Shows
Voices of TaosJonathan Slator on filmmaking and rumors of a new Taos film officeThis episode is brought to you by the NCRTD Blue Bus. This week on Voices of Taos, Tempo editor Lynne Robinson talks with Jonathan Slator, former film commissioner and location scout. Slator discusses his background as a location scout in the U.S. and overseas, as well as the history of filmmaking in Taos and the surrounding areas. He also talks about the possibility of reviving a film office in Taos and how it could help boost and diversify the local economy. Read more about the potential film office here and...2025-04-1927 min
SlatorPod#245 Dealmaker Wows with 10M Translation Education GiftFlorian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, breaking down Slator’s 2025 Language Service Provider Index (LSPI), which features nearly 300 LSPs and reports 6.6% combined growth in 2024 revenues, totaling USD 8.4bn.Florian touches on a surprise USD 10m donation from private equity executive Mario Giannini to launch a new MA translation and interpreting program at California State University, Long Beach. The duo talks about McKinsey’s State of AI report, which continues to classify translators as AI-related roles and shows that hiring them has become slightly easier.In Esther’s M&A corner, TransP...2025-03-2831 min
SlatorPod#240 Anthropic Stuns with Fact About Claude Use for AI TranslationFlorian and Esther, along with Slator Head of Research, Anna Wyndham, discuss the language industry and AI news of the week, with findings from Anthropic’s recent research on Claude’s usage. The analysis of over 4 million conversations revealed a surprising fact about how people use AI for translation.Turning to YouTube, Florian discussed CEO Neal Mohan’s statement that AI dubbing is among the platform’s "big bets" for 2025.In a spree of AI announcements, Deepgram unveiled its Nova-3 speech-to-text model for enterprise use and Panjaya launched Pod Pro, an AI-powered multilingual sync tool. Meanwhil...2025-02-1434 min
SlatorPod#237 DeepL Voice Launch and Interpreter Job SurpriseFlorian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, focusing on Slator’s latest M&A and Funding Report, which highlights over 50 mergers, acquisitions, and financial investments, and nearly 20 funding rounds in 2024.Florian discusses OpenAI’s ChatGPT o1 model, praising its translation accuracy for complex texts like German legal documents, though he notes slower processing speeds and challenges with low-resource languages.In Esther’s first M&A and funding corner for 2025, MotionPoint has acquired KeyContent, Synthesia has raised a USD 180m Series D, bringing its valuation to over USD 2bn, and Pocketalk raised USD 15...2025-01-1730 min
SlatorPod#232 Reddit Rises on AI Translation, TransPerfect Buys StudioFlorian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, with Slator’s latest Translation as a Feature (TaaF) Report, which explores how AI translation is becoming an integral feature in enterprise technology.Florian talks about Reddit’s success with machine translation (MT). By localizing content into French, the social media platform quadrupled daily active users in France, demonstrating the high ROI of investing millions in AI-driven localization each quarter.In an M&A corner, Esther discusses Wolfestone’s acquisition of TauRho Transcribes, beefing up Wolfestone’s offerings in transcription and life sciences. She also cov...2024-11-1527 min
SlatorPod#228 OpenAI’s Advanced Voice Mode and Interpreting, AI Dubs for InstagramFlorian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, with Slator’s latest Pro Guide on Audiovisual Translation, which outlines opportunities for language service providers (LSPs) and how AI is impacting the field.In a language AI corner, Florian covers Alibaba’s recent launch of a proprietary large language model (LLM) for translation, which will help expand the e-commerce giant’s global reach. He also adds that Reddit has piloted machine translation (MT) for French content, a success that will see it roll out to more than 35 countries.Florian highlights NVIDIA’s move into MT...2024-10-2329 min
SlatorPod#226 MTPE Use, Pricing, AI Adoption, and Other Findings from the 2024 ALC SurveyShamus Sayed, COO of Interpreters Unlimited, and Anna Wyndham, Slator’s Head of Research, join SlatorPod to discuss key findings from the 2024 ALC Industry Survey Report, covering industry growth, profitability, service diversification, and the impact of AI.Shamus kicks off the podcast by explaining the origins and purpose of the Association of Language Companies (ALC) and its annual survey, which aims to establish industry standards and measure the value added by language service companies.Anna shares details about the survey, which saw a 50% increase in participation from last year, with 127 companies taking part. Participants mainly co...2024-10-0429 min
