most important news and trends in translation, localization, and language technology. Brought to you by Slator.com.
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2 days ago
#159 The GPT-4 Exposure of Translators and Interpreters
Florian and Esther are back for a packed news pod. The two catch up with OpenAI announcing the release of its much anticipated GPT-4 large language model. They unpack OpenAI’s research on GPT or GPT-powered systems’ impact on the labor force, including specifics around how exposed translators and interpreters are to large language models.
Over at the University of Edinburgh, researchers looked at hallucinations in large multilingual translation models. The research looked at hallucinations across models of different scale, translation directions, and data conditions.
Lilt announced the launch of Contextual AI Engine, a new GPT-style model which Lilt claims has higher accuracy than Google Translate and GPT-4 for many enterprise contexts. Esther talks about Acolad appointing Bertrand Gstalder as the Super Agency’s new CEO.
At the Google for Games Developer Summit 2023, the Tech Giant announced that developers now have access to free machine translation (MT) for their Android apps. Keynote Speaker, Greg Hartrell, also revealed an early access program for machine translation in the Play Console.
Meanwhile, Disney lawyers have filed a subpoena request to force Reddit to identify the person or people responsible for leaking a movie dialogue transcript. It was revealed that a Reddit community shared a Google Doc transcript in Portuguese of the film “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” weeks before it was released.
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4 days ago
#158 How Game Localization is Trailblazing Speech Synthesis with Voiseed CEO
Voiseed CEO and Co-founder Andrea Ballista joins SlatorPod to discuss the machine dubbing startup’s approach to operating and developing their AI-based virtual voice engine, Revoiceit.
Andrea talks about how his passion for music as a child led him to founding audio localization studio Binari Sonori, which he sold to Keywords Studios in 2014, and why he is now launching Voiseed.
He shares his impressions from this year’s Game Developers Conference where there was a lot of interest in new technologies, voice cloning solutions, and the development of emotional synthetic voices.
Andrea unpacks Revoiceit’s ability to understand the voice and emotional profile of the user and transfer both profiles into the target language. Voiseed has been profiling vocal delivery and creating a data set, so the system can have a wider knowledge of human emotion in terms of voice and language.
On the topic of large language models (LLMs), Andrea is not worried about the implications of LLMs like ChatGPT as they have had two years to build a dataset on vast amounts of voice content. He talks about Voiseed’s early financial backers and shares the story behind applying for blended finance (grants and equity) from the European Innovation Council Fund and LIFTT.
Andrea shares his experience hiring during the lockdown and their approach to investing in ‘cool’ people and helping them grow through their incentive plan. The pod wraps up with Voiseed’s product roadmap, where they aim to improve features with more emotion control and work on how to create new voices that can be used in multiple projects.
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Mar 22, 2023
#157 Behind the Scenes of Netflix’ 1899 with Cinescript’s Liane Kirsch
Liane Kirsch, CEO of Cinescript, joins SlatorPod to talk about specializing in the audiovisual industry and working with global TV and film productions.
Liane discusses her route into the language industry, from studying philology and translating contracts to working as an on-set interpreter and dialogue coach for international productions. Throughout this journey she founded Cinescript and for five years she built her client base parallel to her other work.
Liane shares her experience as a polyglot fluent in six languages and how she uses the melodies of languages in her learning process. She talks about the complexities behind translating screenplays, where the process involves one translator and one proofreader each for the source and target language.
She reveals how they supported the production of Netflix’s series 1899 by translating the synopsis, polishing 8 different screenplays, dialogue coaching for Cantonese, and working on additional dialogue recording in post-production.
The pod rounds off with Liane’s initiatives for 2023, including offering internships for international students and strengthening their main team in the office.
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Mar 14, 2023
#156 VSI CEO Mark Howorth on AI in Media Localization, Adding More Dubbing Capacity
Mark Howorth, CEO of VSI, joins SlatorPod to talk about his plans for leading and scaling the media localization provider.
Mark discusses his route into the media and entertainment (M&E) and language space as well as his path to joining VSI. Mark took up his role at the leading media localization provider in January 2023 after spending five years as the CEO of SDI Media including overseeing the company’s sale to Iyuno in 2021. He outlines how the media localization industry has evolved with the streaming boom impacting turnaround times.
Mark also shares some of the challenges of hiring and retaining media localization talent internally and externally post-Covid. He offers his thoughts on the use of machine translation (MT) and automatic speech recognition (ASR) as productivity enhancers, rather than a replacement for human subtitling.
Mark talks about VSI’s historically self-funded growth and highlights the company’s plans to scale further in 2023 and beyond. Mark shares some of the growth drivers behind VSI on the back of +20% growth in 2022.
The CEO reveals key initiatives for VSI in 2023, such as building dubbing capacity, widening its customer base, and geographical expansion. The pod rounds off with Mark’s 2-3 year outlook on the media localization market in terms of customer demands.
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Mar 8, 2023
Why Everyone Is Using Subtitles Now with David Orrego-Carmona
In this week’s SlatorPod, we are joined by David Orrego-Carmona, Assistant Professor at the University of Warwick to discuss his research on language technologies, audiovisual translation, and users of translation.
David shares his background studying translation in Colombia and how it led to the formation of a research group focusing on audiovisual translation and subtitling. He outlines how he is developing Translation Studies at Warwick, not only to teach students about translation and culture, but so they can have a direct link to the industry.
David reveals the key findings from his PhD on the production of interlingual subtitles, where he used eye-tracking to track reading behaviors of non-professional and professional subtitles. He talks about how multilingual content like Netflix’s Sense8 and 1899 is changing the perception of subtitling.
David challenges the idea of the invisibility of subtitles as users between the age of 18 and 24 in the UK are more likely to use intralingual subtitles in English.
David gives his thoughts on the age-old debate of subtitling versus dubbing, where there is no right answer as both modes of translation are efficient and can convey meaning. He talks about how non-professional translators are implementing machine translation in a more informed and educated way through pre-editing.
David discusses why it’s important for students to learn about the requirements of different media in subtitling, including short-form content like YouTube and TikTok. He touches on the impact of ChatGPT on academia, from plagiarism to integrating large language models into the curriculum.
The pod rounds off with David’s current research projects, the first on understanding how people watch subtitles and the second on how machine translation is used by local authorities, NGOs, and charities in the UK.
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Mar 3, 2023
#154 Fastest Growing LSPs, MrBeast’s New Dubbing Company
Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, with the world’s most popular YouTuber, MrBeast, launching a dubbing services company called Creator Global. MrBeast’s latest entrepreneurial move comes as YouTube confirmed it will roll out its multi-track audio to thousands more users.
Over in Australia, Ai-Media shared its financial results for the first half of 2023, with revenues remaining flat and EBITDA edging up a bit. When asked about ChatGPT, Ai-Media CEO Tony Abrahams said that it did not pose a threat to the access service provider.
Data-for-AI provider Appen released “far from satisfactory” results for full-year 2022 as revenues decreased 13% to USD 388.5m. Appen’s results may puzzle some as AI is undergoing perhaps the greatest hype cycle ever.
Researchers at Microsoft have been conducting experiments comparing large language model GPT to other machine translation (MT) systems. The results concluded that GPT models achieved competitive MT quality for high-resource languages, but did not perform well for low-resource languages.
AMN Healthcare revealed in a February 2023 earnings call that in-house Language Services has reportedly doubled its revenues since the 2020 acquisition of Stratus Video. Overall, AMN revenues were up 32% in 2022 to more than USD 5.2m, but declined by 17% in Q4.
The duo talk about the Slator 2023 Language Service Provider Index, which features nearly 350 companies in total, with a combined US-dollar revenue of nearly USD 10.4bn. Esther highlights the fastest growing LSPs and breaks down growth among Super Agencies, Leaders, Challengers, and Boutiques.
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Mar 1, 2023
#153 How Acolad Is Building Its Growth Team with Chief Revenue Officer Gráinne Maycock
In this week’s SlatorPod, we are joined by Gráinne Maycock, to discuss her role as Chief Revenue Officer at Super Agency Acolad.
Gráinne begins with her journey studying translation and interpreting to working in various sales and account management roles, before the LSP she worked for was acquired by Acolad. She then talks about how her role as Chief Revenue Officer goes beyond sales, specifically collaborating with marketing, solutions, support, and operations to improve customer experience and growth.
Gráinne highlights the importance of creating a sense of team through a common vision, communication, shared tech stack, and Acolad’s sales playbook. She discusses the Super Agency’s approach to managing clashing sales territories and verticals.
When it comes to incentivizing top performing salespeople, Gráinne shares why they use best-in-breed compensation and best practices from parallel industries.
She believes that the language industry will evolve to embrace technologies like ChatGPT and large language models if they’re clever. The pod rounds off with Gráinne’s initiatives for the next year as she continues to evolve the solutions playbook, solidify and expand talent, and support salespeople with their sales academy.
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Feb 17, 2023
#152 Language Technology Dominates in Research, RFPs, and Funding
Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, kicking off with highlights from Slator’s latest Game Localization Report. The 100-page report outlines the role that localization plays in bringing games to life and onto the market.
In funding news, former Keywords Studios’ Exec, Andrea Ballista, raised EUR 1m in a seed round for his new machine dubbing venture, Voiseed. The funds will go towards Voiseed’s voice platform, Revoiceit, by improving its patented AI core technology and proprietary emotional multilingual dataset.
Former SlatorPod guest and ADAPT Centre’s MT researcher Yasmin Moslem co-authored a paper recently on whether GPT-3 — the large language model behind ChatGPT — is capable of enhancing “adaptive MT."
The European Commission are putting out a EUR 20m tender for Natural Language Understanding and Interaction in Advanced Language Technologies. The RFP will be open until 29 March 2023 and currently has 37 applicants offering their expertise.
Over in North America, Public Services and Procurement Canada were required to report on the steps that they were taking to protect the health and safety of federal interpreters. The order came from Canada’s Labor Program following an increase in incidents linked to sound quality, including an October 2022 injury that sent an interpreter to the hospital.
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Feb 14, 2023
#151 How Supertranslate is Profitable at $100 Monthly Recurring Revenue
Ramsri Goutham Golla joins SlatorPod to talk about his creator journey in AI SaaS (software-as-a-service), AI consulting, and AI courses.
Ramsri discusses his shift from software engineer in Silicon Valley to entrepreneur in India with AI SaaS apps Questgen.ai, Supermeme.ai, and Supertranslate.ai. He shares how a “build in public” strategy can help inspire people to follow your journey.
Ramsri talks about his blended approach to building products, marketing, and driving his social media channels. He touches on his most recent project, Supertranslate, which is powered by OpenAI's Whisper for its one-click subtitle generation.
Ramsri shares how to build quickly on large language models like Whisper on a serverless GPU infrastructure and by partnering with developers who can build the front end. He gives his thoughts on the impact of ChatGPT on micro SaaS businesses and companies that have built on GPT-3.
Ramsri outlines some of the movers in the data science space that have propelled innovation, from serverless GPUs and open-source machine learning to vector search companies. He talks about how to form a startup in India, including tips on logistics, operations, hiring, and whether to raise funding or not.
The pod rounds off with Ramsri’s plans for the future, where he aims to eventually settle on one project full-time and sell off the others.
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Feb 10, 2023
#150 TransPerfect Reports Results, Big Tech in NLP Race
Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, with TransPerfect sharing its financial results for 2022. The Super Agency grew by 4.6% to USD 1.16bn in 2022. CEO, Phil Shawe, disclosed that half the growth was organic and the other half was attributed to M&A.
Natural language processing startup, Cohere, is reportedly raising hundreds of millions of dollars at a valuation of more than six billion dollars. Alongside ChatGPT and Anthropic, this funding is the latest nod to the ongoing hype in all things AI.
In the UK, a report was released revealing how much the Nation Health Service (NHS) spent on interpreting services over three years. The NHS' spending came under scrutiny from the Taxpayers’ Alliance, which lobbies to “cut waste [and] reform taxes and public services”.
Esther talks about Iyuno’s recent strategic investment in Turkish subtitling and dubbing provider, Ak’la Kara International. This move strengthens the US-headquartered media localizer’s presence in the EMEA region and expands its capacity for Turkish dubbing.
At the end of January, the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Translation announced a forthcoming call for tenders for TRAD23. TRAD23 is a contract for the translation of EU documents from and into EU official languages and will cover more than one million pages per year.
Florian discusses some of the announcements made at Google’s Live From Paris event (including additions to Google Translate), which saw Google Bard’s AI chatbot give the wrong answer at its launch, impacting Alphabet’s share price.
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Feb 3, 2023
#149 How Good Is ChatGPT at Translation, Olympic-sized RSI Contract
Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, kicking off with a sneak peek into the brand new Slator 2022 Language Industry M&A and Funding Report. Spanning 44 pages, the report covers 62 M&A transactions and 18 startup and tech funding rounds.
Following the latest research in ChatGPT, Intento published an article comparing ChatGPT translations to translations done by other stock MT engines. Florian discusses the results with ChatGPT performing well for English to Spanish but found lacking for English to German.
The Committee for Organizing the Olympic and Paralympic Games is looking for an interpreting technology provider who can offer a platform for remote simultaneous interpreting (RSI). The winning candidate will supply an RSI platform for more than 60 interpreters working in 11 languages before and during the Games.
Esther shares her experience watching Netflix’s 1899, which brought together nine source languages, and a number of translated versions: 14 dubbed languages and 32 subtitle options. The one-season series was distributed in 58 countries and was made up of an international cast and crew.
Over in Ireland and London, Keywords Studios are seeing a healthy demand for game localization after posting 22% organic growth in the second half of 2022. The gaming services giant expects full-year revenue and profits to slightly exceed previous guidance.
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Feb 1, 2023
#148 Mastering the Art of Transcreation With Craft’s Tanya Bogin
Tanya Bogin, Managing Director of Craft London, joins SlatorPod to talk about the company’s end-to-end creative production services across all media channels and languages.
Tanya discusses her route into the language industry; from working as a radio station manager to entering the transcreation industry with Craft. She talks about how the company brings creative ideas to life through cultural adaptation, translation, and transcreation.
Tanya outlines the rigorous testing process behind recruiting transcreation specialists and how their bespoke workflow yields successful results with clients. She touches on the role of language technology at Craft with a combination of best-of-breed cloud-based CAT tools and human-driven translation.
Tanya talks about the impact of AI and how they have implemented features like SEO, dynamic content optimization, and virtual production to improve workflow. She shares how they partnered with AI video generation platform Synthesia to transcreate Just…
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Jan 25, 2023
#147 LXT’s Phil Hall on the 2023 AI Boom, Covering 750 Languages, and ChatGPT
In this week’s SlatorPod, LXT Chief Growth Officer Phil Hall joins us to talk about the company’s journey, from providing high-quality Arabic data for a Big Tech company to expanding into 750 languages.
Phil shares his background teaching linguistics and leading business development for Appen before joining LXT. He discusses the key findings from The Path to AI Majority report, from the maturity levels among 200 executives surveyed to which industries are trailblazers in AI adoption.
Phil touches on search relevance ranking as a method to retrain machine learning and give more relevant results. He gives his thoughts on ChatGPT and why he considers it a step change in AI.
Phil talks about LXT’s growth strategy, with M&A a potential avenue to acquire new customers and improve the technology stack. He goes over some of the legal and security considerations when it comes to data, with permission and secure facilities taking priority.
The pod rounds off with Phil’s take on where…
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Jan 18, 2023
#146 Google Translation Hub — Mallika Iyer on Launch, Features, and Roadmap
Google’s Head of Product, Translation AI, Mallika Iyer, joins SlatorPod to talk all about the company’s new Translation Hub.
Mallika begins with her journey from software engineer to leading all of the translation products for Google Cloud, most recently Translation Hub. She shares the motivation behind launching the hub, where they saw that overall demand for translation had increased, but budgets necessarily hadn’t.
Mallika discusses the basic and advanced tiers the hub offers, with the latter including domain-specific translation, translation memory, and translation quality prediction. She explains how the hub has gained traction early on with languages of lesser diffusion in addition to the major FIGS or CCJK combinations.
Mallika talks about a case study with Avery Dennison and how they rolled out Translation Hub to all their employees to improve language communication and promote an inclusive workplace culture. She expands on the different sectors the hub serves, from th…
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Jan 13, 2023
#145 Everyone’s Talking About ChatGPT, DeepL Crowned Unicorn
Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, with the hype surrounding ChatGPT. Slator joined in by prompting ChatGPT to answer questions as if it were a translation manager.
After reports back in November 2022 stated that DeepL was in the final stretch of closing a major investment round, DeepL has finally confirmed that it raised funds from VCs at a billion-dollar valuation.
Translator Scammers Directory shared their annual report of scammer activities in 2022. Last year saw the first dip in new scammer IDs since 2018, signaling lower payoffs for imposters involved in the CV scam.
Florian and Esther then talk about the best and worst-performing listed language service providers (LSPs) in 2022. Out of the 12 LSPs, only Zoo Digital and Honyaku Centre delivered a positive performance, while Appen’s stock continued to plunge.
A large Amazon study titled “Large Scale Study of Human Localization With Insights for Automatic Dubbing” reviewed hundreds of hours…
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Jan 11, 2023
#144 How André Bastié Is Scaling Happy Scribe After Finding Instant Product-Market Fit
In this week’s SlatorPod, Happy Scribe CEO André Bastié joins us to talk about building a unified platform for transcription and subtitling.
André discusses the journey to co-founding Happy Scribe during his studies where he accidentally came across the challenge of transcription and built a first prototype with his flatmate and now CTO, Marc Assens Reina.
The CEO shares how their product development has evolved, from initially deploying the Google Speech API to connecting to various off-the-shelf systems to, now, building their own custom models. He talks about how being a bootstrapped company forces them to focus on producing results with limited resources.
André touches on the different customized features that allow users to create a vocabulary list, build their own dictionary, and adjust the number of characters per line for subtitling projects.
He gives his take on what’s driving the popularity of subtitles in short-form content and how subtitling differs between TikT…
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Dec 14, 2022
#143 Translated CEO Marco Trombetti on Time-to-Edit as Proxy for AI Singularity
In the final SlatorPod episode of 2022, we are joined by Marco Trombetti, cofounder and CEO of Italy-based LSP Translated. Marco joins us two years on from our episode with Translated’s other cofounder, Isabelle Andrieu.
