Daniel Wilson, Founder and CEO of XRI Global, joins SlatorPod to talk about the company's focus on low-resource languages and its efforts to bring digital equality to communities lacking online language support. With a background in linguistics and research on endangered languages in the Caucasus Mountains, Wilson's journey led him to establish XRI…

Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, with SlatorCon London, scheduled for May 23rd, announcing the speaker lineup, including a Keynote presentation from Iris Orriss of Meta. They then discuss how enterprises are becoming increasingly comfortable launching fully automated language AI features, labeling it the “normaliza…

Dr. B.J. Woodstein, Professor, Translator, and Writer, joins SlatorPod to talk about translation theory and its implications for literary translators, while also shedding light on the professional challenges, nuances, and ethical considerations. B.J. discusses her upcoming book, “Translation Theory for Literary Translators”, where she aims to demys…

Mihai Vlad, the Founder of Video Highlight and former General Manager of Language Weaver, joins SlatorPod to talk about his entrepreneurial journey and insights into the language AI startup landscape. Mihai discusses his latest venture, Video Highlight, which aims to solve the inefficiency of extracting valuable information from lengthy videos by p…

Chris Reynolds, the EVP and General Manager of Worldwide Localization and Fulfillment at Deluxe, joins SlatorPod to talk about the complexities of dubbing and the potential impact of AI on the industry. Chris discusses the different elements in the dubbing process, including voice casting, script adaptation, and post-production, as well as the chal…

Jordan Evans, the CEO of Language Network, joins SlatorPod to talk about the evolution of his family-founded language service provider (LSP) and his sales-focused growth strategy. Jordan's professional trajectory began with a blend of sales, tech startups, and a stint as a linguist and translator, before acquiring Language Network and achieving sig…

Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, with Head of Research Anna Wyndham joining to give a breakdown of the 2024 Slator Language AI 50 Under 50, a list highlighting 50 of the newest and most notable language AI companies. The list focuses on 50 language AI companies under 50 months old, showcasing their innovations in s…

Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, with Women in Localization opening a new chapter in Switzerland and SlatorCon coming to Silicon Valley on September 5th. Florian shares insights from RWS’ Annual General Meeting, where under the new leadership of Chairman Julie Southern, the language service provider (LSP) highlight…

Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week with a first look at the newly released 2024 Slator Language Service Provider Index (LSPI) where they unpack the key findings from over 250 LSPs on the ranking. Leading the 2024 LSPI is Super Agency TransPerfect, who recently appointed Jin Lee as the new Co-CEO. Lee began as a projec…

In the landmark 200th episode of the SlatorPod, we are joined by Anja Jones, Managing Director of AJT, to talk about the language service provider’s (LSP’s) journey to becoming a B Corp, a certification for businesses balancing profit with social and environmental responsibility. Anja touches upon the impact of large language models (LLMs), express…

In this week’s SlatorPod, we are joined by Bart Maczynski, the VP of Machine Learning at Language Weaver, the translation tech brand of Super Agency RWS, to talk about the challenges and advancements in enterprise-grade machine translation (MT). The discussion delves into the distinctions between enterprise and consumer-grade MT, with challenges in…

John Tinsley, the VP of AI Solutions at language AI agency Translated, joins SlatorPod to talk about the challenges, advancements, and future directions of AI in the language industry. John shares his journey from founding machine translation (MT) pioneer ICONIC, selling it during the height of the pandemic to RWS, and now his current role focusing…

Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, with Super Early Bird ending soon for SlatorCon Remote March and a save-the-date announcement for SlatorCon London, scheduled in person for May 23, 2024. Florian talks about how translation GPTs are becoming increasingly available on OpenAI’s GPT store, highlighting the ease of buil…

Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, with OpenAI recently launching its GPT store, allowing users to create their own GPT chat interfaces without the need for coding. One move that underscores OpenAI's influence in the language space is Albania's consideration of using ChatGPT for translating documents related to its E…

Vasco Pedro, Co-founder and CEO of language operations platform Unbabel, joins SlatorPod to talk about the transformative year of 2023 and its impact on the language technology landscape. Vasco discusses the AI boom in 2023, emphasizing the importance of recognizing AI as what he calls a cognitive prosthetic rather than a human replacement. He high…

Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, with the release of Slator’s Pro Guide: Solution Sales for Language Service Providers and more exciting research to come. The duo talk about the latest in language AI, with OpenAI gaining traction as a potential default for machine translation, and the firing and rehiring of CEO Sam…

Jonas Ryberg, Chief Globalization Officer of Centific, joins SlatorPod to talk about the evolving language services landscape and Centific's approach to navigating the changes brought about by generative AI and large language models (LLMs). Jonas looks back on the opportunities and challenges of 2023, with the impact of ChatGPT triggering clients, …