SlatorPod#222 Hacks, Strikes, Layoffs, Rankings, and Localization JobsFlorian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, with key highlights from the latest Slator Pro Guide: The Future of Language Industry Jobs. The guide focuses on the future of jobs and freelance opportunities in the language industry, noting the impact of AI on employment trends.The duo analyze the 2024 Inc. 5,000 list, which includes 14 LSPs this year, with companies like PGLS, Propio Language Services, and Boostlingo among the highest-ranked, demonstrating strong growth over the past three years.In other industry news, amid a rocky Q2 2024, AMN Healthcare Services reported an 18% year-on-year increase...2024-08-2232 min
SlatorPod#215 Humanless LSP as a Fun Weekend ProjectFlorian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, giving a recap of SlatorCon London and exploring some use cases from the Slator Pro Guide: Language AI for Consumers.Florian talks about Andrew Ng's recent project on agentic machine translation, which involves using large language models (LLMs) to create a virtual language service provider (LSP).The duo touch on Apple's recent Worldwide Developer Conference, where Apple Watch is set to get a translation widget and also recently announced a new translation API.Florian shares RWS's half-year financial results, where despite declines...2024-06-1334 min
SlatorPod#203 The Top 50 Language AI Companies to Watch in 2024Florian 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 speech-to-text, machine translation, speech synthesis, and more.Esther talks about Disney's Accelerator Program, which invested in two language AI startups: ElevenLabs and AudioShake. AudioShake uses AI to parse audio tracks for mixing or dubbing and ElevenLabs, a multilingual AI voice startup...2024-03-0839 min
SlatorPod#201 Ranking the World’s Largest Translation and Localization CompaniesFlorian 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 project manager at the Super Agency before working through various production roles and rising through the ranks.Slator recently launched the first edition of its Language AI Briefing, a summary of the top AI stories, language AI startups...2024-02-2324 min
SlatorPod#194 Epic Battle in Automatic Speech TranslationFlorian 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 Altman. Meanwhile, the European Patent Office has denied Google's patent application for neural machine translation. The podcast explores the emergence of speech translation as a key focus for major technology companies, with Google launching Translatotron 3 and Ge...2023-12-1338 min
SlatorPod#191 Translation AI Watershed Moment in German ParliamentFlorian 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-created video. A speech by Joana Cotar, a member of Germany’s lower house of parliament, was translated and lip-synced into English using AI. Far from being critical of her voice being cloned and her speech bein...2023-11-1531 min
The High Route Gear Shed PodcastGavin and Slator: The Language of Backcountry GearCome one and come all for the center ring of what is definitely not a circus. In this episode, we get a front-row seat for a chat between two friends who have a problem—a gear problem. But it’s the good kind of problem where two individuals develop a way of conversing about what they like and don’t like regarding gear. In other words, our Gear Editor, Gavin Hess, and go-to tester/reviewer, Slator Aplin, discuss the finer points of the highly developed language they use to ponder some of the backcountry goods we’ll be on this win...2023-11-101h 09
SlatorPod#181 ChatGPT Translation Quality Reality CheckFlorian 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 discussion shifted to Meta's latest release SeamlessM4T which handles various translation-related tasks, including speech recognition, speech-to-speech translation, and more, across 100+ languages.Meanwhile, Appen shares price dropped considerably, so they aim to reposition themselves more toward generative AI but may face stiff competition from...2023-09-0132 min
Localization Fireside ChatConversation with Florian Faes: The story of Slator & L10N Industry updateHere is the chat that I had with my friend and colleague Florian Faes, the Managing Director of Slator, in our upcoming episode of the Localization Fireside Chat! In this episode, we covered: the dynamic world of translation, localization, and language technology. Florian Faes, who is a seasoned professional with extensive experience in the industry, gives us valuable insights and expertise. Based in #Zurich, Florian has a deep understanding of the global market, having spent nearly a decade in Asia before co-founding Slator in 2015. Slator has since become the go-to source for news and research in the #translation, #localization, and...2023-07-1847 min