Marco breaks down the LSP’s Singularity in AI research project and defines what singularity means in translation. He walks us through the process and the vast data collection effort behind the research, with “time to edit” emerging as the key performance indicator for machine translation quality.
He talks about whether Translated has reached a plateau of productivity in postediting and the challenges of building a user interface for interacting with natural language. He also gives his take on the importance of owning an adaptive solution for machine translation like ModernMT.
Marco shares Translated’s approach to working with some of the world’s biggest companies such as Airbnb. He explains how they see financing as a requirement to reach their goals —…
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Dec 7, 2022
#142 The Future of Trados With Mark Lawyer
In this week’s SlatorPod, we are joined by Mark Lawyer, General Manager of Trados, the key technology product line of UK-based Super Agency RWS.
Trados is a translation technology adopted by hundreds of thousands of freelance translators, LSPs, and enterprise customers — the three main market segments of the localization supply chain.
Mark begins with his journey to joining the localization industry straight out of university, with roles spanning business development, solution architecture, and global customer experience management. He shares some of Trados’ milestones starting with its creation in 1984.
Mark talks about the flexibility of the Trados platform and why they offer cloud capabilities with the desktop app to provide a hybrid working environment for translators. He discusses how user feedback allows them to release hundreds of best-in-class features each year.
Mark highlights how user experience and accessibility are critical to Trados, where there are multiple con…
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Dec 2, 2022
#141 DeepL Aborts Write Launch, German Translation Employment Dips, Media Loc M&A
DeepL launches then pulls new AI-based writing tool, translator and interpreter employment declines in Germany, job index dips for fourth time in 2022, Blu Digital Group expands further into media localization, and Deluxe buys Post Haste Digital.
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Nov 29, 2022
#140 How the Brain Processes Language, With MIT Neuroscientist Ev Fedorenko
Joining SlatorPod this week is Ev Fedorenko, Associate Professor of Neuroscience at the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT. Ev also runs EvLab, an MIT language lab that discovers how the human brain creates language.
Ev talks about the different hypotheses concerning the origin of language and how it has likely been a gradual evolution. She shares a number of intriguing research findings on the relationship between language and abstract representations of structure (i.e., complex thought).
Ev discusses how language processing takes place and how we can use brain imaging to compare language with other non-linguistic tasks, such as solving math problems and composing music. She questions whether specific languages can be objectively easy or difficult to learn as an adult.
She also considers what sets polyglots apart when it comes to learning languages and some of the generalizations made in research. Ev talks about how language processing in machines like GPT-3 compares t…
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Nov 25, 2022
#139 AI Dubbing Finds Traction, Translation Buyer’s Guide Published
In this week’s episode, Florian is joined by Anna Wyndham, Senior Research Analyst at Slator. The two discuss the language industry news of the week, with a recap of the Nordic Translation Industry Forum held in Sweden last week. The NTIF covered a broad range of presentations, including a talk from Ikea about how they are building a custom machine translation (MT) engine from scratch.
In startup funding, AI dubbing startup, NeuralGarage, raised USD 1.45m in a seed round led by Exfinity Ventures. While this is the latest in a series of Indian machine dubbing startups to have raised funds, NeuralGarage focuses on visuals. This includes changing the lip and jaw movements of the person on the screen to match the target speech.
In other AI dubbing news, Papercup won a two-year translation and dubbing contract with Bloomberg, signaling greater interest in synthetic voices. The deal will see Papercup mainly localizing Spanish global news coverage, financial market analysis, and documenta…
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Nov 18, 2022
#138 DeepL’s Unicorn Round, $15 Million Translation Client, Bank Builds MT In-House
Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, with German machine translation (MT) company DeepL said to be in the final stretch of closing a major investment round led by Silicon Valley venture firm, IVP. This will allow DeepL to expand further into the enterprise, as it ramps up hiring of customer success, account management, and related enterprise-focused roles.
The duo talk about how BNP Paribas, Europe’s second-largest bank, has been building its MT engine in-house over the past five years — instead of using publicly available MT tools, such as Google Translate or DeepL.
In M&A news, LanguageLine, the language services sub-unit of French call center giant Teleperformance, acquired UK-based LSP Capita Translation and Interpreting (Capita TI) for an undisclosed amount. Capita TI’s parent company, Capita plc., has been trying to sell off the language services unit and eight other non-core businesses since early 2020.
Down Under, Straker Translations has…
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Nov 11, 2022
#137 Intento CEO Konstantin Savenkov on Best-Fit MT, Google Translation Hub, Generative AI
Konstantin Savenkov, CEO and co-founder of Intento, joins SlatorPod to discuss how they enable enterprise clients to choose best-fit machine translation (MT) services and technology.
Konstantin outlines Intento’s services and product offerings, which include an MT Hub for localization and office productivity, an MT studio, as well as MT evaluation and maintenance. He talks about why there is a lack of consolidation when it comes to MT providers, translation management systems (TMS), and translation productivity technology (aka CAT).
The CEO discusses the highlights from Intento’s State of Machine Translation 2022 report, which evaluates 31 MT engines, their best-performing language pairs, and pricing comparison. He shares his views on Google’s Translation Hub and how it raises more interest from investors evaluating the language industry.
Konstantin gives his take on generative AI — such as Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion and Open AI’s Whisper — and how this will not o…
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Nov 4, 2022
#136 Deepgram: From Dark Matter to Deep Learning Speech API With Scott Stephenson
Scott Stephenson, CEO of Deepgram, joins SlatorPod to talk about his unique journey to co-founding the deep tech, automatic speech recognition (ASR) company and raising over USD 50m in funding.
Scott recalls how his experience working with dark matter detectors as a particle physicist in China led to him becoming a deep-learning entrepreneur. He discusses some challenges in solving ASR; from labeling data for machine learning to formulating and executing an effective go-to-market strategy.
The CEO gives his thoughts on Whisper, OpenAI’s open-source ASR model, and how it may actually grow the total addressable market for voice AI companies. He shares the difficulties when it comes to translating a transcript versus translating straight from audio into another language.
Scott gives his advice on how to build a successful AI company and appeal to investors. The pod rounds off with Deepgram’s roadmap for the next year, with text to speech, voice cloning, real-time translation, and s…
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Oct 28, 2022
#135 DigitalTolk CEO Virpal Singh on Booking an Interpreter in Seconds
In this week’s SlatorPod, we are joined by Virpal Singh, CEO and co-founder of DigitalTolk, an interpreting services provider that uses technology and automation to help match interpreters to clients.
Virpal begins with his journey to setting up DigitalTolk; from studying computer engineering and electronics to entering the language industry with co-founder Leyla Sarac. The duo saw a gap in the Swedish market to meet the increasing language demand during the refugee crisis of 2015.
The CEO talks about the fragmentation of the interpreting market in Europe compared to the US because of the different laws and language barriers across national borders. He shares some of the technical challenges they have been solving with virtual remote interpreting (VRI) and helping customers identify use cases for VRI versus OPI.
Virpal discusses how they match supply and demand by having a stable back end, a user-friendly interface, and state-of-the-art technology, especially with emergency bookin…
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Oct 7, 2022
#134 Cohere Co-founder Nick Frosst on Building the NLP Platform of the Future
The co-founder of Cohere, Nick Frosst, joins SlatorPod to talk about rapidly scaling one of the most exciting natural language processing (NLP) startups. Nick shares his journey to establishing Cohere alongside Aidan Gomez and Ivan Zhang with Aidan’s seminal paper, Attention Is All You Need, serving as an inspiration to the startup.
He reflects back on his experience at the Google Brain team in Toronto, where he worked on neural network research with Geoffrey Hinton, and breaks down the evolution of neural networks to the current state-of-the-art large language models.
Nick touches on the level of machine learning experience needed to deploy on Cohere’s NLP platform — and how it is Cohere’s goal to eventually become the default NLP toolkit for all types of developers.
Nick gives his thoughts on generative AI, such as Dall-E and Stable Diffusion, and the possible business applications for them. He shares the rationale behind partnering with Google Cloud to cater to Cohere’s…
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Sep 23, 2022
#133 Sizing the Global Interpreting Market, DeepL Hiring, Europe’s Audiovisual Hub
Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week and announce the launch of Slator’s Interpreting Services and Technology Report. The 60-page report provides a 360-degree view on the growth industry of interpreting. The report features analysis by mode, setting, geo, buyers, use cases, and more.
Florian touches on a new interpreting feature released by Microsoft, which allows simultaneous unidirectional interpretation in 16 language pairs in Teams Meetings. In addition, Microsoft will finish rolling out its multilingual live captioning functionality for Teams in early October 2022.
Big Language Solutions has announced the appointment of Dick Surdykowski as CEO. He takes over from Jeff Brink, who has moved into the Chairmanship and is focusing on strategic initiatives.
Esther talks about DeepLs’ hiring patterns based on 300+ LinkedIn profiles of people associated with the machine translation (MT) company. The results indicate what the MT giant will focus on movin…
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Sep 16, 2022
#132 Rise of AI Writers, EU Interpreter Strike, Airbnb Expands MT, Lionbridge M&A
In this week’s episode, Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, with various natural language generation (NLG) startups gaining traction of late. Esther covers whether these NLG startups, which can help content creators write copy in multiple languages, are a threat or an opportunity for LSPs.
Over in Europe, the strike at the European Parliament among interpreters continues, as they decline to interpret for those that dial-in remotely. Among the complaints, poor sound quality and a heavier workload. As negotiations between European Parliament staff interpreters and the administration collapse, efforts have been made to get European Parliament President, Roberta Mesilla, involved.
In M&A news, Lionbridge is set to acquire Game Tester, a game-testing platform based in Australia and South Africa. This will be the third games-related acquisition for the Super Agency in three years and will allow them to add community-based testing capabilities to the Lionbri…
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Sep 9, 2022
#131 Automating Subtitling, Dubbing, Live Captioning With XL8 CEO Tim Jung
Tim Jung, CEO of XL8, joins SlatorPod to talk about the startup’s journey — from co-founding the media-focused machine translation company with former Apple Software Engineer, Jay Park, to raising a USD 3m bridge round in August 2022.
Tim discusses his experience working for Samsung and Google and how they have adopted an engineering-driven culture at XL8.
The CEO walks through their product MediaCAT, which allows users to streamline media localization workflows in three steps: sync, translate, and dub. XL8 also recently launched EventCAT, where users can interpret or add live subtitles for events through the power of AI.
Tim reveals some of the media-specific challenges of language automation, from speaker identification to generating subtitles by speech recognition. He tells us how the XL8 approach differs from big tech as it uses 100% human professional-curated data to train its MT engines.
The CEO talks about what they have gained from their partnership with Iyuno-SDI and t…
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Sep 2, 2022
#130 Yasmin Moslem on Using Large Language Models to Custom Train Machine Translation
Machine Translation (MT) Researcher, Yasmin Moslem, joins SlatorPod to talk about her research on Domain-Specific Text Generation for Machine Translation — a project she conducted with Rejwanul Haque, John D. Kelleher, and Andy Way at the Adapt Center in Dublin.
Yasmin shares her experience working as a translator, discovering translation productivity (CAT) tools, and experimenting with translation memory to improve MT. She breaks down the paper’s approach to domain-specific MT training using back-translation for data augmentation.
She discusses how some LSPs are already implementing this approach in real-life, customizing it for different use cases. She explains why they used a combination of BLEU, Comet, and other quality evaluation frameworks as well as human evaluation to rate machine translation quality.
Yasmin concludes the podcast with her advice for those in the core industry looking to enter the machine translation space, from the spiral learning process to reading rese…
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Aug 26, 2022
#129 Translation’s Top YouTuber Adrian Probst on Building a Brand as a Freelancer
Adrian Probst, German Language Specialist and Content Creator behind the YouTube channel Freelanceverse, joins the pod this week to talk about how he became arguably the most successful YouTuber in the language industry.
The YouTuber looks back on his journey; from commercial apprenticeship and studying translation at university to working as project manager and branching off on his own as a freelancer. He recalls how he began his YouTube channel as a way to challenge himself during the pandemic, and how consistency and authenticity has allowed his channel to grow to over 16,000 subscribers.
Adrian highlights the importance of online visibility and networking as a way to find and secure new clients directly. He reveals how he bases some of his videos on frequently asked questions from the community, such as pricing translation and the future of machine translation.
The pod rounds off with Adrian’s view on YouTube giving multilingual audio tracks to its top creators — and how his…
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Aug 19, 2022
#128 Translation Pricing With Joseph Lambert and Callum Walker
Joseph Lambert (Lecturer in Translation Studies at Cardiff University) and Callum Walker (Lecturer in Translation Technology at the University of Leeds) join SlatorPod to talk about their paper Because We’re Worth It: Disentangling freelance translation, status, and rate-setting in the United Kingdom.
Joseph discusses the top three challenges for translators when it comes to pricing their services, including knowing how to calculate rates, client or LSP resistance to rate suggestions, and being willing to talk about rates in general. Callum shares the motivation behind writing the paper and how they aim to bridge the gap between academia and industry when it comes to pricing.
The duo talk about the lack of recognition of translation as a profession that requires a high degree of specialization and expertise — one of the central issues holding prices down. They address the difference in pay between working as a freelance translator for an LSPs versus acting independently and engag…
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Jul 29, 2022
#127 LSP Leadership Changes and Interpreting Shake-Up Across the Globe
In this week’s episode, Florian and Anna discuss the language industry news of the week, with RWS announcing the appointment of Julie Southern as Chairperson Designate.
Another leadership change saw Heith Mackay-Cruise replacing Phil Norman as Chairman of the Board at Straker Translations. Meanwhile, the UK Immigration Enforcement outlines exceptional cases in which staff might use a translation device instead of on-site or telephonic interpreting.
In Canada, the Board of Internal Economy (BOIE), has approved a six-month pilot project that allows the use of “external” and “remote” interpreters for parliamentary sessions. The duo talk about a EUR 42m contract that popped up in Slator’s own RFP Center from the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons.
New guidance in Australia was published by the health department that clarified how medical professionals and GPs should bill interpreting services when they require an extended consultation. In an a…
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Jul 22, 2022
#126 Dubverse’s Anuja Dhawan on AI Dubbing for YouTubers, TikTokers and Content Creators
Dubverse co-founder, Anuja Dhawan, joins SlatorPod to talk about launching the machine dubbing startup and powering video content dubbing using the latest AI language models and tech.
Anuja starts with her journey to co-founding Dubverse with Varshul Gupta as a result of the rise of English speaking video-generated content during the pandemic. She goes through the company’s core team structure where the focus is on scaling through AI and technology.
She discusses how they tailor their product to language demand in India as roughly only 10% of the population understands or speaks English fluently. She talks about their approach to tackling technical challenges when producing highly natural, emotional AI voices.
Anuja notes the importance of dubbing short-form content from large social media and video networks like YouTube, TikTok and, specific to India, ShareChat. She unpacks a human-in-the-loop model where they onboarded a translator to improve linguistic nuances in their automate…
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Jul 14, 2022
#125 RSI Pushback, Subtitling and Dubbing Land Grab, Meta MT ‘Breakthrough’
In this week’s news episode, Florian and Anna catch up on a month’s worth of news, with RSI receiving a lot of opposition. First, there was a UN Today article where interpreters pushed back on poor sound quality and unreliable audio levels causing hearing problems. Then interpreters went on strike at the EU Parliament after negotiations seeking improved work conditions failed.
Anna talks about Meta AI’s “breakthrough” claim in machine translation with the release of the I/O model called No Language Left Behind (NLLB). NLLB is an open-source machine translation model with 54 billion parameters and focuses on 200 low-resource languages, specifically from Africa and Asia.
In media localization, ZOO Digital released full-year results for 2022 which saw revenue grow by 78% from the previous year, and growth into the current year driven by the ongoing territory launches of major streaming platforms.
Keywords Studios’ interest in the space has become more apparent as CFO, John…
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Jul 8, 2022
#124 How to Become a Successful Freelance Interpreter With Jan Rausch
In this week’s SlatorPod, we’re joined by Jan Rausch to discuss his experience in the interpreting industry as a freelance conference and business interpreter.
Jan talks about his background in teaching modern languages and how he transitioned to freelance interpreting, where he eased himself into a highly competitive market. He shares the range of scenarios he has worked in; from European Works Councils and clinical trials to sales meetings and political and diplomatic interpreting for German delegations.
Jan discusses the need to multitask and formulate good language that is easy to understand for the listeners when it comes to simultaneous interpreting. He also talks about how the pandemic has impacted interpreting with the explosion of remote and hybrid meetings.
Jan outlines the pros and cons of remote simultaneous interpreting (RSI) and the preventative measures interpreters can take to protect their hearing and general health. Jan touches on the challenge of staying fully…
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Jun 24, 2022
#123 Reverso CEO Theo Hoffenberg on Building Language Technology Used by Millions
Theo Hoffenberg, Founder and CEO of Reverso, joins SlatorPod to talk about specializing in AI-based language tools and translation aids used by millions online.
Theo begins with his background in the software industry, where he helped launch tech companies in Europe and how he got into the language technology industry with Reverso. He discusses the evolution of the company, from a downloadable software to an online translation platform with millions of users including language professionals and enterprises.
The CEO talks us through the release of some of their AI-based language tools like Reverso Context, a bilingual dictionary tool based on big data and machine learning algorithms. He shares how they maintained and grew their user base by staying on top of SEO and leveraging the App Store.
Theo talks about acqui-hires and recruiting remote engineering and tech talent. He discusses how they stay ahead in a highly competitive space by deploying locally and online, offering secure Saa…
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Jun 17, 2022
#122 Addressing Vicarious Trauma Among Linguists With MasterWord CEO Mila Golovine
Mila Golovine, CEO and President of MasterWord, joins SlatorPod to talk about the important topic of stress and trauma that linguists may experience on the job.
Mila walks us through her journey in the language industry: immigrating from Russia, founding the Texas-based LSP straight out of university, and leading it to where it is today. She reflects on MasterWord’s diversification, expanding from oil and gas to healthcare, education, and government services.
The CEO talks about the strategy behind recruiting from refugee communities and using MasterWord Institute to train talent wanting to enter the language industry. She discusses how stress and vicarious trauma affect language professionals, as well as the specific training and tools that can help prevent this.