Diego Antista, Co-Founder and CEO of GetGloby, joins SlatorPod to talk about the complexity of translating and transcreating digital ad campaigns. Diego shares a pivotal moment when he discovered that the cost of translating campaigns for multicultural audiences was a significant barrier for advertisers, leading to the creation of GetGloby with fel…

Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, with the release of Slator’s new Pro Guide: Scaling an LSP Key Account. The duo analyzed the job requirements and responsibilities for an AI Localization Analyst at Chubb, an insurance company. Florian discusses when he, for the first time, realized he briefly fell for a third-party…

Gabriel Fairman, Founder and CEO of Bureau Works, joins SlatorPod to talk about the potential of generative AI in translation management. Gabriel shares the origin story of Bureau Works, where over the years his perspective shifted towards viewing translation as an information management challenge, leading Bureau Works to transition into a tech-ena…

Pablo Navascués, Managing Director of global content and SEO agency Key Content, joins SlatorPod to discuss the impact of generative AI on content creation and SEO. Pablo explains how content strategy and SEO strategy have become more interconnected, emphasizing the need for high-quality, user-oriented content. He acknowledges that AI can be valuab…

Bryan Murphy, CEO of Smartling, joins SlatorPod to share insights into the language technology leader’s position as a turnkey cloud-based language AI solution. Bryan talks about his background in software and e-commerce and how he joined Smartling to leverage technology in the translation and localization business. Bryan expands on how Smartling ha…

Jakub Absolon, CEO of ASAP-translation.com, joins SlatorPod to share insights into the evolving landscape of AI in the language industry and the role of post-editing in the translation process. Jakub acknowledged the success of the past two years but noted that this year has brought new challenges. To stay competitive, the LSP plans to expand its B…

Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, where they reflect on SlatorCon Zurich 2023, which saw a growing interest in AI-driven translation technologies and the industry's efforts to position itself as experts in the enterprise content lifecycle. Esther discusses ZOO Digital's financial struggles due to strikes in Hollywoo…

Sebastien Pare, CEO of VIQ Solutions, joins SlatorPod to discuss the evolution of transcription for multi-speaker content in challenging legal and regulatory settings. Sebastien explained that VIQ initially started in Canada and expanded to other Commonwealth countries, focusing on courts thanks to their need for advanced audio and video solutions.…

Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, where Spotify launched AI-powered voice translation for podcast creators. Esther gives a recap of the ALC 21st Annual Summit in Portland, where she presented key findings from the 2023 ALC Survey. The duo discussed the addition of Basque, Catalan, and Galician as official languages …

Mark Shriner, Strategic Sales Director of memoQ, and now CEO of memoQ RFP, joins the podcast to discuss the challenges and opportunities of request for proposals (RFPs) in the language industry. Mark explains that enterprise language services RFPs tend to focus on language pairs and pricing, while language technology RFPs delve deep into product fe…

“The face is the uncanny valley. The nuance and detail in the face and the way it moves is a very difficult thing to animate,” Jonathan Bronfman, CEO of MARZ explains on SlatorPod. Canada-based MARZ, which stands for Monsters Aliens Robots Zombies, was founded in 2018 to leverage AI and bring quantifiable metrics like time and cost to the business …

Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, where amid ChatGPT's new enterprise launch, Florian tested ChatGPT's translation quality and came across mistranslations and awkward phrasing. Florian highlights the launch of the Slator Pro Guide: Subtitling and Captioning, providing an overview of its content and use cases. The di…

Georg Ell, CEO of Phrase, joins SlatorPod to talk about key moments since he joined the localization platform in May 2022, merging Memsource into the Phrase brand, and the opportunities of AI-driven growth of content requiring localization. Georg discusses Phrase’s product offering, which includes machine translation (MT) aggregator Phrase Translat…

Joining SlatorPod this week is Longyue Wang, a Research Scientist at Tencent AI Lab, where he is involved in the research and practical applications of machine translation (MT) and natural language processing (NLP). Longyue Longyue expands on Tencent’s approach to language technology where they integrate MT with Tencent Translate (TranSmart). He hi…

Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news from over the past month, where NWN Carousel, a Massachusetts-based cloud communications company, secured a USD 6.5 million contract with Baltimore, Maryland, to provide AI-powered multilingual emergency 9-1-1 services. Meta has unveiled Llama 2, its latest large language model, trained on 40% m…

In this week’s SlatorPod, we are joined by Florian Stègre, Founder of Checksub, to discuss how the SaaS platform powers subtitling and dubbing for SMEs and enterprise clients. Florian's entrepreneurial journey began after graduating from business school and founding video production company, ROOM Agency, which laid the foundation for Checksub. Chec…

Rocio Martinez, VP of Language Services at Jellyfish, joins SlatorPod to talk about the role of creative content localization at the digital marketing agency. Rocio explains that while the language services team at Jellyfish function as an LSP, their positioning in the market is broader, and they act as an internal solution provider that supports t…