SlatorPod#168 Google Bard Refuses to Translate, Launching Slator AnswersThis 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 trained on our research, podcast transcripts, and thousands of articles. Florian gives a brief demonstration of Slator Answers’ natural language querying abilities and puts the model on the spot by asking a question in German.Esther takes a look at a graphic from Slator’s 20...2023-05-2632 min
SlatorPod#166 Translation and Localization Industry Maintains Growth in 2022 to USD 27.9bnFlorian 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 endeavor to enforce its branding guidelines to prevent companies from using GPT in their names or products. OpenAI believes that using GPT in branding confuses end-users, as it may imply a partnership or endorsement where there isn't one.Esther examines Appe...2023-05-1222 min
SlatorPod#154 Fastest Growing LSPs, MrBeast’s New Dubbing CompanyFlorian 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 fr...2023-03-0329 min
SlatorPod#152 Language Technology Dominates in Research, RFPs, and FundingFlorian 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 c...2023-02-1724 min
SlatorPod#149 How Good Is ChatGPT at Translation, Olympic-sized RSI ContractFlorian 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...2023-02-0322 min
SlatorPod#145 Everyone’s Talking About ChatGPT, DeepL Crowned UnicornFlorian 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...2023-01-1323 min
SlatorPod#139 AI Dubbing Finds Traction, Translation Buyer’s Guide PublishedIn 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...2022-11-2517 min
SlatorPod#136 Deepgram: From Dark Matter to Deep Learning Speech API With Scott StephensonScott 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 ma...2022-11-0453 min
SlatorPod#133 Sizing the Global Interpreting Market, DeepL Hiring, Europe’s Audiovisual HubFlorian 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 Di...2022-09-2324 min
SlatorPod#131 Automating Subtitling, Dubbing, Live Captioning With XL8 CEO Tim JungTim 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 powe...2022-09-0952 min
SlatorPod#127 LSP Leadership Changes and Interpreting Shake-Up Across the GlobeIn 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...2022-07-2916 min
SlatorPod#120 Academic Translation and Author Services as Growth Markets With ALE CEO, Avi StaimanWe 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 th...2022-06-0358 min
SlatorPod#115 Dispatch From GALA San Diego 2022In 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...2022-04-2916 min
SlatorPod#113 Translation and Localization Industry Grows 11.8% in 2021 to USD 26.6bnSlator’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 gi...2022-04-1428 min
SlatorPod#111 Boostlingo CEO Bryan Forrester on Fundraising, M&A, Scaling Interpreting TechnologyIn 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...2022-04-0149 min
SlatorPod#108 Low Resource, High Potential — NeuralSpace CEO Felix Laumann on Democratizing NLPFelix 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...2022-03-1149 min
SlatorPod#106 Ranking the World’s Largest Language Service ProvidersIn 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.2022-02-2517 min
SlatorPod#104 Audio Localization in Video Games With Alessandra VincenziAlessandra 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....2022-02-1140 min
SlatorPod#101 The World of Japanese Game and Media Localization With Katrina LeonoudakisKatrina 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...2022-01-211h 09
SlatorPod#99 Lokalise’s USD 50m Series B; 2021 Industry Highlights and 2022 OutlookIn 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.Wi...2021-12-1718 min
SlatorPod#97 Smartling Mega-Round, Avantpage CEO on Serving LEP PopulationsLuis 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 L...2021-12-0351 min
Translation ConfidentialEP 70 - Translation Industry Trends With Florian Faes From SlatorPeter and Patrick are joined by Florian Faes, managing director of Slator. Slator is one of the most important news sources in our industry. We discuss positive and negative trends in our industry, the state of conferences in a post-Covid world, and the most impactful translation news story in 2021. 2021-10-2934 min
SlatorPod#92 Blazing-Fast Machine Translation With Kenneth HeafieldIn 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 un...2021-10-291h 06
SlatorPod#91 Judging Google Translate, TransPerfect’s Road to the Billion, Media Loc Hub SpainIn 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 Memsour...2021-10-2226 min
SlatorPod#90 On XTRF and Scaling a Translation Management System with Andrzej NedomaAndrzej 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...2021-10-0854 min