Mila gives her outlook on the dynamics of Language Access regulation in the US and how it differs state by state. The pod rounds off with Mila’s approach to balancing growth across all verticals having thrived through…
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Jun 10, 2022
#121 Leading TransPerfect’s Technology Division with Matt Hauser
TransPerfect Senior Vice President in charge of technology, Matt Hauser, joins SlatorPod to share his experience in building the technology division at what is now the world’s largest language service provider.
Hauser explains why they bet early on the cloud when building their translation management system, Global Link, and how the TMS is deployed across much of production at TransPerfect and across hundreds of enterprise clients.
He discusses the importance of connectors and building and maintaining that content on-ramp to clients. Matt agrees with Florian that post-editing MT as a process is beginning to reach maturity — and is now standard operating procedure in most areas where it makes sense.
The discussion then touches on how TransPerfect is taking a deliberate and client-centric approach in the tech integration of Semantix, TransPerfect’s largest acquisition to date.
Finally, Matt shares his views on how to hire and motivate an effective technology sales force.
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Jun 3, 2022
#120 Academic Translation and Author Services as Growth Markets With ALE CEO, Avi Staiman
We are joined by Avi Staiman, CEO of Academic Language Experts (ALE) to discuss translation for the academic publishing sector.
Avi shares his background studying and working in the education sector and how this led to him founding ALE. He delves into ALE’s services, which range from editing and translating materials for scholars before they pitch their book or article to big research institutions and funding agencies.
The CEO talks about the role of English as lingua franca in academia and how non-native English scholars are at a disadvantage as a result. He runs through the typical workflow between authors, linguists, and editors, as well as how ALE’s thorough reviewing process helps retain clients.
Avi comments on the use of technology in academic translation, where the lack of repetition in research can hinder the benefits of translation memory tools. He talks about how ALE is raising awareness around the issue of visibility when it comes to giving translators credit in acad…
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May 26, 2022
#119 RWS Chief Language Officer Maria Schnell on the Value of Linguistic Expertise
In this week’s SlatorPod, we are joined by Maria Schnell to discuss her recent appointment as Chief Language Officer at RWS — pointing to the Super Agency’s investment in linguistic expertise.
Maria begins with her journey as a trained translator and how she worked her way through commercial and operational roles at SDL, before the company was acquired by RWS. She then talks about what the new role of Chief Language Officer entails, specifically leading the Language eXperience Delivery (LXD) platform.
She breaks down the role of the LXD platform, where a large, linguistic network supports clients looking to venture into more remote markets and long-tail languages. She also shares the importance of technology in optimizing operations, from translation productivity to quality assurance.
Maria discusses RWS’ approach to machine translation, where human post-editing is necessary if clients want true engagement with their end customers. She also talks about plans to simplify the…
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May 20, 2022
#118 Welocalize CEO Smith Yewell on Scaling a Language Industry Super Agency
Smith Yewell, Co-founder and CEO of Welocalize, joins SlatorPod to talk about how the team built the company from the first order, translating a single word 25 years ago, into what is now a global Super Agency.
Smith talks about co-founding Welocalize with wife Julia Yewell in 1997, and how they did not have a common language when they first met. He recalls how he navigated the many complex end-client industries and enterprise functions, especially with the maturation of technology.
The CEO shares the impact private equity investors have had on Welocalize and on the language industry — where roughly a third of the leading 100 LSPs are now PE-backed. He also reflects on the M&A space and shares the strategy behind expanding into digital marketing services as well as tech and patent translation.
Smith concludes with Welocalize’s plans for 2022: strengthening relationships and growth opportunities. He believes innovation around natural language processing (NLP) will change the way…
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May 13, 2022
#117 Jeenie CEO Kirsten Brecht Baker on Raising a Series A for Healthcare Interpreting
In this week’s SlatorPod, we are joined by Kirsten Brecht Baker, Co-founder and CEO of Jeenie, an on-demand healthcare interpreting platform that recently raised USD 9.3m in Series A funding.
Kirsten begins with her journey as a daughter of linguists and how she transitioned from working in international education to co-founding Jeenie. She tells us about the pivot to servicing healthcare in the US and how they grew in one of the most competitive spaces in the industry.
The CEO shares her experience partnering with Transformation Capital, a growth equity fund focused on innovative healthcare IT and services companies, in order to scale through hiring and innovate through technology. She talks about the advantages of working remotely versus a hybrid model, such as direct connections from clients to interpreters in as little as 15 seconds.
The pod rounds off with Jeenie’s technology plans for the future with intentional partnerships and integrations with electronic medical records…
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May 6, 2022
#116 Leading the World’s Largest Interpreting Service With Genoveva Ruiz Calavera
In this week’s SlatorPod, we are joined by Genoveva Ruiz Calavera, Head of the Directorate-General for Interpretation (SCIC) at the European Commission, the world’s largest employer of conference interpreters.
Genoveva reflects back on her 30-year journey working for the European Commission in an array of different roles; and what led her to switch to leading SCIC. She shares SCIC’s mission to provide high-quality conference interpretation to institutions and organize corporate conferences.
The Director-General relays the main challenges she overcame as she stepped into the role in the middle of the pandemic, with Covid disrupting in-person interpretation. Along with a dramatic drop in demand, SCIC had to adjust to a hybrid culture and develop new video-conferencing tools to provide interpreting services during the global crisis.
Genoveva also talks about working with the European Parliament and Court of Justice to pilot a new accreditation testing platform for freelance inter…
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Apr 29, 2022
#115 Dispatch From GALA San Diego 2022
In this week’s episode, Slator’s very own Andrew Smart joins us from sunny San Diego for a report on what took place at GALA 2022 and to discuss the language industry news of the week.
Florian talks about how RWS’ shares jumped after Baring Private Equity Asia confirmed that it is in the “preliminary stages of considering a possible offer” to take over the Super Agency. This announcement comes a month after RWS unveiled its new strategy at the LSP’s Capital Markets Event.
Meanwhile, ZOO Digital beats its full-year guidance. The media localization provider now expects FY22 revenues to be at least USD 70m, up USD 5m from the previous estimate, and an increase of 78% compared to the prior year. This announcement comes as streaming providers compete with each other for subscriptions, launching in new territories around the world.
Andrew shares his impressions after he and Slator Staff Writer, Seyma Albarino, attended GALA 2022, one of the first, bigger, in-person language in…
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Apr 22, 2022
#114 Amazon’s Professional Translators, Transifex, Seprotec, BIG
In this week’s episode, Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, with shares in Netflix taking a 35% dive after the streaming giant lost 200,000 subscribers. The company continues to push international content and is currently building capacity in gaming faster than when they entered film.
Amazon announces the release of 51 language datasets, which will help Alexa add more low-resource languages to their current 8 languages. They created this 100-million-utterances-per-language dataset by tasking professional translators with translating the English dataset into 50 typologically diverse languages.
On the M&A front, BIG has acquired Lawlinguists, a legal translation specialist founded by three attorneys and whose entire linguist network is made up of lawyers. This is BIG’s second acquisition in the regulated industry space in Europe after they acquired Dora Wirth Languages a year ago.
Meanwhile, SeproTec has bought Cologne-based LSP tsd as part of their…
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Apr 14, 2022
#113 Translation and Localization Industry Grows 11.8% in 2021 to USD 26.6bn
Slator’s very own Anna Wyndham joins the pod to share key insights from our flagship Slator 2022 Language Industry Market Report.
Totalling 100 pages, the report covers language industry growth, the LSP competitive landscape, core language industry technologies, and market outlook. Anna starts off by breaking down market size by vertical, geographic region, and buyer intention. She also touches on spotlight topics, such as remote interpreting, media localization, and expert-in-the-loop.
Anna reviews frontier language technologies, with speech-to-speech translation, synthetically dubbed media, and synthetically generated content marketing having the potential to disrupt and expand the market. Florian gives his outlook on the market and projected growth to 2026 based on conservative, base, and optimistic growth scenarios.
Next up, Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, which saw Lilt raise USD 55m in series C funding led by Four Rivers. Also in the US, on…
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Apr 8, 2022
#112 Scaling Website Localization with Weglot CEO Augustin Prot
Augustin Prot, Co-founder and CEO of Weglot, joins SlatorPod to talk about the startup’s journey as a no-code website localization technology provider.
Augustin discusses his not-so-typical professional background in M&A and how he got into the language services and tech industry. He talks us through the transformation of their client segments, from self-service SMBs to large enterprises, and how Weglot aligns its product with these sectors.
The CEO talks about raising EUR 45m with partner Partech Growth to scale product development and expand their 30-person team. He shares how no-code tech has evolved since Weglot was founded, with digitalization and Covid-19 accelerating the trend.
Augustin shares the complexities behind website localization and how they tackle SEO challenges — such as getting Google to recognize the translated version of a website. The pod rounds off with Weglot’s roadmap for 2022, including a new integration with Squarespace and the ability to translate v…
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Apr 1, 2022
#111 Boostlingo CEO Bryan Forrester on Fundraising, M&A, Scaling Interpreting Technology
In this week’s SlatorPod, we are joined by Bryan Forrester, Co-founder and CEO of Boostlingo, a Texas-based interpreting software and technology provider.
Bryan begins with his journey to co-founding Boostlingo; from selling his first tech startup, Anchor Software, to entering the interpreting space. The CEO shares his experience partnering with growth equity firm Mainsail Partners in order to scale the business through hiring and M&A.
He addresses the VoiceBoxer and Interpreter Intelligence acquisitions as part of a strategy to expand into remote simultaneous interpreting (RSI) and on-demand scheduling. He talks about some of the technical challenges with VRI and OPI when it comes to bandwidth.
Bryan gives his take on the US interpreting market and how Covid-19 affected the structure of on-site, remote, and hybrid interpreting in healthcare. The pod rounds off with Boostlingo’s plans for 2022 with a build instead of buy approach.
First up, Florian and Esther discuss the langua…
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Mar 25, 2022
#110 A New Way to Post-Edit MT and News on RWS, Weglot, DeepL, Boostlingo, Acolad
Nico Herbig and Josef van Genabith join SlatorPod to talk all about their project, called MMPE, a multi-modal interface for post-editing machine translation.
Nico shares the motivation behind starting MMPE and how they aim to improve the collaboration between human translators and language technology. Josef explains how they geared the project toward a human-in-the-loop model.
The duo reflect on the early research behind the project, where they gathered input from professional translators to narrow down the design and handwriting interaction. They discuss the hardware technology and their approach when it comes to measuring cognitive load.
The segment rounds off with the next steps for MMPE now that the project is complete — from the potential commercialization of certain aspects to further research in eye-tracking.
First up, Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, with RWS announcing the acquisition of Liones and analyst projections of USD 1 bill…
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Mar 18, 2022
#109 Meta VP Iris Orriss Announces Shift from Community Translation to Single-Language Vendors
In a guest solo, Meta’s VP of Internationalization, Product Quality, and Product Experience, Iris Orriss, joins SlatorPod to talk about the company’s mission to give people the power to build communities, bringing the world closer together.
Iris recounts her journey to joining the language industry, from training as a geologist to working in big tech, from Microsoft to Meta. She also reveals her motivations for working in the field of internationalization.
The VP shares Meta’s strategy to remove language and cultural barriers through technology and the localization of major languages not well-represented on the Internet, such as Amharic, Khmer, and Sinhala. She discusses the scale of internationalization operations at Meta with more than 100 languages on the platform and millions of words translated every week.
Iris announces the end of their Community Translation program, where translators helped Meta make the Internet’s major languages available on the platform. The shift…
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Mar 11, 2022
#108 Low Resource, High Potential — NeuralSpace CEO Felix Laumann on Democratizing NLP
Felix Laumann, CEO of NeuralSpace, joins SlatorPod to talk all about the no-code, low-code natural language processing (NLP) platform for low-resource languages.
Felix recalls his journey to startup CEO in the NLP milieu after coming from a computer and mechanical engineering background; plus the origin story of NeuralSpace. He discusses the difficulty behind building models for low-resource languages when faced with less than 1% of data available.
The CEO recounts his experience connecting with investors to raise a USD 1.7m seed round. He explains how machine translation fits into their framework, with the main use-case being building chatbots.
Felix reveals how they collect data and their plans to work directly with linguistic professionals to cover different pronunciations, tones, and emotions. He shares plans to add more speech capabilities and cover nearly any fundamental NLP project or problem.
First up, Florian and Esther talk about the language industry news of the week, wi…
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Mar 4, 2022
#107 Automating Language Evaluation With Emmersion CEO Brigham Tomco
Brigham Tomco, CEO of Emmersion, joins SlatorPod to talk all about automating language evaluation and the underlying tech behind it.
Brigham begins with his journey into the language education and tech industry, where he started two venture-backed companies. He recounts the early days of Emmersion, where they offered language tutoring and how they evolved into building language assessment tech.
The CEO shares the importance of language learning in the age of AI with language tech like machine translation and speech-to-speech. He identifies the different key client segments, from call centers and BPOs to academia and LSPs.
Brigham unpacks the language tech and patenting process behind language testing products, such as TrueNorth Speaking Test and WebCAPE. He outlines how they handled the rapid demand for remote hiring as a result of Covid and Emmersion’s roadmap for the future.
First up, Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, with Simon Lee, CEO of lang…
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Feb 25, 2022
#106 Ranking the World’s Largest Language Service Providers
In this week’s episode, Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, kicking off with some key stats from the Slator 2022 Language Service Provider Index (LSPI).
Florian talks about the latest in M&A news, where the low-resource language API platform NeuralSpace raised USD 1.7m in a seed round led by Merus Capital.
To cap off the episode, the duo unpacks a recent post from Meta titled, “Teaching AI to translate 100s of spoken and written languages in real time”, where the company announced two new projects.
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Feb 18, 2022
#105 Healthcare Interpreting in the US and Beyond With Marco Assis
In this week’s SlatorPod, we’re joined by Marco Assis, CEO of Propio Language Services (Propio), a US-based interpreting and language technology company.
Marco begins with his unusual route into the language industry where he spent most of his career in finance and M&A before taking over Propio from its long-term owners in 2017. He talks about Propio’s highly specialized healthcare domain and outlines the similarities and differences between servicing public vs. private sector clients.
The CEO shares his experience teaming up with private equity and what Triple Tree Capital Partners brings to the table in terms of operations. He also gives listeners a behind-the-scenes glimpse at recruiting, training, and working with translators and interpreters. Marco gives his take on the competition from in-house services at major hospital systems and insurance companies.
He then talks about the motivation behind building proprietary technology and launching the mobile app platform Propio…
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Feb 11, 2022
#104 Audio Localization in Video Games With Alessandra Vincenzi
Alessandra Vincenzi, Head of Audio Localization at Keywords Studios, joins SlatorPod to talk about the ins and outs of audio localization in the video game industry.
Alessandra starts with her route into the audio localization space with Binari Sonori and her transition to Keywords Studios. She shares the differences between localizing for mobile versus Triple-A games.
She also talks about casting, onboarding, and categorizing voice-acting talent and how actors are matched to different clients. She goes into possible use cases for artificial voices in video games and the migration to remote recording solutions.
Alessandra gives her outlook on game localization with a growing amount of titles coming from Asia and the continuing convergence of game and media localization.
First up, Florian and Esther review the poll results from February, where the hottest localization trend of 2022 divided opinions.