In this week’s SlatorPod, we are joined by Graham Neubig, Associate Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, to discuss his research on multilingual natural language processing (NLP) and machine translation (MT). Graham discusses the research at Neulab, where they focus on various areas of NLP, including incorporating broad know…

Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news over the past month, with ChatGPT traffic hitting its peak in May 2023 and large language models being released left, right, and center. The EU Commission (EC) unveiled the launch of a pilot program that will see the EC use its own machine translation tool to translate certain press releases. In…

Deepdub Co-founder and CEO, Ofir Krakowski, joins SlatorPod to talk about the AI dubbing platform’s goal to make content more accessible through automation and human collaboration. Ofir’s experience in the Israeli Air Force's machine learning and innovation department led him to use his knowledge in deep learning and generative AI to co-found Deepd…

ICON plc’s Senior Vice President of Commercialisations & Outcomes, Brian Mallon, joins SlatorPod to shed light on the crucial role of language services within clinical research organizations (CROs). Brian recounts ICON's growth journey, from a team of five in Dublin back in 1990 to its present-day workforce of over 41,000 across 50 countries. Brian…

Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, covering key takeaways from SlatorCon Remote such as lip sync AI dubbing demos from NeuralGarage and how FIFA and DeepL tackle sports localization. After unveiling its first-half results for 2023, RWS CEO Ian El-Mokadem emphasized the advantages of utilizing AI and large language mo…

Unilingo Founder and CEO, Farbod Mansorian, joins SlatorPod to talk about launching the leading dubbing provider for Youtube creators, enabling them to get billions of additional views. As a regular consumer of YouTube, Farbod came across TED Talks, and after translating a talk for his mother, the idea to bring this to other non-English speaking co…

Nic McMahon, CEO of United Language Group (ULG), joins SlatorPod to talk about the language service provider’s (LSP) mission in connecting language and culture to create meaningful outcomes. Nic recounts his journey in the language industry, from junior project manager at SDL to ascending to the role of CEO of ULG. He highlights ULG’s goal to go be…

This week Diego Bartolome, Founder of sintetic.ai, joined us on SlatoPod to talk about empowering companies to achieve more with generative artificial intelligence, including Slator with Slator Answers. Diego discusses how he collaborated with Slator to create a chat interface that allows Slator subscribers to question an AI model specifically trai…

Joining SlatorPod this week is Steven Piantadosi, Associate Professor of Psychology at UC Berkeley. Steven also runs the computation and language lab (colala) at UC Berkeley, which studies the basic computational processes involved in human language and cognition. Steven talks about the emergence of large language models (LLMs) and how it has resha…

Florian and Esther discuss the launch of Slator’s flagship 2023 Language Industry Market Report. The 140-page report provides a comprehensive view of the global language services and language technology industry, which Slator estimates grew over 4% to nearly USD 28bn in 2022 on the back of a strong first half. The duo talk about OpenAI’s new endeav…

Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, covering the latest in large language models with Custom.MT’s Chat GPT in Localization Part II, SlatorPod’s The Great ChatGPT and Translation Debate, and Hugging Face’s launch of HuggingChat. Belgium-based language service provider (LSP) Jonckers sells a majority stake to investment…

In this week’s SlatorPod, Fireflies.ai CEO Krish Ramineni joins us to talk about scaling the AI meeting assistant and building on the latest advances in large language models. Krish starts with his journey to co-founding Fireflies, which began as a drone delivery service and as a result of conversations with customers and investors, evolved into an…

Tony Abrahams, CEO and Co-founder of Ai-Media, joins SlatorPod to talk about the journey to building a market leader in multilingual live captioning. Tony discusses his transition from working in finance to co-founding Ai-Media with Alex Jones and introducing large-scale captioning to Australian Pay TV. He gives an overview of Ai-Media’s technology…

This week, SlatorPod hosts its very first panel debate with guests Adam Bittlingmayer, CEO of ModelFront, Varshul Gupta, Co-founder of Dubverse, and Mihai Vlad, General Manager of Language Weaver. To start off, the panel participants reflect on their recent experience with ChatGPT since its launch in November 2022 and how this shapes their views on…

In this week’s SlatorPod, we are joined by Christian Federmann, Principal Research Manager at Microsoft, where he works on machine translation (MT) evaluation and language expansion. Christian recounts his journey from working at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence under the guidance of AI pioneer Hans Uszkoreit to joining Micros…

In this week’s SlatorPod, we are joined by Nikola Nikolov, an experienced researcher, engineer, YouTuber, and consultant in natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning. Nikola talks about the evolution of large language models (LLMs), where the core technology remains the same, but the number of parameters has grown exponentially and the…