memoQ talksMarketing Tips from Florian Faes at SlatorFlorian Faes, Managing Director at Slator provides some excellent tips on how LSPs and other companies in the localization industry can improve their marketing efforts. www.slator.com 2021-09-2938 min
SlatorPod#85 Advocating for Interpreters in Afghanistan with Red T Spokesperson Rebecca PetrasRebecca 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...2021-09-0338 min
SlatorPod#84 M&A Shakes Up Nordic Language Industry, New Language Operations Pro GuideSlator’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...2021-08-2737 min
SlatorPod#81 TransPerfect Blowout Q2, Welocalize Buyer NLG, Reframing Video LocalizationIn 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 spec...2021-07-2323 min
SlatorPod#78 Zoom Adds Live Translation, Netflix Dubbing News, Toppan’s Christophe DjaouaniChristophe 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...2021-07-021h 01
SlatorPod#71 Unbabel CEO Vasco Pedro on Translation Productivity, Lisbon’s Startup Scene, Growth PlansVasco 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 al...2021-05-141h 17
SlatorPod#70 Appen Shares Plunge, TRSB Buys Anglocom, Evaluating MT, Huge RFP in SwedenOn 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...2021-05-0736 min
SlatorPod#64 Language I/O Founders on USD 5m Series A, AI Writer, Translation Pricing ReportLanguage 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...2021-03-261h 10
SlatorPod#63 Alex Katsambas on Localizing Billions of Words in Luxury FashionIn 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 t...2021-03-191h 09
SlatorPod#62 Netflix A/B Testing, Travod CEO Elena Grigoras, Ban in JapanTravod 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...2021-03-121h 05
SlatorPod#61 XTM CEO Bob Willans on Raising Capital and the Future of Translation PricingXTM 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 abou...2021-03-0552 min
SlatorPod#57 Kudo CEO Fardad Zabetian on Multilingual Meetings, Job Index JumpsIn 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 lang...2021-02-0556 min
SlatorPod#55 Memsource CEO on Buying Phrase, Straker’s Lingotek Deal, TransPerfect FY 2020In 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 company2021-01-2259 min
SlatorPod#54 Oxford Languages President Casper Grathwohl, M&A Report, LSP Growth OpportunitiesPresident 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 exp...2021-01-151h 01
SlatorPod#53 Supertext Co-founder Fabian Dieziger, Brexit & Translators, SBA regulations for US LSPsIn 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 freela...2021-01-0858 min
SlatorPod#52 Top 10 Stories of 2020, Isabelle Andrieu, co-Founder and Chairman of TranslatedIn 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 “pollu...2020-12-1857 min
SlatorPod#51 RWS’ Plans for SDL, Top 10 NMT Papers, Graduating Translation in 2020The 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 analy...2020-12-1141 min
SlatorPod#48 GPT-3 for Translators, SLT CEO Kris Zdanowski, Translation Tests, Media Loc UnitesJoining 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 t...2020-11-201h 16
SlatorPod#47 Lionbridge Mega Deal, Altagram CEO Marie Amigues talks Game LocalizationMarie Amigues, Founder and CEO of Altagram, joins Slator Pod and talks to Esther and Florian about how she runs the fast-growing game localization providerMarie 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 am...2020-11-131h 11
SlatorPod#45 Medtech Loc, Venga Global CEO Kåre Lindahl, Language AI in Video, Amazon MT FailThis 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 Slato...2020-10-301h 11
SlatorPod#44 Facebook MT, Interprefy’s Kim Ludvigsen on RSI, Zoom Zapps, LSP EarningsInterprefy 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.2020-10-231h 03
SlatorPod#42 TransPerfect Settles Wordfast, Sandeep Nulkar on India Loc Industry, Mozilla Kills ElmoFlorian 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 pic...2020-10-0955 min
SlatorPod#41 Tarjama CEO Nour Al Hassan; Translator Marketplaces, INC 5000 LSPsSlatorPod 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 2...2020-10-0256 min
SlatorPod#37 First guest episode with Kimon Fountoukidis! Plus RWS-SDL, China NLP Ban, AB5, Translation at WTOFlorian 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 yearEsther 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...2020-09-041h 06SlatorPod#36 RWS to Buy SDL: Unpacking the Language Industry’s Deal of the DecadeIn 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 revenueThe 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 stronge...2020-08-2830 min
SlatorPod#35 Good Times Bad Times for LSPs, Are Translation Equivalents Real? VRI BoomFlorian 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...2020-08-2131 min
SlatorPod#33 How LSPs Sell, RWS Pays Back, Machine Mistranslations, Signs of Life for Loc JobsIn 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...2020-08-0728 min