On Slator’s job ad platform LocJobs, DeepL posted their first job for a Localizat…
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Feb 4, 2022
#103 The Machine Translation Literacy Project with Lynne Bowker
*In this week’s SlatorPod, we are joined by Lynne Bowker, Professor at the University of Ottawa to discuss the **Machine Translation Literacy Project**, whose eye-catching infographics have proven very popular on **Twitter**.*
*Lynne shares her background working in higher education and how this led to her running the MT Literacy Project. She talks about the evolution of machine translation (MT) systems and how this inspired her to teach users in the wider population about the dos and don'ts of using MT output.*
*Lynne talks about the different use cases of free online MT systems, highlighting her research on how international students use MT as an aid for scholarly writing in English. She mentions the importance of confidentiality and privacy when using programs such as DeepL and Google Translate.*
*The pod rounds off with Lynne’s plans to train teachers in MT Literacy and introduce the project to thousands of secondary school students as part of enhancing their digital literac…
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Jan 28, 2022
#102 Björn Lifvergren on Subtitling, Dubbing, and Launching LinQ Media
*Björn Lifvergren**, Executive Chairman of **LinQ Media Group**, joins SlatorPod to talk about dubbing, subtitling, and the media localization industry.*
*Björn starts with his route into the media & entertainment and language space; where, after two decades of leading (and eventually selling) BTI Studios, he founded **LinQ Media**. He gives his take on delivering localized content at scale and reacts to Netflix revealing its **subtitling and dubbing stats** for the first time.*
*Björn talks us through LinQ Media’s **geographic market focus** and experience in retaining dubbing and subtitling talent in the Nordics. He delves into dubbing services and the dynamics between owning a physical studio, using the cloud, and running a hybrid model.*
*Björn reflects on his experience working with private equity and gives insights on how language service providers can work with investors. He shares his outlook on the media localization market and how linear TV and cinema will evolve in…
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Jan 21, 2022
#101 The World of Japanese Game and Media Localization With Katrina Leonoudakis
*Katrina Leonoudakis** joins SlatorPod to discuss her experience as a Japanese-to-English Localization Specialist in the world of anime, manga, and **video games**.*
*Katrina recounts her early years as a freelance translator and her experience breaking into the entertainment and media space. She shares the main cultural and linguistic challenges when localizing a Japanese game to adapt to a Western English-speaking culture.*
*Katrina talks about how she deals with balancing the needs and preferences of the original scriptwriter, target audience, and client. She also reflects on the use of machine translation by indie versus Triple-A game studios and the negative impact of cost-cutting measures on freelancers.*
*The Pod concludes with Katrina’s views on the highly skilled pool of media translators in film, animation, and gaming, as well as the recent hype around metaverse and virtual reality.*
*First up, Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, with **Sw…
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Jan 14, 2022
#100 The Social Impact of Language Technology With Andrew Bredenkamp
*In SlatorPod’s 100th episode, **Andrew Bredenkamp**, CEO of CLEAR Tech, joins the Pod to talk about the evolution of **CLEAR Global**, formerly known as **Translators without Borders** (TWB).*
*Andrew recalls his path to joining CLEAR Global, with leadership roles at content governance platform Acrolinx and TWB, and why he stepped in to drive the tech piece of the puzzle with CLEAR Tech. He also defines how CLEAR Tech works with TWB and CLEAR Insights, the research and data branch of the organization.*
*The CEO talks about the use of multilingual chatbots for two-way interactions in marginalized languages, and their plan to train chatbots in code-switching. He also shares how they collaborate with both Big Tech and local talent to build tech for low-resource languages in South Asia, South and Central America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and elsewhere.*
*The Pod rounds off with Andrew outlining the organization’s current initiatives and what the language industry can do to support the g…
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Dec 17, 2021
#99 Lokalise’s USD 50m Series B; 2021 Industry Highlights and 2022 Outlook
*In SlatorPod’s final episode for 2021, Florian and Esther are joined by Slator’s very own Andrew Smart to share the top industry highlights over the past year.*
*Florian looks back on 2021, which saw approximately **60 M&A transactions and 25 funding rounds** announced this year, with big moves such as **TransPerfect acquiring Semantix**. For 2022, Florian predicts additional competition as the likes of DeepL engage in a direct battle for enterprise account ownership, with tech continuing to develop in the core localization and TMS area.*
*With it being a great year of recovery for the industry, Andrew reflects on the commercial highlights, with Slator hosting three **SlatorCon Remote** events. Andrew points out that technology opened up new types of markets and new ways of connecting with one's audience, with Slator hosting free online digital marketing **events**.*
*Esther talks about an increase in hiring announcements and senior appointments, as **Slator’s Language Job In…
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Dec 10, 2021
#98 Lionbridge CEO John Fennelly on the Language Industry’s Growth Trajectory
*John Fennelly**, CEO of **Lionbridge**, joins SlatorPod to talk about the **Super Agency**’s journey over the past 25 years since its founding by **Rory Cowan**.*
*Fennelly recalls his path to **joining Lionbridge in mid-2017** after leadership roles at Thomson Reuters and Hireright — and why he stressed the theme of simplification and relentless customer focus in his first years as **Lionbridge** CEO. He discusses how the 6,000-person company adapted quickly to a remote-first world.*
*The CEO shares his views on the dynamics of competing with rival Super Agencies, as well as emerging tech-enabled, VC-funded players. He also shares **Lionbridge’s motivation for selling its data annotation business, Lionbridge AI**, to (again) become a core language and tech-services player.*
*Fennelly talks about the various considerations when it comes to building, buying, licensing, and owning localization and translation management workflows and machine translation engines. He concludes wi…
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Dec 3, 2021
#97 Smartling Mega-Round, Avantpage CEO on Serving LEP Populations
*Luis Miguel, CEO of **Avantpage Translations**, joins SlatorPod to talk about the LSP’s mission over the past 25 years of helping immigrants and other limited-English-proficient (LEP) populations.*
*Luis walks us through his journey in the language industry, from immigrating from Mexico to founding and leading a California-based LSP. He introduces Avantpage’s leadership team and highlights the importance of developing talent within the company as it grows.*
*The CEO discusses the key differences between servicing government clients versus the private sector. He reflects on the dynamics of Language Access regulation as Biden’s new administration and the pandemic affected the regulated industry in the past year.*
*Luis shares his approach behind building a proprietary technology stack, explains his attitude toward prioritizing organic growth over M&A, and shares his outlook for the future.*
*First up, Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week — and th…
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Nov 26, 2021
#96 The Creativity of Transcreation with Tag Collective Arts’ Rik Grant
*Rik Grant, Transcreation Partner at London-based **Tag Collective Arts**, joins SlatorPod to talk about all things **transcreation** as well as multi-language content creation.*
*Rik discusses his route into the language industry; from working as a Lead Account Manager to entering the creative industry. He outlines the careful process behind recruiting transcreation talent and their varied copywriting, agency, or client-side background.*
*Rik shares the challenges involved in localizing for different markets, especially when technical, linguistic, and cultural barriers are prevalent in certain locales. He also advises on how to help clients appreciate the value of transcreation.*
*Rik touches on the role of language technology in Tag’s workflow and pricing models for transcreation versus translation. He rounds things off with his industry outlook as digital content continues to grow and customers seek personalized experiences.*
*First up, Florian and Esther discuss the language…
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Nov 19, 2021
#95 Launching the Most Comprehensive Open-Source Globalization Strategy Playbook
*Natalia Levitina and Karen Combe, Members of the **GILT Leaders’ Forum**, talk about GILT’s **Globalization Strategy Playbook**, arguably the industry’s most comprehensive, open-source guide to globalization, internalization, and localization yet.*
*The co-authors recall the various stages of their career in the localization industry and their journey to becoming part of the GILT Leaders Forum. They reflect on their experience writing the **30,000+-word, six-chapter playbook** with 10 co-authors from the localization buy-side, and how they drew on key learnings from their professional backgrounds.*
*The duo discuss the role of primary and secondary stakeholders, from end-users and management chains to procurement and vendors. They advise what language tech tools buyers should choose and prioritize when it comes to the translation management system (TMS), translation productivity (CAT), and machine translation stack.*
*Natalia and Karen round off with the playbook’s potentia…
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Nov 12, 2021
#94 Diego Cresceri on Pricing MT Post-Editing and Becoming President of Elia
Diego Cresceri, CEO of Creative Words, joins SlatorPod to talk about his journey in the language industry, from founding the language service provider (LSP) to becoming President of Elia.
Diego recounts his beginnings as a Translator, Project Manager, and eventually branching off on his own to create Creative Words. He also shares the motivation behind the founding of Creative AI for multilingual data services and how it functions alongside Creative Words.
The CEO discusses the evolution of post-editing machine translation (PEMT) and the LSP’s approach to pricing PEMT by the word. He also shares their marketing strategy through social media, Google SEO, and partnerships with associations such as GALA, ATC, and Elia.
Diego talks about his new role at Elia and their aim for members to actively grow through visibility and engagement. He reflects on the uncertain future of the language industry but says he expects it to remain fertile with innovation.
First up, Florian and Esther dis…
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Nov 5, 2021
#93 Véronique Özkaya on Why Argos Multilingual Acquired Venga Global
*Véronique Özkaya**, CEO of **Argos Multilingual**, joins SlatorPod to talk about the recent acquisition and integration of language service provider (LSP) **Venga Global**.*
*Véronique Özkaya walks us through her extensive career in the language industry and taking up her new role as CEO at **Argos** amid the pandemic. She also shares insights into the acquisition of **Venga** merely three months after announcing the **acquisition of linguistic quality assurance provider Chillistore**.*
*The CEO discusses meeting Venga CEO **Kåre Lindahl** at **SlatorCon Francisco in 2019** and plans for integrating the core team and sectors. As a result of growth post-acquisition, Véronique gives her thoughts on build versus buy in language tech, integrating a sales force, and the future direction of the company.*
*First up, Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, with a bizarre case in Sweden where a British parent was trying to apply for child care leave when sev…
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Oct 29, 2021
#92 Blazing-Fast Machine Translation With Kenneth Heafield
*In this week’s SlatorPod, we’re joined by **Kenneth Heafield**, Reader in Machine Translation (MT) at the University of Edinburgh. We originally connected with Kenneth on Twitter in a discussion about Slator’s coverage of a research paper on **Carbon Emissions in MT**.*
*Kenneth talks about his experience going back and forth between academia and industry, reflecting on the pros and cons of working for Big Tech. He discusses his recent research with efficient translation and language modelling as well as other MT topics that are undervalued by the industry.*
*Kenneth shares his thoughts on the popular preprint platform arXiv and how news outlets should cover research that hasn’t been peer-reviewed. He gives tips for those interested in attending natural language processing (NLP) conferences, particularly on how to navigate the complex system.*
*Kenneth concludes the podcast with an exciting demo of **Translate Locally**, an MT app that **runs locally on a desktop or laptop…
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Oct 22, 2021
#91 Judging Google Translate, TransPerfect’s Road to the Billion, Media Loc Hub Spain
*In this week’s episode, Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, with continued disruption to subtitling, caption and audio description on UK’s Channel 4, after **water damage at Red Bee Media’s broadcast center ruined a large number of hard disks**.*
*In media localization news, Esther talks about **Spain’s plans to invest EUR 1.6bn into the audiovisual sector** from now through 2025, with the aim of expanding the industry by 30%. *
*Meanwhile, Florian shares key findings from **Memsource and Charles University’s latest research**, which delved into the impact of machine translation quality on post-editing speed.*
*Florian discusses TransPerfect’s financial results, as they **close in on their billion-dollar target after Q3 revenues grew 31%** to USD 279m from the previous year. He also touches on a ruling in the US, where a judge called **Google Translate a useful tool, but inadequate for soliciting consent**. *
*To round off the episode, Es…
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Oct 8, 2021
#90 On XTRF and Scaling a Translation Management System with Andrzej Nedoma
*Andrzej Nedoma**, Co-founder and CEO of **XTRF**, joins SlatorPod to discuss the journey of the translation management system (TMS).*
*Andrzej begins with XTRF’s early days as a spin-off of family-owned LSP **Lidolang** and building the company with Co-founder, Dominik Radziszowski. He talks about the rationale behind pivoting from licenses to SaaS in 2014 and the funding decisions with **Experior Venture Fund**.*
*The **XTRF** CEO unpacks the process behind investment firm **K1 acquiring a majority stake in the company** and their relationship with sister company **XTM** going forward. He talks about the similarities and differences between LSP and enterprise clients.*
*Andrej shares the key shifts in the TMS landscape over the past decade and XTRF’s most important innovations in the last five years, including building their **Business Barometer**. He rounds off with XTRF’s roadmap over the midterm.*
*First up, Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the we…
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Oct 1, 2021
#89 How the Pandemic Changed Interpreting Forever With Anja Peschel
In this week’s SlatorPod, we’re joined by Anja Peschel, Managing Director of Peschel Communications, a Germany-based boutique languages service provider (LSP) that offers translation and interpreting.
From the perspective of a practicing interpreter, Anja discusses her initial experience of providing consecutive interpreting via Zoom when the pandemic first prevented in-person meetings and conferences from taking place. She also talks about the learning curve with remote simultaneous interpreting (RSI), its pros and cons, and shares her views on automated tools for interpreters.
First up, Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, carbon emitting machine translation, how DeepL integrates with startups, Keywords' new CEO goes on record, and TransPerfect's new M&A point man, and Google Meet adding live translated captions.
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Sep 24, 2021
#88 Dubbing, Subtitling, and the Future of Media Localization with VDMS’ Simon Constable
*Simon Constable, Global Language Services SVP of **Visual Data Media Services** (VDMS), joins SlatorPod to talk about dubbing, subtitling, and the pandemic-induced transformation of media localization.*
*Simon starts with his route into the media & entertainment and languages space, where his international experience spans 25 years. He delves into **VDMS**’ localization services and the dynamics between owning a studio versus working with the best fit for a specific project.*
*The SVP discusses the combination of language technologies and automation workflows used for subtitling and dubbing. He reflects back on VDMS’s learnings in the last year and how the pandemic affected demand and production for content owners.*
*Simon explores the different types of content, from recording voice-overs for cartoons to dealing with unscripted reality TV shows. He briefly touches on the challenges of remote dubbing and the level of demand for English as a target language. *
*The Pod rounds o…
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Sep 17, 2021
#87 Inside DeepL and Welocalize VP Olga Beregovaya on Language Tech Evolution
*Olga Beregovaya**, AI Innovation VP of **Welocalize**, joins SlatorPod to talk about all things **AI**, natural language processing (**NLP**), machine learning (**ML**), and machine translation (**MT**) related.*
*Olga begins with her journey into the language services and technology industry, where she currently leads AI innovation for **Welocalize**. She unpacks some of the broader applications of AI, ML, and **NLP** outside the language industry.*
*The AI Innovation VP recounts the early days of implementing NLP algorithms and the evolution of the computer-assisted translation environment. She shares the role of humans in MT workflows and injecting AI into the global content transformation ecosystem.*
*Olga shares her thoughts on text-generative models, such as **GPT-3** and **BERT**, and the importance of synthetic data. She identifies the under-utilized NLP applications in the language industry.*
*She outlines key AI language trends in light of increasing translator productiv…
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Sep 10, 2021
#86 Fake Interpreters, Fake LinkedIn Profiles, SlatorCon Highlights
First up, Florian and Esther share key takeaways from SlatorCon Remote, which hosted 13 guest speakers and drew in over 300 attendees.
Esther talks about the Video Localization panel, where Chris Reynolds, Tom Livne, and Fardad Zabetian explored the similarities and differences between speech and text outputs. Next, Florian follows up on the Content in the Age of AI panel, where Konstantin Savenkov, Jochen Hummel, and Michel Lopez covered the landscape of AI-generated content.
Speaking about this week in language industry news, Florian recounts his experience with LinkedIn spam; the likes of weekly fake profile requests from Chinese LSP CCJK. Florian then discusses Apostroph Group’s new CEO Philipp Meier, who previously held the position of CEO of Apostrophe Switzerland.
The duo also talk about Cohere, an AI startup co-founded by University of Toronto alumni and which raised USD 40m to develop natural language software.
In UK news, Esther shares how a woman was made to complete a…
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Sep 3, 2021
#85 Advocating for Interpreters in Afghanistan with Red T Spokesperson Rebecca Petras
*Rebecca Petras, Spokesperson for non-profit **Red T**, joins SlatorPod to bring awareness to their advocacy for the protection of translators and interpreters in high-risk settings.*
*Rebecca shares details of her professional background in journalism and discusses how she began her journey in the language industry through the humanitarian sector. She talks about the current situation of interpreters in Afghanistan and explains how the rising danger for linguists over the past few months led to her becoming involved with **Red T** and its Founder **Maya Hess**.*
*Rebecca explores the role of linguists in conflict zones and explains who they typically work with. She discusses the lack of official status for interpreters (unlike, say, journalists) and highlights Red T’s efforts to ensure protection for these linguists by speaking at the UN, working to change policy, and issuing a conflict-zone field guide for linguists.*
*The Pod rounds off with Rebecca outlining Red T’s current…
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Aug 27, 2021
#84 M&A Shakes Up Nordic Language Industry, New Language Operations Pro Guide
*Slator’s very own Senior Research Analyst Anna Wyndham joins the Pod to give a sneak peek into the latest **Slator Pro Guide: Language Operations**. The 40-page guide is packed with data from public and proprietary sources, including 11 interviews with language service providers (LSPs) at different stages of growth across Europe, Asia, and North America.*
*Anna unpacks the five key areas of the report that cover how LSPs structure operations, linguist supply chain models, an analysis of the global footprint of LSPs, program management, and payment risks. She concludes with a one-page operational milestone roadmap that lays out the key milestones LSPs hit as they grow from Boutique to Super Agency.*
*First up, Esther and Florian catch up on three weeks’ worth of the language industry news, beginning with **TransPerfect’s largest M&A deal** to date as they bought Semantix, Sweden’s largest LSP.*
*Esther shares news of clinical research specialist **WCG’s acquisition of e-cl…
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Aug 20, 2021
#83 Smartcat CEO Ivan Smolnikov on Translation SaaS and Marketplaces
*In a guest-centered episode, **Ivan Smolnikov**, CEO and Founder of **Smartcat**, joins SlatorPod to talk about the company’s journey as a tech-powered SaaS platform.*
I*van discusses his not-so-typical professional background and how he got into the language services and tech industry. Since 2016, he has been focused on building **Smartcat** into an accessible SaaS platform with a marketplace of suppliers.*
*The CEO talks about the complex ecosystem that comes with servicing three different client segments — enterprises, LSPs and freelancers — and how Smartcat aligns its interests with them.*
*Ivan also discusses how they use multi-layered technology to find qualified suppliers and match them with buyers by analyzing terminology and collecting customer feedback. Although buyers increasingly directly edit MT output in Smartcat, he still sees a bright future for specialist and tech-enabled LSPs.*
*The Pod rounds off with Ivan’s views on raising funds in the language industr…
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Jul 30, 2021
#82 LanguageLoop CEO, TikTok’s Dutch Translation Penalty, SME Website Localization
*Elizabeth Compton, CEO of **LanguageLoop**, and Claire Mullins, National Translations Manager at the Australian language service provider (LSP), join SlatorPod to talk about the company’s digital and organizational transformation.*
*Elizabeth recalls the LSP’s early days from 1978, and the decision to rebrand to **LanguageLoop**. She touches on the role of the Victorian State Government as shareholder.*
*She shares the impact of the pandemic as they saw an immediate shift from on-site to remote interpreting, as well as accelerating the digital delivery of language services. Claire talks about how Covid drove the conversation around multilingual engagement.*
*Claire also weighs in on the impact of immigration and the resulting increase in demand for rare and emerging languages, as well as multilingual consumer behaviors in Australia. The pod ends with their collective outlook, as the LSP plans to leverage tech and build deeper customer engagement with the launch of multilingual…
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Jul 23, 2021
#81 TransPerfect Blowout Q2, Welocalize Buyer NLG, Reframing Video Localization
In this week’s solo episode, Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, kicking off with a sneak peek into the brand new Slator 2021 Video Localization Report. Months in the making, the report provides an innovative look at the high-growth medium of video.
Florian shares news of TransPerfect’s best quarter ever (Q2 FY21), which saw the US-based Super Agency reel in an extra USD 70m in revenues compared to the same period in 2020.
The duo also unpack the acquisition by language service provider Welocalize of Germany- and Greece-based life sciences specialist NLG (or Next Level Globalization). NLG focuses primarily on the medical devices sub-sector. The deal saw Welocalize double the size of its life sciences division — Welocalize Life Sciences — to around USD 50m in annual revenues.
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Jul 16, 2021
#80 TAIA CEO Marko Hozjan on Scaling a Translation Startup
Marko Hozjan, CEO and Co-founder of translation startup TAIA, joins SlatorPod to talk about his company’s journey from launch to their recent series A.
Marko discusses what brought him into the world of translation from a background that spans everything from economics and leadership, to language teaching and…sailing. He talks about automation and machine translation and the need to remain focused and disciplined when developing translation products.
First up, Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week — which saw three M&A and Funding announcements. The two talk about Rome-based Translated’s USD 25m investment, Argos Multilingual’s acquisition of Chillistore, and Big Language Solutions’ acquisition of UK-based Dora Wirth Languages (DWL).
Esther talks about media localization provider ZOO Digital’s 2021 annual report, which detailed a shift in their service mix toward Media Services (media packaging, content preparation, etc.).
Florian also muse…
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Jul 9, 2021
#79 Women in Localization President Cecilia Maldonado on Translation in Latin America
Cecilia Maldonado, Director of Strategic Accounts at Latamways, joins SlatorPod to talk about the language industry landscape in Latin America and her term as President of Women in Localization.
Cecilia recounts her path to joining the language industry and the many hats she wore over the past 20 years. She touches on the two-year process of merging SpeakLatam and Two Ways Translation Services, and how they managed to double in size in a highly fragmented, competitive industry.
She shares her perspective on how business is centered around Argentina and Brazil in the Latin American language industry, and LSPs competing for talent with global Super Agencies operating local production hubs.
Cecilia also talks about Women in Localization and navigating the challenges of leading a not-for-profit organization. She closes with a market outlook on multimedia and as well as the potential for growth of machine translation post-editing (MTPE).
First up, Florian and Esther discuss the language…
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Jul 2, 2021
#78 Zoom Adds Live Translation, Netflix Dubbing News, Toppan’s Christophe Djaouani
Christophe Djaouani, President of newly launched Toppan Digital Language, joins SlatorPod to discuss the Japanese corporate giant’s plans to become a leader in translation for regulated industries.
Christophe shares his career journey; from his days as project manager at RR Donnelley to how he worked his way up to Executive Vice President at SDL. He introduces the members of the Toppan Digital Language executive team.
In an exclusive, Christophe announces that Toppan Printing will be renamed Toppan Inc. to reflect the transformation of the company. He goes over the benefits of having existing pockets of translation and localization within the organization.
He talks about the challenges of the regulated space and points out the value of security and quality when creating, managing, and delivering multilingual content at speed and at scale. He also gives tips on RFP procurement; having the right tools, team, and approach.
Christophe ends with the company’s vision to become the ma…
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Jun 25, 2021
#77 Synthesia CEO Victor Riparbelli on Personalized Video in 40+ Languages
Synthesia CEO and Co-founder Victor Riparbelli joins SlatorPod to discuss the company’s approach to operating and developing the world’s first and largest platform for video AI generation.
Victor talks about Synthesia’s journey and the rapid progression of media technology. He unpacks the role of academia in the company, where PhDs and professors make up nearly 50% of staff.
The CEO goes over the evolution of text-to-speech in the last decade. He also discusses the difficulty of extending voice into multiple languages when there is no data to support the neural network.
Victor reviews the success of video content over text and how this ties into working with global companies. He shares how he sees the localization and translation industries as partners and an integral part of creating multilingual content.
Victor talks about Synthesia’s funding rounds and shares the story behind connecting with their first investor Mark Cuban. The podcast wraps up with Victor’s view on de…
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Jun 18, 2021
#76 BLEND Enters Voice Services, Keywords CEO Retires, Propio Gets Growth Equity
In this week’s SlatorPod, Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, with BLEND’s acquisition of GM Voices, a voice and audio localization provider known for producing the original Siri for Apple.
Following RWS’ appointment of a new CEO, Keywords Studios announced the retirement of CEO Andrew Day, with Jon Hauck (CFO) and Sonia Sedler (COO) stepping up as interim CEOs while Keywords searches for its new leader.
In healthcare interpreting news, Esther talks about Propio Language Services’ growth equity investment from Triple Tree Capital Partners (TTCP) — which sees TTCP expand its portfolio into language services for the first time.
Meanwhile, Florian discusses the completion of video remote interpreting (VRI) provider Cloudbreak Health’s SPAC transaction following its merger with digital healthcare provider UpHealth.
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Jun 11, 2021
#75 How Large Companies Buy Translation Services — With Procurement Cube’s Armand Brevig
Armand Brevig, Managing Director of Procurement Cube, joins the pod to discuss how language service providers (LSPs) can work with Procurement at large enterprises.
Armand touches on the rationale behind a consultancy firm like Procurement Cube. He talks about how they find clients and goes through the typical company profiles they assist.
He then shares how translation services fit into the company's portfolio, both from a buyer and sales perspective. He briefly goes through the evolution of the procurement function, from being transactional to strategic.
Armand mentions some of the common misconceptions that service vendors may have about procurement and tackles the perception of translation services as a commodity.
After delving into the importance of category management, Armand explores the preference for single-vendor strategies over multi-vendor. The pod closes with Armand’s outlook on the future and how Covid has re-orientated procurement spend.
First up, Florian and Esth…
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Jun 4, 2021
#74 Remote Simultaneous Interpreting With Interactio Co-founder Simona Andrijauskaitė
Interactio Co-founder and Chief Business Development Officer Simona Andrijauskaitė joins SlatorPod to discuss the Lithuanian startup’s journey.
Simona talks about how the pandemic boosted demand and changed their primary market, with institutions needing technology for multilingual communication. She relates how it was all hands on deck at the remote simultaneous interpreting (RSI) platform, as years of development were compressed into weeks.
She also reflects back on their recent USD 30m round and how they managed to raise one of the biggest series As in the language industry. She closes with the company’s plans to improve quality on all levels, including hiring top talent.
First up, Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, kicking off with Straker Translations’ announcement of a USD 15.5m capital raise.
Esther talks about the Language Industry Job Index (LIJI) that, after a five-month growth streak, shrank for the first time since January 2021.
E…
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May 28, 2021
#73 What’s New in Machine Translation with TextShuttle CTO Samuel Läubli
Samuel Läubli, Partner and CTO at TextShuttle, joins the pod to talk about the ins and outs of a language technology provider, and the current state of machine translation.
The CTO touches on his background in Computational Linguistics and decision to go back to the academe in 2016. He gives his take on the current state of machine translation, particularly weaknesses around sentence-by-sentence structure and limited control.
Samuel discusses his thesis, which tackles three key challenges in MT for professionals: quality, presentation, and adaptability. He debates whether machine translation can become truly creative without artificial general intelligence — or if it will always be considered imitation.
He then walks listeners through TextShuttle’s business model as well as the key problems the company solves for clients, ranging from producing MT systems to helping with configurations, workflows, and training translators.
First up, Florian and Esther discuss the language indu…
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May 21, 2021
#72 Vistatec CEO Thomas Murray on Agile Localization and Organic Over Acquisitive Growth
Vistatec CEO Thomas Murray joins the pod to discuss the company’s international presence, the tech and business environment, and managing growing content volumes.
Thomas shares his insights on how geographic spread and the follow-the-sun model are important in serving clients. He explains why the language service provider (LSP) prefers organic growth over M&A, owing to the quality and longevity of customer relationships.
He also discusses how globalization has changed the way the LSP tackles “content explosion”; and how agility and speed of execution are crucial to scalability. The CEO also weighs in on ISO certification and how using it in the right way can lead to operational excellence.
Finally, Thomas reflects on the past year as Vistatec moved its operations online and kept staff safe through Covid.
First up, Florian and Esther share key takeaways from SlatorCon Remote, which drew in nearly 300 attendees and facilitated 200-300 individual networking sessions. This year…
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May 14, 2021
#71 Unbabel CEO Vasco Pedro on Translation Productivity, Lisbon’s Startup Scene, Growth Plans
Vasco Pedro, CEO of Unbabel, joins SlatorPod to discuss the company’s growth journey — from identifying the initial use case to raising USD 60m in Series C funding in 2019, and beyond.
Vasco outlines Unbabel’s translation pipeline and underlying technology. He describes the importance of the human-in-the-loop model and the ability humans have to impact the output of machine learning (ML) models.
The CEO talks about the challenges of ‘going remote’ overnight in response to Covid. Vasco says culture plays an important role in attracting top talent globally in the highly-competitive AI / ML space.
Vasco also shares his experience with investors, such as Point72’s Sri Chandrasekar, lead investor in Unbabel’s Series C, who provide actionable insights on how to further scale the business.
First up, Florian and Esther discuss the launch of the flagship Slator 2021 Language Industry Market Report. The duo share highlights from the 80-page, newly-released Market Report, which…
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May 7, 2021
#70 Appen Shares Plunge, TRSB Buys Anglocom, Evaluating MT, Huge RFP in Sweden
On SlatorPod this week, Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week — and share the exciting agenda for SlatorCon Remote, which is just around the corner.
Florian briefly discusses the breaking news of Appen shares taking a beating, causing trading to halt. Esther talks about Canadian LSP TRSB’s acquisition of local rival Anglocom. According to TRSB CEO Mary Kazamias, Anglocom’s in-house linguists were central to the acquisition.
The two discuss Google’s latest research paper on machine translation. Conclusion: It is better to hire professional translators to train an advanced MT system than have amateur crowd workers do it manually.
Meanwhile, Esther shares details of a huge tender underway in Sweden as Stockholm began the hunt for a single vendor to supply interpretation services for the entire region.
Taking a step back from day-to-day translation and interpretation, the duo talk about LSP Translated’s announcement that it will take part in Ocean…
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Apr 30, 2021
#69 Massive Localization at Canva, RSI Learning Curve, and Regulating AI
Florian is starstruck this week as Rachel Carruthers (Head of Internationalization and Localization) and Michael Levot (Localization Program Lead) from his favorite SaaS tool, Canva, join SlatorPod.
Rachel and Michael join the Pod from Down Under to talk about Canva’s hub-and-spoke model for Localization, which enables them to run a “[expletive] massive” localization operation across no less than 104 languages.
They talk about deciding what to build and what to buy in the way of language technology, and discuss their language services vendor model, which currently involves a half a dozen LSPs.
First up, Florian and Esther discuss a Paris-based RSI study which concludes that interpreters find remote simultaneous interpreting (RSI) more difficult than onsite.
Meanwhile, Google Translate marked one billion installs by looking back on the language capabilities it has added since launching in 2010. The duo also talk about proposed regulation from the EU around AI systems.
Florian…
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Apr 23, 2021
#68 Lilt CEO Spence Green on Predictive Translation and the AI Agency’s Roadmap
Spence Green, CEO and co-founder of tech-enabled language service provider Lilt, joins SlatorPod to talk about the journey from research concept to enterprise-scale AI translation agency.
Having raised USD 25m in Series A funding in early 2020, Spence recalls hiring researchers, developers, and enterprise sales professionals, and the benefit of the monthly standups Lilt holds.
Spence touches on performance improvements in their interactive translation system and cites prediction scores as high as 78%.
He identifies key items on their roadmap, outlining Lilt’s connector-first approach, as well as enhancing the customer review cycle with in-built tools.
With Lilt’s investors backing an AI-agency thesis, Spence says there’s still more that can be done by the industry to further automate translation and localization.
First up, Florian and Esther review the possible impact on US-based linguists of America’s PRO Act, which passed in a Democrat-led House in early March.
The two…
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Apr 16, 2021
#67 Papercup CEO and Science Advisor on Speech Translation and Synthetic Voices
Papercup CEO Jesse Shemen and Science Advisor Simon King join the pod to discuss how they develop synthetic voices to make videos accessible in multiple languages.
The two talk about the underlying components of the Papercup workflow and outline the role that technology as well as humans play in the creation of multilingual videos.
Simon, a Professor of Speech Processing at the University of Edinburgh, discusses the evolution of text-to-speech technology, the main technical hurdles in producing highly natural, emotional voices, as well as the adoption and acceptance curve for synthetic voices.
Jesse shares some of Papercup’s company milestones, which include raising a total of ca. USD 14m in seed and series A rounds. He also explains why there is room for many different startups in the multilingual speech and video translation space.
While Papercup has an ambitious goal of making videos accessible in any language, Jesse says startups will likely expand the market rather than repl…
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Apr 9, 2021
#66 Top Performing LSPs in Q1, MotionPoint Investment, Media Loc M&A, US Dubbing
Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, where they compare the stock performance of the handful of publicly-listed LSPs both year-to-date (Q1 2021) and from the start of 2020.
Florian calls out ZOO Digital and Keywords Studios — both of which are up more than 60% from January 2020 — and the two talk about Appen’s fall from the dizzying heights of mid-August 2020.
Florian shares news from the Sunshine State, where web localization platform MotionPoint secured a major investment from private equity firm Lightview Capital.
Esther talks about more M&A in media localization, as entertainment heavyweight Deluxe acquired a business unit from Sony Electronics.
The duo talk about an article in Bloomberg that highlighted the increasing demand for dubbing in the US; that is, “even Americans are embracing dubbing.”
Florian once again marvels at GPT-3. This time, it’s the stats that impress him: 300 apps or startups built on GPT-3 — and 4.5 billion word…
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Apr 1, 2021
#65 Media Loc’s Most Powerful CEO, KUDO Series A, Babylon Health’s Michela Simonelli
Babylon Health Content Design and Localization Lead, Michela Simonelli, joins the pod to talk about hyper-local digital content, localizing high-touch health materials, and the growing telehealth market.
Michela shares her professional journey prior to Babylon Health, which saw her spend 11 years “agency-side” in multiple language service providers (LSPs).
Michela discusses how content design interacts with localization at the digital health provider and collaborating across functions with epidemiologists, internationalization teams, and data scientists.
She also broaches the subject of machine translation (MT), explains why there is currently no interpreting provision for medical appointments, and identifies an opportunity for LSPs that can provide a holistic service for telehealth.
First up, Florian and Esther discuss two M&A and funding stories in the media localization space.
Private equity-backed Iyuno completed its acquisition of major rival SDI Media to become Iyuno-SDI…
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Mar 26, 2021
#64 Language I/O Founders on USD 5m Series A, AI Writer, Translation Pricing Report
Language I/O Co-founders Heather Shoemaker (CEO) and Kaarina Kvaavik (CBO) join the pod this week to discuss their newly announced Series A round, channel partnerships with CRM systems, expanding beyond their core multilingual customer support offering, and the future of subscription-based pricing models.
The two duo join SlatorPod fresh off their USD 5m funding round, which was announced on March 23, 2021. Kaarina and Heather discuss their journey from founding and bootstrapping Language I/O to bringing on angel and VC investors in early 2021, and their plans for deploying the latest investment.
Heather talks about the challenge of working with user-generated customer support content and Language I/O’s approach to identifying and dealing with “problematic” content. She describes Language I/O’s CRM integrations, and their approach to supporting major enterprises with their MT-based multilingual customer support offering.
Kaarina talks about the company’s tiered-subscriptio…
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Mar 19, 2021
#63 Alex Katsambas on Localizing Billions of Words in Luxury Fashion
In this week’s SlatorPod, Farfetch's Head of Linguistic Services, Alex Katsambas talks about the online luxury fashion platform’s localization model.
Alex talks about Farfetch’s internal teams, churning out billions of words annually, the importance of sustainability in content messaging, and why return-on-investment for localization cannot be measured immediately.
He shares insights into Farfetch’s approach to content differentiation, and explains why treating various content verticals differently is essential, particularly when thinking about integrating machine translation (MT).
Having already rolled out MT for two languages, Alex tackles expanding Farfetch’s use of MT in the coming months, and explains why MT is good news for human experts. He also discusses the challenges and opportunities presented by multilingual SEO.
First up, Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week. Florian talks about DeepL smashing it in global traffic rankings, and ad…
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Mar 12, 2021
#62 Netflix A/B Testing, Travod CEO Elena Grigoras, Ban in Japan
Travod CEO Elena Grigoras joins the pod to discuss LSP’s past, present, and future. Elena talks about the company’s client mix and how Travod manages the balance of servicing both third-party LSPs — initially the company’s primary focus — and end customers.
She discusses the relationship with Travod’s sister companies, Worldminds and Traduno (translation technology arm), and parent company Mondia Technologies Group. Elena outlines Travod’s technology stack, which includes their proprietary business management system, Traduno, and discusses market demand for customer portals.
Elena shares Travod’s approach to business development and hiring sales talent, and talks about the company’s recent website relaunch. She also gives her insight on translation pricing trends, touching on the role of the per-word rate, the impact of effort-based pricing, and her vision of a value-based pricing model.
As CEO of a UK-headquartered business with a large employee base in Moldova an…
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Mar 5, 2021
#61 XTM CEO Bob Willans on Raising Capital and the Future of Translation Pricing
XTM CEO Bob Willans joins the pod to discuss the journey of the company he co-founded back in 2002. Bob talks about growing XTM with little outside funding to become a USD 11m SaaS company in 2021.
He discusses XTM’s decision and search to bring on financial backers in 2021, which culminated in XTM’s majority sale to US-based investment firm K1 Investment Management in January 2021.
Bob shares his views on the TMS funding and investment boom in 2020 and unpacks the landmark shifts in translation management technology over the past two decades.
Bob also talks about milestone developments in XTM’s product, including totally rewriting their translation editor at one stage, and discusses how the company balances out feature requests and customization for enterprise clients against general product enhancements.
First up, Florian and Esther kick off with some key stats from the Slator 2021 Language Service Provider Index (LSPI), which features more than 175 companies on its launch…
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Feb 26, 2021
#60 Semantix Exec Britta Aagaard on EUR 34m EU GROW Translation Contract
In this week’s SlatorPod, Semantix Chief Business Officer Britta Aagaard joins us to talk about their recent major deal win — a EUR 34m translation contract for the EU GROW project. Britta discusses what’s involved in bidding for, winning, and setting up to go live on a contract of this size, as well as the role of Semantix’s technology partner ESTeam.
Britta also talks about her path to joining Semantix, which resulted from the 2017 acquisition of Textminded, the translation company that she headed as CEO before its sale to public sector interpreting specialist Semantix.
Four years later, Britta shares how learnings from the public sector carry over to servicing private sector customers, and how the acquisition of Textminded has seen Semantix expand its offering to become a bonafide full-service LSP.
First up, Florian and Esther discuss dating website operator Match.com's acquisition of a multilingual video chat platform built on Google Translation API for a cool USD 1.73bn…
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Feb 19, 2021
#59 Limecraft CEO and Founder Maarten Verwaest on AI-enabled subtitling
In SlatorPod #59, Limecraft CEO and Founder Maarten Verwaest joins us to talk about digital workflow management in the media sector and AI-enabled subtitling. Maarten shares his entrepreneurial journey, tells us why he doesn’t plan to bring on financial investors, and explains why AI should not be left unattended.
First up, Florian and Esther discuss the week’s language industry news as they revisit the majority sale of UK-based translation management system (TMS) provider XTM.
The two discuss an MT-related court case in Poland. Having taken their client to court over non-payment for a book translation, a Polish LSP soon found their practices under scrutiny by the court and expert witnesses.
Esther talks about a major deal win for LSP Semantix and friends worth around USD 40m over four years. Semantix, Summa Linguae, and ESTeam partnered up to bid for an EU translation contract for the Commission’s Directorate-General, and succeeded in ousting incumbent provider AMPLEXOR.
Sti…
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Feb 12, 2021
#58 Smartling CEO Jack Welde, Lengoo and XTM Funding, Systran and TAUS
Smartling CEO Jack Welde joins the pod to talk about technology-enabled language services, scaling with fast-growing customers, the M&A and funding wave sweeping the translation management landscape.
Jack shares why Smartling’s attitude towards machine translation shifted from “MT bad” in 2010 to fully embracing the technology in creating their own NMT engines in 2020. He also talks about his experience of running a 200-person company through a laptop in the era of Covid-19, and steering Smartling through its best-ever year in 2020.
First up, Florian and Esther discuss the breaking news that UK-based TMS provider XTM has sold a majority stake to California-based investors K1.
Florian talks about another language industry investment story, as Germany-based Lengoo announced they raised USD 20m in Series B funding based on an AI-agency investment thesis.
The two discuss the recent MT Model Studio launch from machine translation provider SYSTRAN, which allows people to enhance ex…
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Feb 5, 2021
#57 Kudo CEO Fardad Zabetian on Multilingual Meetings, Job Index Jumps
In SlatorPod #57, Fardad Zabetian, Co-Founder and CEO of multilingual conferencing platform KUDO joins us to discuss the world of conferences and interpreting, his vision for KUDO from the get-go, and his company’s explosive growth during the pandemic.
Fardad, who launched another of his businesses, Conference Rental, in the early 2000s, shares anecdotes from the early days of KUDO, talks about his commitment to removing the friction points in sourcing interpreters for the private sector, and tells us about his experience of securing USD 6m in funding during Covid-19.
First up, Florian and Esther discuss language industry news from a week that saw virtual event platform Touchcast raise USD 55m, based on a feature list that includes AI- or human-generated captions in real-time, foreign subtitles, and dubbing.
Esther talks about localization at health tech startup Oura. The Finland-based company, whose flagship product is a wearable smart ring that provides health and sleep insights…
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Jan 29, 2021
#56 Media Loc Mega-Deal, Mark Shriner on Sales and Asia, Call of Duty Loc Stats
We welcome special guest Mark Shriner to this week’s SlatorPod. (Spoiler alert: He used to be Florian’s boss!) The longtime (former) language industry exec shares insights from 20+ years leading Asian offices for some of the world’s largest LSPs and discusses his experience of selling language services across the vast, diverse continent. Mark also offers tips for motivating LSP sales teams and talks about localization through the lens of enterprise technology.
First up, Esther and Florian delve into the language industry stories of the week, which saw news break of a major upcoming transaction in the media localization space as Iyuno Media Group announced its plans to acquire dominant rival SDI Media. Subject to approvals being granted, the combined group will become the largest pure-play media localizer in the world, weighing in at, give or take, USD 400m in annual revenues.
The two discuss fellow media localization provider ZOO Digital’s recent trading update, as the UK-lis…
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Jan 22, 2021
#55 Memsource CEO on Buying Phrase, Straker’s Lingotek Deal, TransPerfect FY 2020
In SlatorPod #55, aka “TMS week,” Memsource Founder and CEO David Canek joins us to talk about the acquisition of localization SaaS provider Phrase, announced just this week. David walks us through his company’s milestones, from Memsource’s launch in 2010 as a cloud-based TMS and their very first paying customer in 2012, to growing as a bootstrapped company until July 2020, when investment firm giant Carlyle took a majority stake in the company.
He shares insights into the acquisition of Germany-based Phrase, discusses why their developer-targeted product is complementary to Memsource’s offering, and outlines the direction of the company
First up, Esther and Florian unpack the week’s language industry news, which was dominated by translation management acquisitions, as DACH-based Across sold to financial investor Volaris Group and New Zealand-based language service provider (LSP) Straker bought Lingotek, a US-based TMS provider.
The two talk about TransPerfect’s 2020 f…
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Jan 15, 2021
#54 Oxford Languages President Casper Grathwohl, M&A Report, LSP Growth Opportunities
President of Oxford Languages Casper Grathwohl joins the Pod from sunny Florida this week to discuss OUP’s business in lexical data, working with big tech customers, the world’s under-served and low resource languages, and more.
First up, Florian (from snowy Switzerland) and Esther (from lockdown London) talk about Slator’s newly-launched 2020 M&A and Funding report, a 40-page report with in-depth analysis of the 39 M&A transactions and 13 startup rounds covered by Slator in 2020.
Esther gives an update from the UK, where the Ministry of Defence (MoD) launched a new USD 74m call for expressions of interest for interpreting and translation services, and outsourcing giant Capita put the planned sale of its translation and interpreting division, Capita TI, on hold.
Florian talks about transcription and audio/video editing tool Descript — which raised USD 30m to expand its capabilities for enterprise use — and potential implications/use cases for the language industry. He also…
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Jan 8, 2021
#53 Supertext Co-founder Fabian Dieziger, Brexit & Translators, SBA regulations for US LSPs
In the first episode of 2021, Fabian Dieziger, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Swiss-based language service provider (LSP) Supertext, joins the pod to discuss the local Switzerland market, Supertext’s US and Germany expansion and their copywriting roots, and why they’ve chosen to shun M&A in favor of organic growth.
Florian and Esther talk about Slator’s all-new 2021 Data-for-AI Report, which is designed to help LSPs evaluate and pursue opportunities in the fast-growing niche of providing data for AI customers.
Esther shares an update on how the UK-EU trade and cooperation agreement will impact freelance translators and interpreters on short-term missions to Europe post-Brexit, while Florian unpacks the US proposal to extend small business perks to LSPs generating up to USD 20m in annual revenues. In a last look back at 2020, the two select their top quotes of the year.
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Dec 18, 2020
#52 Top 10 Stories of 2020, Isabelle Andrieu, co-Founder and Chairman of Translated
In the final episode of 2020, Isabelle Andrieu, co-Founder and Chairman of Italy-based LSP Translated, joins the pod to talk about her 20-year journey with Translated, their ModernMT and MateCat products, and why long-tail clients are still the soul of the business.
Florian and Esther share their top five picks from Slator’s most viewed stories of 2020, singling out heavy-hitters from the year such as RWS’ acquisition of rival LSP SDL (the #1 breaking-news story of 2020), and Acolad’s acquisition of AMPLEXOR.
Florian’s other picks include: Freelancers’ AB5 exemption win in California; LSPs suing a client over “polluted” TMs in Canada; and the launch of the world’s largest language model, GPT-3, which took the internet by storm.
Esther’s top hitter was the Slator’s 2020 Language Service Provider Index (LSPI). Also on her list are Stratus Video’s sale to AMN Healthcare. And, incidentally, Stratus was one of the fastest-growing LSPs in 2019 (another top pick), whi…
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Dec 11, 2020
#51 RWS’ Plans for SDL, Top 10 NMT Papers, Graduating Translation in 2020
The special guest for episode #51 is Slator’s very own Monica Jamieson, a new translation grad who joins the Pod to talk about why today’s 20-somethings are studying languages, and to offer tips on language industry job hunting during Covid-19.
Esther shares her key takeaways from SlatorCon Remote on December 3, 2020, which drew in +250 attendees from 30 countries, who tuned in to watch 6 CEOs, a CMO and 3 enterprise clients provide insights from their vantage points in the language industry.
Florian talks about the top 10 most influential research papers on neural machine translation (NMT), based on Slator’s analysis of citation counts, which sparked some discussion on Twitter.
He also discusses the latest financial results from language data provider Appen, which downgraded its earnings guidance after a disappointing November, and from language service provider (LSP) RWS, which outlined its plans to integrate former rival SDL.
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Dec 4, 2020
#50 New Rates in Germany, Financial Translation, LSP Channel Partners
In this half-century, guestless episode of SlatorPod, Florian unpacks the contentious matter of pay rises for interpreters and translators in Germany’s courts. Linguists for Germany’s judicial system will see their hourly and per-word rates increase from January 2021, but not everyone’s satisfied.
He and Esther discuss big bucks equity research after US-based investment firm Jefferies formed an alliance with Japanese firm SMBC Nikko Securities, which will see Nikko translate Jeffries’ equity research reports for distribution in Japan. Under the alliance, research for high-profile stocks will be the first to be translated, before Nikko — or an LSP they engage — ramps up to translating research covering ca. 100 stocks.
From a cross-continental alliance to another form of inter-business collaboration: the two talk about the often-overlooked biz dev strategy of channel partnerships for LSPs, after UK-based SDL announced a partnership with office provider Rovva, which enables…
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Nov 27, 2020
#49 Ex Netflix Exec Chris Fetner on EGA Launch, LSP Dying Zone, the First SPAC
Former Netflix exec and Managing Director of EGA Chris Fetner joins the pod this week to talk about entertainment localization’s new association, the drivers of media loc, and how content owners view the ROI of subtitling and dubbing.
First up, Florian unpacks some bold claims coming out of New Zealand-based LSP Straker’s investor presentation, which placed 20,000 LSPs in the “Dying Zone,” and dismissed 40 larger LSPs (+USD 50m) as providing “global coverage but lacking innovation.
Esther talks about the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) upcoming open translation tender. WIPO, which spends around USD 5m on translation outsourcing each year, is inviting patent-specialized LSPs from around the world to express interest in bidding for 26m words annually.
The two discuss the week’s investment and funding news, as telemedicine and video remote interpreting (VRI) provider Cloudbreak Health gets snapped up by investors and simultaneously taken public in New Yo…
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Nov 20, 2020
#48 GPT-3 for Translators, SLT CEO Kris Zdanowski, Translation Tests, Media Loc Unites
Joining the pod is Kris Zdanowski, Founder and CEO of Summa Linguae Technologies. Kris talks about his entrepreneurial journey, from paying for receivables collections with shares, doing a merger with an LSP in India, to rolling out an M&A strategy and launching into the data annotation industry.
Florian shares a few choice insights from Slator’s Inside India’s High-Growth Language Industry webinar, which this week attracted more than 130 participants and featured four expert panelists.
The two discuss startup Otherside AI, which raised USD 2.6m in funding just six months after launch for one of the first real-life GPT-3 uses cases. Florian unpacks the tech, which transforms bullet points into complete sentences (including in other languages), and its potential benefit for translators. They also venture down the translation test rabbit hole — a divisive issue, as highlighted by Slator’s recent reader poll.
Esther talks about the language industry’s latest association: Ente…
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Nov 13, 2020
#47 Lionbridge Mega Deal, Altagram CEO Marie Amigues talks Game Localization
Marie Amigues, Founder and CEO of Altagram, joins Slator Pod and talks to Esther and Florian about how she runs the fast-growing game localization provider
Marie recounts her experience of launching Altagram and growing the business internationally, and discusses the ins and outs of game loc.
In part 1, Florian unpacks the sale of Lionbridge’s AI division to Canada’s TELUS International nearly one billion US-Dollar. He talks about the success of Lionbridge’s private equity owners, HIG Capital, in selling just one part of the business they acquired in late 2016 (Lionbridge) for nearly triple the amount paid for the entire company. Lionbridge, meanwhile, is left with around USD 500m in core translation and localization revenues.
Esther shares some recent financial highlights from LSPs Summa Linguae Technologies, Stratus Video and ZOO Digital, whose dubbing revenues soared in the company’s first half.
The two delve into machine dubbing and discuss a recent paper from DeepMind…
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Nov 6, 2020
#46 Smartcat Funding, 2M CEO Tea Dietterich, Loc Jobs Climb, Earnings Wrap
Episode #46 of SlatorPod sees Florian and Esther welcome a very special guest and true linguist, 2M CEO Tea Dietterich joins the pod from Sunshine Coast in Australia.a
Stay tuned for our discussion with Tea on the language market in Australia: from the country’s biggest translation clients in the private sector, and Cultural and Linguistic Diversity (CALD) communities to the emergence of remote interpreting, and everything in between.
First off, Florian discusses Smartcat’s Series B funding: the US-based language technology provider raised USD 14.6m earlier in the summer, led by Matrix Partners, continuing the run of investment in the core language technology space...Intento, Memsource, the list goes on; and there’s now even a company advertising for investment.
Esther talks about the promising earnings updates from language service providers Straker Translations in New Zealand, and Honyaku Center in Japan, and from LanguageLine’s parent company, which said the interpreting…
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Oct 30, 2020
#45 Medtech Loc, Venga Global CEO Kåre Lindahl, Language AI in Video, Amazon MT Fail
This week, Florian and Esther welcome Kåre Lindahl, CEO of Venga Global for a wide ranging discussion about language data as a business for LSPs, lessons from M&A, selling consulting to loc buyers, and Amazon’s Swedish MT fail.
First up, Florian talks about advances in automated transcription and AI video editing including the function to edit from transcripts. (Watch this space for full SlatorPod transcripts…) The two discuss the world of translation and localization for the complex and growing medical technology (medtech) industry, and share some of the key takeaways from the newly published Slator 2020 Medtech Translation and Localization Report.
As many parts of the world begin to experience a second wave of the coronavirus, Florian talks about the implications for the language industry, while Esther shares some of the findings from the latest UK ATC Survey, which asked language service providers (LSPs) about the state of their businesses in October 2020. Then we finish by h…
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Oct 23, 2020
#44 Facebook MT, Interprefy’s Kim Ludvigsen on RSI, Zoom Zapps, LSP Earnings
Interprefy founder Kim Ludvigsen joins the pod this week to talk about why he decided to pass the CEO baton to Annett Polaszewski-Plath while business is booming after Covid restrictions turbocharged the adoption of remote simultaneous interpreting.
Slator Co-founder and Commercial Director Andrew Smart guest-hosts this week. Andrew and Florian talk about TransPerfect’s solid third-quarter results, why more language service providers should consider an IPO, and why Zoom Zapps could be a big deal.
Facebook’s big announcement about soon deploying massively multilingual machine translation models is also on the agenda.
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Oct 16, 2020
#43 RWS-SDL Greenlight, Pangeanic CEO Manuel Herranz Joins, thebigword's Big Promise
Manuel Herranz, CEO of MT and language service provider Pangeanic joins SlatorPod. Manuel joins us for part two, after your regular hosts give a run down of the week’s language industry news.
Florian talks about what’s going on with RWS’ buying SDL, as the deal inches closer to, well, closing. Just the small matters of a court hearing and SDL’s delisting from the London Stock Exchange to take care of next...
The two talk about Japanese MT provider and LSP Rozetta, which released financial results for the first half of 2021. Remarkably, the English language version of Rozetta’s financial statements had been machine translated (with no manual modification), using Rozetta’s own MT engines.
Esther discusses translation startup TAIA’s recent investment, and shares news from UK-based LSPs thebigword, Capita TI and translate plus, after all three filed results from 2019 and provided business updates on Covid-19.
Stay tuned for our discussion with Manuel, who talks about Pang…
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Oct 9, 2020
#42 TransPerfect Settles Wordfast, Sandeep Nulkar on India Loc Industry, Mozilla Kills Elmo
Florian and Esther are joined by Sandeep Nulkar, CEO and Founder of BITS Private Limited and co-Founder of Vernac Language Technologies to discuss India's language industry.
Before Sandeep joins us, your regular SlatorPod hosts talk about the week’s language industry stories...
Florian shares news from Mozilla, which just took the decision to retire Elmo — the backbone of its localization infrastructure — and to axe hundreds of jobs. Esther talks about the recovery in the language industry job index (LIJI), which climbed above the baseline in October for the first time since March 2020.
The two pick up on a few news items circulated in SlatorSweep: from TransPerfect’s out-of-court settlement with former co-owner Liz Elting over the ownership of Wordfast LLC, to interpreting platform KUDO announcing an integration with Microsoft Teams.
Don’t miss our in-depth discussion with Sandeep; we delve into India’s language industry, Sandeep’s take-aways from the Slator’s rece…
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Oct 2, 2020
#41 Tarjama CEO Nour Al Hassan; Translator Marketplaces, INC 5000 LSPs
SlatorPod welcomes Nour Al Hassan, CEO of the Middle East’s leading language services provider, Tarjama. A lawyer by training, Nour talks about how she started in the language industry and grew Tarjama to 160 employees, the decision to build a proprietary translation management platform, and her take on language services demand in the MENA region.
Before Nour’s segment, Slator’s Florian and Esther kick off the week’s language industry news with a discussion about translator marketplaces in light of Across Systems’ decision to retire their version of it, “Crossmarket.” (Spoiler alert: They plan to launch a new one in 2021.)
Esther talks about her recent experience during an LSP’s Capital Markets Day and Florian shares news that the South Korea Exchange, KRX, has started to offer English translation services for regulatory filings of eligible companies, which include the likes of Naver, Samsung Biologics, and more than 50 others.
The duo also discuss the handful of US-…
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Sep 25, 2020
#40 Acolad Buys AMPLEXOR; GLOBO's Gene Schriver talks On-Demand Interpreting
Florian and Esther are joined by Gene Schriver, CEO and Founder of US-based on-demand interpreting tech and services provider GLOBO. Stay tuned for the interview section to hear Gene share his insights on video remote interpreting (VRI), telehealth platforms, helping interpreters cope with the demands of the job, and more.
Your regular hosts, Florian and Esther, talk in depth about this week’s top language industry story: the acquisition by France-based Acolad Group of rival AMPLEXOR to become Continental Europe’s largest LSP — once the deal passes antitrust clearance, that is.
Esther shares a few key findings from the Chartered Institute of Linguists’ (CIOL) recent survey on the relationship between linguists and LSPs, which found that only 5% of translators and interpreters prefer to receive assignments through TMS platforms.
The two discuss optical character recognition (OCR), a persisting project management headache, and talk about why big tech, LSPs, startups, and the r…
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Sep 18, 2020
#39 Petr Antropov on Lokalise Series A, BIG M&A, Why THG Insourced Translation
In SlatorPod’s third guest episode, Florian and Esther are joined by Lokalise co-Founder Petr Antopov, fresh from his company’s Series A funding round announced on Sept 7, 2020.
Your regular hosts bring you the week’s language industry news; from Jeff Brink’s BIG Language Solutions acquiring US-based healthcare specialist ISI to two LSPs merging in Belgium, this week was awash with corporate transactions (not an NMT story in sight).
Another two companies went public, as the owner of Language Connect, The Hut Group (THG), successfully completed a major IPO in London. Florian and Esther discuss why an e-commerce giant like THG would not only bother doing localization internally, but make it an integral part of their IPO messaging. The two also talk about Ai-Media’s IPO in Australia.
In financial results, Esther gives an update on H1 2020 trading from London-listed video game specialist Keywords Studios, which grew 8% organically. Keywords’ Localization division suffered as…
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Sep 11, 2020
#38 MT with Adam Bittlingmayer, Lokalise Series A, the “Outperforming Humans” Claim
In SlatorPod’s second guest episode, Florian and Esther are joined by former Google Translate developer and ModelFront founder and CEO Adam Bittlingmayer to discuss machine translation, machine translation risk prediction, how LSPs should leverage MT, how big tech thinks about MT, and much more.
Your two hosts first talk about localization SaaS startup Lokalise — which announced a USD 6m in Series A funding this week — and their decidedly corporate (read not LSP)-focused customer base
Florian talks about Google’s foray into telehealth via a USD 100m partnership with Amwell, bringing together Amwell’s video platform and Google’s NLP and machine translation know-how to compete with the likes of Stratus, LanguageLine and Boostlingo.
He and Esther delve into a new research paper’s claims that MT OUTperforms humans (within a very specific set of parameters) and Esther shares localization insights from digital healthcare company Babylon Health, which provides accessible heal…
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Sep 4, 2020
#37 First guest episode with Kimon Fountoukidis! Plus RWS-SDL, China NLP Ban, AB5, Translation at WTO
Florian and Esther are joined by 🎤special guest 🎤Kimon Fountoukidis, Founder and Chairman of Argos Multilingual for a frank and animated discussion about the language industry.
Florian also provides an update on the market reaction following the breaking news last week that RWS plans to acquire SDL later this year
Esther talks international trade — more specifically how translation and interpreting are run at the World Trade Organization (WTO) —, sharing insights from Josep Bonet, Division Director, Language and Documentation Services Division at WTO.
Florian reviews the latest developments in the AB5 saga over in California, where interpreters, translators and LSPs are celebrating their success in getting exempted from a bill that would have compelled LSPs to hire freelancers as direct employees in the State. Hopping to China, he talks about several language technologies that have made the list of restricted exports, as the US and China’s tech battle intensifies.
Flori…
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Aug 28, 2020
#36 RWS to Buy SDL: Unpacking the Language Industry’s Deal of the Decade
In this week’s SlatorPod, Florian and Esther share a hot take on❗the story of the week❗— if not of recent language industry history: RWS’s acquisition of rival SDL. The coming together of the two UK-based Super Agencies will see the creation of the first ever billion-dollar-revenue LSP, and TransPerfect stripped of its current title of world’s largest LSP by revenue
The two whizz through the YTD trading performance of RWS, SDL and the seven other listed LSPs that Slator tracks. After a predictable Covid-19-related dip between February and April 2020, which LSPs bounced back stronger than ever and which continue to limp? (Yes, the disappearance of the SDL brand will take the number of publicly traded LSPs from nine to eight, but watch this space for the upcoming listing of Australia-based Ai-Media).
Esther talks about a patent translation-related fiasco in the US courts, which highlights, as one legal commentator put it, the need to “pay extra scrutiny to a patent applic…
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Aug 21, 2020
#35 Good Times Bad Times for LSPs, Are Translation Equivalents Real? VRI Boom
Florian and Esther talk about remote interpreting’s moment in the spotlight. From phone interpreting (OPI) to video remote interpreting (VRI) and remote simultaneous interpreting (RSI), the two discuss the various use cases for each, the differences in margins, and how RSI is booming as conferences have moved online.
Esther shares insights from a deep-dive interview with SDI Media CEO Mark Howorth, who warned of a double-digit revenue drop in 2020. She and Florian talk about the impact of Hollywood’s four-month closure and how the absence of new productions has left a content void for media localizers that will likely take months to fill.
From some cold hard figures put out by LSPs, to somewhat abstract theory...Florian wraps his head around new research from Princeton that explores whether translation equivalents really mean the same thing in each language. Bit of a head scratcher.
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Aug 14, 2020
#34 SDL Soars, What’s Sockeye, Who Owns Systran, Loc at Infobip, Aussie Troubles
In amongst arguing about salmon in this week’s SlatorPod, Florian and Esther talk about SDL’s shares, which rallied on the release of their H1 2020 financial results. Esther discusses SYSTRAN’s new owner, South Korea-based STIC Investments, who took a controlling stake in the MT provider in July 2020 alongside a consortium of minority investors.
The two share localization insights from Croatian cloud communications company Infobip, who recently hired an LSP and a translation management system (TMS) provider and implemented a continuous loc model.
Florian gives an update on Sockeye (not the salmon). Amazon’s open source toolkit for neural machine translation (NMT) has just been released in its second iteration, Sockeye 2, and is now available on Github.
Esther talks about how mistranslations are causing a stir over in Australia this week. Problems observed in the translations of coronavirus-related public messaging have prompted the state of Victoria to announce additional fu…
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Aug 7, 2020
#33 How LSPs Sell, RWS Pays Back, Machine Mistranslations, Signs of Life for Loc Jobs
In episode 33 of SlatorPod, Florian and Esther talk about fresh signs of recovery in the language industry, from the Slator Language Industry Job Index (LIJI) — which rose (slightly) in August 2020 for the first time since the pandemic hit — to encouraging survey data from the ATC UK’s Coronavirus Pulse Survey in July.
The two also share news that the world’s most valuable listed LSP, UK-based RWS, decided to voluntarily hand back money to the UK government that they received under the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme. It’s probably not a huge sum of cash that RWS is giving up since they only “furloughed a small number of employees,” but still.
With what looks like more than tentative green shoots appearing, what better time for LSPs to think about ramping up Sales and Marketing? The two discuss Slator’s recently published Pro Guide on Sales and Marketing for LSPs and share personal anecdotes from working in Sales (Florian) and Project Management (Esther) functions at…
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Jul 31, 2020
#32 Crypto Linguists, TransPerfect Q2, LanguageLine, Salesforce MT Dataset, UK Contract
In this week’s SlatorPod, Florian and Esther discuss the quirky use of social media ads by the Royal Australian Navy in their quest to recruit 40 crypto linguists (which also happens to sound like a pretty cool job). We also talk about Salesforce’s new open-source XML-tagged dataset for NMT training, based on thousands of XML files per language pair to help improve translation of online help documentation.
From Silicon Valley tech to the UK public sector, Esther shares her takeaways from a presentation given by the UK’s central government procurement arm, CCS, to nearly 80 would-be suppliers on a huge upcoming language services tender.
Finally, as earnings season kicks off the two give a run down of the latest quarterly results from TransPerfect, Australia-listed Straker Translations and Teleperformance, the owners of interpreting giant LanguageLine.
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Jul 24, 2020
#31 The World's Biggest Language Model, Kudo Raises 6M for Remote SI, Open Source Machine Interpreting
Florian brings you this week’s language news from his hideaway in the mountains of Switzerland, sharing news on the world’s largest language model, GPT-3, from OpenAI. He and Esther (who is still hunkered down in London) discuss its applications in language generation, and whether or not it’s any good at the task of machine translation yet (spoiler: not really).
Esther talks about two funding stories from the week: a USD 1.1m raise from Sweden-based localization and tech provider LocalizeDirect, which has built a headless CMS to support multilingual game development; and multilingual web conferencing platform Kudo, which raised USD 6m from VC based on their remote simultaneous interpreting tech.
Leaping from distance interpreting to a machine interpreting, Florian discusses the launch of M.INTerpreting, an open-source project to help further research into machine interpreting, spearheaded by Claudio Fantinuoli from the University of Mainz. Also in the land of open-source, the t…
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Jul 17, 2020
#30 The Most Interesting Loc Deal of 2020, India’s New LSP Org, Media Loc’s Solid Summer
In this week’s episode, Florian and Esther delve into the numbers and rationale behind the Memsource transaction, as the translation technology (TMS) provider sold a majority stake to private equity giant Carlyle in a landmark deal for the language industry.
The two talk about highlights from the game localization panel at SlatorCon Remote, moderated by Daniel Finck with machine translation and localization experts from Frontier Developments and Electronic Arts, Tamara Tirják and Cristina Anselmi.
From gaming to media entertainment, Esther talks about media localizer ZOO Digital’s financial results for the 12 months to March 2020. ZOO said the new year is off to a good start, and that the coronavirus lockdowns had proven to be a catalyst for buyers to try remote dubbing.
Finally, Florian shares news from India, where a new language industry association, CITLoB, has formed, attracting 50 members within a month of launching.
Finally, Florian unveils that SlatorPod now has its ve…
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Jul 10, 2020
#29 Stripe on Lack of Translation, More Memsource, SlatorCon, Best MT Paper
Florian talks about research from Silicon Valley start-up Stripe, which surveyed hundreds of e-commerce websites for issues at checkout, the most common of which was a lack of local language translations.
The two discuss SlatorCon Remote, where the 300-strong audience heard about e-commerce localization courtesy of multilingual content provider Quill. Also present at Slator’s inaugural remote conference was EasyLing, whose CEO described their web proxy solution for translated website. We had a private equity perspective on the industry, heard from CRM SaaS company Pipedrive about their localization operations, and featured experts across media and game localization, and more
Esther shares news of media post-production giant Deluxe’s partial sale to private equity (PE) and discusses a bit about the winning papers from ACL, the organizer of the world’s largest NLP conference, while Florian talks more about Memsource selling a majority stake to a major PE firm.
Links to the stori…
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Jul 2, 2020
#28 Memsource Goes Big, UK Mega Tender, Intento Seed Round, Jobs Decline Slows
In this week’s episode, Florian shares breaking news from the world of M&A and funding, as translation technology provider Memsource sold a majority stake to private equity giant Carlyle and machine translation matchmaker Intento raised USD 3m.
Esther discusses a nationwide mega-tender for language services due to launch in August 2020 in the UK: the pan-government RFP is worth GBP 110m over three years and is designed to replace an existing contract that has been extended due to coronavirus. Keen to get the procurement process right, the buyer is hosting a webinar at the end of July for suppliers to give input on how the RFP should be structured.
The two talk about Slator’s newly launched pro guide on How to Run a Translation and Localization RFP. If you’re a buyer keen to get your translation and localization procurement right, this guide is an indispensable resource for your organization and is packed full of practical insights on running an RFP.
Florian provides an update…
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Jun 25, 2020
#27 Apple Translate, Localised Series A, SOSi Invests in Apptek, L10N at Deliveroo, Japan M&A
Florian and Esther discuss Apple’s announcement that its new operating system, iOS 14, will come pre-loaded with a Translate app when it’s released in September 2020. The Translate app will run on NMT, be one of just a few dozen built-in iPhone apps, and allow users to translate without an internet connection. What will this mean for other translation apps?Esther shares news of e-commerce company Localised’s USD 6.5m funding round with investment from a UK growth fund and celebrity entrepreneur Peter Jones of Dragon’s Den fame. Localised provides pre-built localized websites to help brands connect with prospective customers internationally. The second of three M&A and funding features this week, Esther talks about US government contractor SOSi’s investment in machine translation and speech recognition provider AppTek. Florian discusses the acquisition by Japanese financial printer Takara of local LSP Simul International from the owner of Berlitz Language Schools.And the two r…
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Jun 18, 2020
#26 Biggest MT Survey, Interpreter Protest, Google Translate, M&A is Back
In a half-year anniversary episode, Florian and Esther unpack a wide-scale European Union survey of small and medium enterprises. Nearly 2,900 SMEs responded to questions about their language needs, MT use and attitudes of MT, as the EU rolls out an expansion program for their free automated translation platform, eTranslation.Florian ponders why a public body like the EU would be concerned with making MT available for use among private sector companies, and discusses a recent blog post from Google on the latest tweaks and techniques they’re applying to MT. The two talk about media localizer IYUNO’s acquisition of German dubbing and post-production studio Scalamedia, and highlight a possible language industry IPO reportedly being considered by Ai-Media in Australia. Florian shares his take on the diverging fortunes of language industry stakeholders amid the pandemic, as the gap widens between those who are suffering financially (e.g., the EU’s contract interpreters) and those who…
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Jun 12, 2020
#25 Google TM Snafu, Translator Salaries, RWS Iconic M&A, AB5 in California
Florian and Esther talk Google snafu, delving into the story of how Google “inadvertently sent” users’ translation memory data to someone else. Users of the now retired Google Toolkit, a free cloud-based translation productivity, may have had their translation memory contents shared with another user as a result of a technical issue affecting download requests.Florian discusses UK-based RWS’ acquisition of machine translation provider Iconic Translation Machines for a whopping USD 20m maximum, or 16x revenues. Why would the world’s most valuable LSP buy an MT startup rather than build the tech internally? An existing partnership, as well as Iconic’s focus on critical content and their customer base likely helped move the needle in favor of an acquisition.Esther outlines salary data coming out of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, which indicates that US translators and interpreters earned a median wage of USD 51,830 annually in 2019. We also look at which states offer the b…
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Jun 4, 2020
#24 Puzzled Interpreters, Loc at Verizon, Surprising MT, Jobs Vanish
Florian and Esther discuss the plight of the EU’s contract interpreters. While conference interpreting work has dried up, the ca. 3,000 contract interpreters, many of whom generated 100% of their income from the institutions, have been given a one-off payment to see them through the coronavirus pandemic. In a show of solidarity, however, staff interpreters created an emergency fund to help support their contract colleagues.Florian draws attention to the Slator Language Industry Job Index figures, showing a further drop from May to June, and highlights anecdotal evidence of localization job losses, including a LinkedIn-publicized cull in WeWork’s Globalization team. Esther shares insights from Verizon Media’s localization teams on their tech stack, including a proprietary loc platform, called Dragonfly, which helps to process 500,000 translated words monthly across platforms including Yahoo Mail, HuffPost, TechCrunch and more, in as many as 79 languages. Picking up on a news item…
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May 28, 2020
#23 Netflix MTs Subs, RSI on Zoom, 9 Translation Markets, Defenders of French
In this week’s episode, Florian and Esther discuss Netflix’s recent paper on sentence simplification and machine translation, destined to help improve the quality of machine-translated subtitles. But how will audiences react if simpler source sentences mean a lack of idioms and colloquialisms in foreign-language subtitles?The two talk about hyper-localized markets in the language industry and point out that a lot of demand is still local to an LSP’s home turf, limiting widespread industry consolidation. They discuss a few examples, from onsite dubbing and interpreting requirements in countries in Europe, to specific types of work that only exist in a particular geography, as with IPO translation in Hong Kong. They also revisit remote simultaneous interpreting (RSI) in Zoom, having received new user feedback from a listener. The conference interpreter, who had been using Zoom for a year, praised the platform: all they need to do is tweak a couple of things and it should be a solid…
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May 21, 2020
#22 Japan’s Undervalued LSP, Australia and VRI, Translator Strike Contd.
#22 Japan’s Undervalued LSP, Australia and VRI, Translator Strike Contd.In this week’s podcast, Florian shares news from Japan’s largest LSP, Honyaku Center, whose translation revenues shrunk by +4% to a still-substantial USD 75m year-on-year (and USD 107m for the whole company). He says that the listed LSP could be a steal for companies looking to acquire within the world’s third largest economy, as its market cap stands at a meagre USD 39m.Florian points to research that shows almost 70% of global clinical trials have been disrupted, and discussed the impact that may have for many of the world’s largest LSPs, for whom clinical trials are typically a high-margin and lucrative business.One market less susceptible to coronavirus disruptions is the public sector. And Florian outlines how a heads up about multiple large tenders is making waves in the Netherlands, amid fears from interpreters that quality may be compromised as procurement becomes more centralized. Esther shares u…
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May 14, 2020
#21 Cash for Lilt and Plint, Presbyterian Loc, Game M&A, SlatorCon Goes Remote
Despite Esther’s laptop going into its own form of lockdown, Florian and Esther ploughed ahead to bring you this week’s language industry news. Florian highlights three finance-focused stories, as Plint, Lilt and Keywords Studios, three very different types of language service providers, all announced financing news. Firstly, Florian shares news from Sweden, where private equity firm Priveq took a majority stake in Plint, a subtitling-focused media localizer whose revenues have grown significantly from 2015 when they first signed Netflix as a customer. Florian also unpacks tech-enabled LSP Lilt’s fortunately-timed USD 25m funding raise involving big names such as Intel Capital and Sequoia. The round completed ahead of the pandemic. And, in Ireland, gaming services provider Keywords Studios announced a GBP 100m share placing to fuel future acquisitions of smaller rivals weakened by the coronavirus pandemic.Breaking from the world of M&A and funding, Esther discusses insights into…
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May 8, 2020
#20 thebigword’s email, Amazon Subs, Germany Says No, LSP Sales Tool
Florian and Esther pick out two of their favorite sales and biz dev insights from the recently launched Slator 2020 Language Industry Market Report: 400+ buyer job titles and 200+ LSP core and adjacent services.Florian gives an update on coronavirus’ industry impact and talks about the added factor of debt for some private equity backed LSPs. The two ponder LSP thebigword’s bold Word-pie initiative, which seeks to find LSPs running out of cash and offers to pay some continued income in exchange for onboarding clients.Esther gives an overview of Amazon Prime Video’s new research paper on quality estimation for subtitle translations, and shares an update from media localizer ZOO Digital, which is seeing a “reassuring resumption in demand” as back catalog localization ramps up while new production work is stalled. Florian discusses why Germany’s ISO Terminology Committee has broken ranks with other countries by rejecting the adoption of ISO 20771, the new standard for legal tr…
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Apr 30, 2020
#19 Facebook Terminology, 2020 Report Launch, EU LSPs Struggle, AB5 Hope
Florian and Esther share highlights from the newly-released Slator 2020 Language Industry Market Report. The 55-page report features a wealth of insights and data to help LSPs drive strategy, sales and marketing and enable buyers to assess the vendor landscape. Esther talks about terminology management at scale after Facebook’s Uwe Muegge gave Slator an inside look at how his team is bringing consistency to the tech giant’s marketing terms. They’re using data and analytics, automation, and a robust terminology management process to soon bring the Facebook Marketing Dictionary onstream.Esther picks out a number of takeaways from the “European Language Industry Survey 2020, Before and After Covid-19,” run by the EU ATC and other industry bodies. WIth many freelancers saying they only have 1-3 months’ runway without additional support, she shares insights from the survey around how freelancers and LSPs are responding to the crisis. Over in California, freelancers are dealing w…
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Apr 24, 2020
#18 DeepL Custom Hints, EU MDR Delay, Dub Studios Reopen, Google Live Translation
In another lockdown episode, Florian discusses how LSPs are faring in the current climate. He also previews the results from the European Language Industry Survey, run by a group of industry associations. The survey found that LSPs plan to increase sales and marketing after Covid-19 and are not yet considering making layoffs. Among freelancers surveyed, only 16% said they have had to renegotiate rates. Esther talks about the coronavirus effect on the medical devices regulation (MDR) in Europe. Originally scheduled for May 2020, it has now been delayed by a year. LSPs hoping for a revenue boost linked to increased translation requirements under EU MDR may now have to wait a little longer.The two speculate on DeepL’s possible plans to begin offering customization, after they updated their T&Cs to introduce a clause on “Customer Training Data.” Providing custom MT would be a departure from the off-the-shelf generic model DeepL is known for. Florian also highlights broader MT researc…
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Apr 16, 2020
#17 Startup Cuts, Super Agency Headwinds, Fixing Gender in NMT
#17 Startup Cuts, Super Agency Headwinds, Fixing Gender in NMTFlorian and Esther discuss the language industry startup environment amid the coronavirus pandemic. As the language industry’s most heavily-funded startup, Unbabel, lays off a third of its staff, others may need to take similar measures to extend their runways given the uncertainty around capital raises in 2020. From startups to stalwarts: Florian shares news from TransPerfect and SDL, which both released financial results this week. TransPerfect had a strong Q1 2020 with 14% growth, while SDL delivered a solid performance across its three divisions — Language Services, Language Technologies, and Content Technologies — in 2019. Looking into summer and beyond, TransPerfect is warning of a softening in Q2, while the first phase of SDL’s mitigation plan is in full swing.Esther discusses a new paper from Cambridge researchers, one of the many papers released ahead of July’s ACL conference. Danielle Saunders and Bll Byr…
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Apr 8, 2020
#16 Polluted TMs, LSP Sells Masks, RWS as Proxy, Loc at Corona Test Manufacturer
Florian shares his own bizarre story of being pitched coronavirus masks by an LSP over LinkedIn. Esther discusses news that LSPs are suing the Translation Bureau of Canada (Attorney General of Canada), one of the world’s largest translation buyers. LSPs claim that the Translation Bureau’s translation memory is “flawed and polluted,” which is costing them time and money.Florian unpacks RWS’s latest half-year trading update to March 2020. Revenues were down by -1.8% from 2019, but overall, Life Sciences and some large enterprise IT were not doing too badly, suggesting these sectors may take less of a hit from Coronavirus across the wider language industry. Florian shares localization insights from Swiss-based life science company Hamilton, which manufactures ventilators and coronavirus testing equipment. Hamilton has language services volumes of 3-5 million words annually, most of which is technical documentation (tech doc).The two close with a story on public sector interpreti…
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Apr 2, 2020
#15 Loc Jobs Dry Up, Furloughs, LSP Crisis Management, Clinical Trial Translations
Florian highlights some stories picked up this week in SlatorSweep, Slator’s daily news aggregation service, including Keywords Studios’ decision to furlough 200 of its game testers employees in Dublin, and news from Germany of the government’s financial support package for freelancers and small businesses. Esther discusses the impact of Coronavirus on the Slator Language Industry Job Index, which fell more than three percentage points in April 2020. Job postings for localization and translation roles fell by as much as 20% and 40% on some job aggregation sites from the month before.With much attention focused on the race to find a Coronavirus vaccine, the two talk about the role of translation services in Covid-19-related clinical trials, which are ongoing even as many others have been halted given the logistical challenges posed by a global lockdown. And Florian shares Piotr Misztal’s tips for company management teams. Piotr is Partner Value4Capital, the PE firm that backs Su…
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Mar 26, 2020
#14 Flawed MT Review, TransPerfect v. Lionbridge, LSPs, Freelancers & Corona
Florian and Esther share an update on the impact of Coronavirus on the language industry, zooming in on contingency plans communicated by SDL, ZOO Digital and Keywords Studios in their recent updates to investors, as well as the UK’s newly unveiled financial aid package for self-employed people.Esther unpacks a recent study on machine translation evaluation, published by leading academics from Zurich, Dublin City, Carnegie Mellon and Groningen universities. The study found that previous claims of ‘human parity’ are linked to flaws in the way that MT output is being evaluated. Florian discusses the ongoing TransPerfect-Lionbridge lawsuit, as a judge rules that eight of TransPerfect’s ten claims against Lionbridge can go to discovery.Links to the stories discussed in this episode:*SlatorPro* Media Localization: ZOO Sees This Bright Spot as Production of Originals Slowshttps://slator.com/financial-results/media-localization-zoo-sees-this-bright-spot-as-production-of-originals-slow…
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Mar 19, 2020
#13 Airbnb Loc, Continuity Despite COVID-19, CIOL Survey, Multilingual Podcasts
In this week’s SlatorPod, Florian and Esther discuss the collective responses of more than 40 LSPs to the Coronavirus pandemic, from remote working to cloud-based services and business continuity plans. Esther talks about the results of a recent survey published by the CIOL — Chartered Institute of Linguists — which revealed a significant degree of dissatisfaction around translator and interpreter pay, but a healthy overall fondness of the profession. The two discuss localization at Airbnb, where the team has doubled the number of languages available to more than 60. Airbnb human-translated more than 100 million words in 2019, and used third-party machine translation for huge volumes of user generated content. Lastly, looking at an industry that may be boosted by the current climate, Esther shares some highlights about the trend for multilingual podcasts.Links to the stories discussed in this episode:Language Service Providers Respond to Coronavirus Lockdownshttps://slator.com/in…
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Mar 12, 2020
#12 Corona Affecting Language Industry, Loc at Fisher Investments
Capping off a hectic week with a Friday 13th special, Florian and Esther unpack the state of the language industry as Coronavirus goes global. From reports of demand surges for video remote interpreting and from some retail and e-commerce customers, to slowdowns in IT, e-learning and multimedia translation requests, how are the world’s language service providers faring in the face of the pandemic? The two discuss localization at asset and wealth management firm Fisher Investments, where the in-house team of five linguists, one project manager and one localization manager have shifted from outsourcing 70% of language tasks to handling more than half internally.Links to the stories discussed in this episode:The State of the Language Industry as Coronavirus Goes Globalhttps://slator.com/industry-news/the-state-of-the-language-industry-as-coronavirus-goes-global/At Fisher Investments, Localization Drives Revenue Through Client Retentionhttps://slator.com/features/at-fisher-investments-lo…
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Mar 5, 2020
#11 Corona Impact, Magic Translator, LSP Growth Ranking, AILIA
Esther gives a short briefing on the AILIA conference she attended in Ottawa last week. The two discuss how the ongoing economic disruptions caused by the coronavirus are impacting the language industry and freelance linguists. They review the ranking of the fastest growing language service providers of 2019 and wonder about a recent RFP published by US Department of Homeland Security, which is looking to procure a quasi-magic translation and interpreting device for less than a million US-Dollars.Links to the stories discussed in this episode:The Slator 2020 Language Service Provider Indexhttps://slator.com/data-research/the-slator-2020-language-service-provider-index/US Coast Guard Opens RFP to Replace ‘Human Translator’ with ‘Portable Translator’https://slator.com/technology/us-coast-guard-opens-rfp-to-replace-human-translator-with-portable-translator/Here Are the 20 Fastest-Growing Language Service Providers of 2019https://slator.com/data-research/here-are-the-20-fastest-gro…
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Feb 27, 2020
#10 *Special Edition* Slator 2020 Language Service Provider Index
Who came in top? Who grew fastest? Who struggled? Florian and Esther discuss the newly released Slator 2020 Language Service Provider Index (LSPI), featuring 130 language service providers on first release. Breaking down the landscape of providers into four segments: Super Agencies, Leaders, Challengers and Boutiques, the two analyze some of the best performances across each of the categories, and look at factors that influenced growth.The fasting growing segment was the Leaders, at 14.85%, which outpaced growth across the three other segments through a mix of organic and acquisitive growth. Growth across the 130 LSPs who participated in the LSPI was around 15%. Stripping away acquisitions, LSPs are growing in the mid-single digits, Florian estimated.
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Feb 20, 2020
#9 Top 10 LSPs of 2019, Testing Google’s Interpreter Mode, Capita TI for Sale, Norway Terp RFP
Florian and Esther share a sneak peak of 2019’s LSP results ahead of publishing the Slator 2020 LSPI next week. Get an exclusive look at the top 10 language service providers by revenue in 2019, as Florian and Esther discuss language industry Super Agencies and Leaders, and reveal which media localizer made it into the top 10 for the first time. What could go wrong? As several US airports have taken to using Google Assistant Interpreter to help foreign travellers interact with airport staff, Florian live-tests the software on air with German to English! See how it fares (and whether Esther understands) as Florian tries out some tourist lingo.Esther talks about Capita plc’s planned sale of its translation and interpreting business (Capita TI), along with eight other “specialized services” businesses, which come with a total price tag of GBP 200m plus for the lot. UK outsourcing giant Capita plc is offloading its sideline translation and interpreting business as part of its effor…
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Feb 13, 2020
#8 What's Trans-Adaptation? Kiwi M&A, Honyaku's Miss, India Data, Loc Meetup
SlatorPod #8! Esther shares details about localization at US-based coaching app BetterUp, which works with enterprise customers across 62 countries and 30 languages. BetterUp’s Localization Program Manager, Ella Pętlicka spoke to Slator about localization operations at BetterUp including the Trans-Adaptation workflow — Florian and Esther discuss this and other workflows (e.g., transcreation and linguistic validation) that aim to deliver hyper locale-aware content. Florian runs through the latest financial results for Japan’s largest translation company, Honyaku Center, and unpacks Straker Translations’ recent acquisition of New Zealand’s oldest company, NZTC International. Esther talks about new subtitling standards in Finland that seek to promote consistency across streaming platforms. The two discuss online language provision for Indian languages, and how Oxford Languages (a division of Oxford University Press) is driving better access and experiences for India’s interne…
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Feb 6, 2020
#7 DeepL Breakthrough? UK Game Localizers Are Special, Mexican Dubbing, Straker Financials
Florian talks about DeepL’s claims of making yet another “breakthrough” in what they call “AI translation quality”. Esther unpacks a recent survey of UK gaming professionals by industry association ukie, which finds that localization workers in gaming are better educated, and less depressed and anxious than their counterparts in other functions. According to the survey, game loc professionals are also the most diverse bunch in gaming: if looked at in terms of gender, nationality and ethnicity. Esther and Florian also discuss the Slator Job Index, which rebounded from a dip in January to reach record highs, +9% above the benchmark of July 2018.Florian talks about Straker Translations’ latest quarterly results and how the strategic shift to serving enterprise customers impacts results.Esther shares news of a debate that’s developing in Mexico around the idea of increasing the use of dubbing in Mexican movie theaters. Pro-dubbing campaigners, including voice actors, want al…
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Jan 30, 2020
#6 The TMS Question, 475M Stratus Deal, UK Manifesto, Slator LSP Index Heads-up
SlatorPod #6! Florian Faes and Esther Bond unpack ASICS’ localization strategy and weigh up the benefits of centralized and local procurement strategies. The two also discuss when to use a vendor-agnostic (pureplay) translation management system (TMS), or one offered by an LSP. Florian analyzes the acquisition of US-based video interpreting provider Stratus Video by healthcare service giant AMN Healthcare for a whopping USD 475m, while Esther shares highlights from the UK Association of Translation Companies (UK ATC)’s newly published manifesto on public sector translation and interpreting. Links to the stories discussed in this episode:How ASICS Runs Localization: Insights on Vendors, Processes, Technologieshttps://slator.com/features/how-asics-runs-localization-insights-on-vendors-processes-technologies/AMN Healthcare to Buy Interpreting Provider Stratus Video for USD 475 Millionhttps://slator.com/ma-and-funding/amn-healthcare-to-buy-interpreting-provider-stratus-video-for-usd-47…
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Jan 23, 2020
#5 Interpreter Strike, Amazon Machine Dubbing, Super Agencies 2019 Financials
SlatorPod #5! Florian Faes and Esther Bond discuss the 1,500-strong interpreter strike in the Netherlands. Florian talks about Amazon’s foray into automatic machine dubbing, which combines machine translation, text-to-speech, and audio rendering models. Esther unpacks the 2019 financial results for two Super Agencies — SDL and TransPerfect. TransPerfect’s acquisition of no less than seven media localizers in 2019 made it the most acquisitive LSP in 2019, just one of a number of highlights Esther shared from the recently released Slator 2019 Language Industry M&A and Funding Report.Links to the stories discussed in this episode:We’re On Strike: Dutch Linguists Oppose the Use of ‘Less Qualified’ Interpretershttps://slator.com/industry-news/were-on-strike-dutch-linguists-oppose-the-use-of-less-qualified-interpreters/Machine Dubbing: Amazon AI Opens New Chapter in Automating Media Localizationhttps://slator.com/technology/machine-dubbing-amazon-ai-opens-new-chapter-in-automatin…
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Jan 16, 2020
#4 Lionbridge Lawsuit, HOOQ Media Localization, Translator Scams, CES and Translation Gadget
SlatorPod #4! Florian Faes and Esther Bond discuss South-East Asia streaming joint-venture HOOQ and their localization efforts across a handful of Asian languages. The two also talk about Lionbridge being sued over earn-out payments by the founders of Geotext, a legal translation company they acquired in 2015. Translation scams continue to be a problem with fake translators impersonating real ones. Esther talks about how those scams work and what can be done about it. Finally, the two discuss the ubiquitous “translation earpieces” which apparently were a hot topic at the Consumer Electronic Shows (CES) in Las Vegas.Links to the stories discussed in this episode:Streaming Platform HOOQ Sees ‘Great Return’ on Localization, Sets 100 Originals for 2020 Releasehttps://slator.com/features/streaming-platform-hooq-sees-great-return-on-localization-sets-100-originals-for-2020-release/Here’s What Translator Scammers Were Up to in 2019https://slator.com/industry-news/heres-what-translat…
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Jan 9, 2020
#3 Loc Meetup, EU 60M Awards, LSP Scorecard, 2020 Predictions, Q1 Speaking
SlatorPod #3! Florian Faes and Esther Bond discuss London localization meet-ups, the European Parliament’s giant Translation Directorate’s EUR 60m translation award, Amazon hiring new media localizers, and the scorecard of the handful of publicly listed language service providers. Esther talks about the January reading of the Slator Language Industry Job Index and Florian plucks Amazon’s new batch translation and two other stories featured in this week’s SlatorSweep. Then the two do some crystal ball gazing and make predictions for 2020 language industry M&A and startup funding as well as trends in MT, and talk about their Q1 conference speaking schedule.Links to the stories discussed in this episode:EU Awards EUR 63 Million in Translation Contracts to Kick Off 2020https://slator.com/deal-wins/eu-awards-eur-63-million-in-translation-contracts-to-kick-off-2020/Slator Language Industry Buyer Tracker January 2020https://slator.com/people-moves/slator-language-industry-buyer-tracke…
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Dec 19, 2019
#2 Top 2019 Quotes, Kantan MT Acquisition, AB5 Law
Florian Faes and Esther Bond discuss the week’s language industry news.Featured this week: the top language industry quotes of 2019 including TransPerfect, BTI Studios, Unbabel’s venture capital backer, and Nike’s Global Localization Manager. Then, the two discuss California’s controversial AB5 gig worker bill, which the language industry is fighting tooth and nail, and Keyword Studio’s acquisition of machine translation provider KantanMT for EUR 7M.Links to the stories discussed in this episode:Top Language Industry Quotes of 2019https://slator.com/features/top-language-industry-quotes-of-2019/Capital Markets Day: What Keywords Studios Said About Game and Media Localizationhttps://slator.com/industry-news/capital-markets-day-what-keywords-studios-said-about-game-and-media-localization‘Translation Agencies Are Cancelling My Contracts’ — California’s AB5 Bill Starts to Bite https://slator.com/industry-news/translation-agencies-are-cancelling-my-contracts-californias-ab…
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Dec 13, 2019
#1 Denmark, EU, RWS, Buyer Panel
SlatorPod #1, the very first edition! Florian Faes and Esther Bond discuss the week’s language industry news. Featured this week: a giant interpreting contract gone wrong in Denmark; the EU’s translation test fail; RWS continues its growth streak posting yet another year of revenue and profit growth, and takeaways from SlatorCon Amsterdam’s enterprise localization panel.Links to the stories discussed in this first episode of SlatorPod:How Localization Is Run at Nike, Bose, and KAYAK: SlatorCon Panel Insightshttps://slator.com/slatorcon/how-localization-is-run-at-nike-bose-and-kayak-slatorcon-panel-insights/Serious Data Protection Violations: Denmark Terminates Giant EasyTranslate Contracthttps://slator.com/industry-news/serious-data-protection-violations-denmark-terminates-giant-easytranslate-contract/‘Unacceptable’ — Tempers Flare Over European Commission’s Bungled Translation Testhttps://slator.com/industry-news/unacceptable-tempers-flare-over-european-commissions-bungl…
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