It's AI bingo at the moment! Everyone's talking about it - but did you know that the quality and quantity of training datasets are crucial to the accuracy and effectiveness of machine learning models? The more diverse and representative the data, the better the AI model can perform in terms of nuance. Did you ever wonder how to ensure that AI discerns what Americans would wear to a wedding? And what people would wear in Asia, Europe or Africa, taking into account the specificities of each country?

In this enlightening AI dialogue episode of our Globally Speaking podcast, Melanie Peterson - Program Director for Train AI at RWS - joins Vasagi Kothandapani to discuss how she tackled one of her biggest AI challenges: a rating and labelling data project for western-style womenswear using resources in the APAC region only, where the raters were 80% male.

Melanie unpacks the intricacies of her mission, shedding light on how she explains what she does to her family and friends, why a rocket scientist or a chef might have been involved in one of Train AI's latest data training projects, and what exactly we mean by data collection, data creation, data annotation and sentiment analysis.

Get ready for a captivating exploration into the heart of AI.

In this second Globally Speaking Podcast, dedicated to the localization supply chain, follow Rosario de Zayas Rueda's fascinating journey as she explains how she started out as a translator and language specialist and ended up opening her own language services agency, completing a full cycle of professional development.

As she explains, in her early days in the localization industry, the role of a language specialist was nebulous. Like many of her peers at the time, Rosario had to navigate, figure everything out as she went along and fill in the gaps left by other people's undefined job descriptions.

Discover how her passion for technology led her to set up her own LSP, where she pioneered with post-editing processes and machine translation – long before these advances gained global recognition. And finally, discover why sometimes it’s not about the quality of the translation but more about the quality of the business outcome.

How can a company set up a localization program from scratch? What are the important criteria to consider, and what are the challenges?

Is there a translation policy in place?

What needs to be translated, and into which languages?

Who is responsible for reporting and the communication around it?

Find out what Renée Lemley, former Global Copy Director at Under Armour, has to say about her experience of setting up a brand-new localization process at Under Armour and why she believes the secrets lie in the brand voice. In this episode of Globally Speaking, she explains to our host, Jordan Cockrell, that it is essential to have a language service provider who is fully engaged on the client’s side and who shares a strong agreement on the partnership.

As Anthony Burgess, author of a Clockwork Orange, explains: “Translation is not just about words, but about making a whole culture intelligible.” It's about translating emotions and a part of the culture, and that's the magic of what LSPs do.

‘Hurt. Soap. Blows.’

In case you are wondering, we haven't gone crazy, these are just the three words what3words uses to describe our location today. But now we're wondering what those three words would be like in French. Well, if we switch languages, it becomes ‘Gîte. Lavande. Aviron.’

There are so many situations in life where you need to tell someone exactly where you are, but you don't have the tools to do so. what3words has divided the entire world into 3-meter squares and assigned each of those squares a unique 3-word address, which is a very human friendly way of describing it to someone you're talking to. Listen to Jamie Brown, Chief Language Office at what3words, describe how they help deliver post in favelas but also save lives in the context of their collaboration with emergency services around the world, thanks to the app being available offline.

In this episode, you'll discover the unique localization process that what3words had to develop because words are literally their product and the tool for talking about their product, and because, among many other examples, one word in English can become 3 words in French.

It’s completely natural for humans to attribute human characteristics to generative AI systems that seem to behave like us. And since language is one of the most profoundly human characteristics on earth, it explains why we tend to compare LLMs like GPT or PaLM (Bard) to humans, and even attribute emotions to them.

But in the same way that we don't expect an airplane to flap its wings like a bird, or a submarine to swim by using wave-like movements like a fish, it's important to remember that LLMs do not use language the way humans do. They are an immensely useful invention to generate language but are blind to experiences that aren't encoded in language and have no true emotional understanding.

Listen to this fascinating discussion between Vasagi Kothandapani, Bart Maczynski and Marina Pantcheva in our latest Globally Speaking Podcast episode and learn all about the fundamental differences between language learning in LLMs and humans and how we can encode ethics in AI.

When it launched 25 years ago, coffee brand Tim Hortons did better than competitors in Quebec because it localized most of its content to make it more relevant to the market. On its coffee cups, the brand used to display the Toronto cityscape in anglophone Canada, which was replaced with Montreal for its Quebec launch.

Similarly, a client in the US would like to see large streets in his advertising videos. A Parisian, on the other hand, would be more impacted by a landscape with narrow streets.

In this latest episode of the Globally Speaking Podcast, Marine Esquenet is joined by Richard Cronin, Localization lead at Google, to discuss how a brand as famous and offering as many diverse services as Google can help its clients make the right decisions and navigate through the complexities of growing internationally. Also find out what Richard has to say about the impact of the transition to AI on Google, on the industry in general, and on the new media Google has to work with.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that brands with a physical presence will always be trusted more than companies that only offer an online store. Things are now changing.

According to our latest research, 58% of global consumers now trust global brands with a localized online presence equally to those with a physical presence. That’s an incredible opportunity when you think about it – over half of consumers are willing to trust you, if you get your customer experience right.

Globally Speaking is joined by the ‘CX Leader of the Year’, James Scutt -Principal XM Catalyst at Qualtrics XM Institute and recognized as one of Europe's leading Experience Management experts - who offers his unique perspective on how brands can open up global opportunities by simply getting their customer’s experience right, showing empathy and focusing on the human touch.

He also highlights the common CX pitfalls of businesses, giving examples of where they’ve gone wrong and how they’ve won their customers’ trust back.

A third of the world's websites are in English. And yet only 5% of Internet users speak English as their mother tongue. How can you, as a business, ensure that you are speaking to users in their own language and impacting their customer journey in a culturally relevant way?

In this episode, Marine Esquenet talks to Zhongjun GE, head of the localization team at ByteDance, who explains how China-based companies approach their localization strategies and what the most common pitfalls are for them when embarking on the internationalization journey. He also shares three main localization trends emerging in China when it comes to engaging with international audiences.

In France, the Big Mac, McDonald's favourite burger, has the same name as in English and doesn't have a translation. In Hong Kong, it has been given a name that no current machine translation could fathom: Gui Mo Ba, which could be translated as ‘the invincible juggernaut’. Why? Because one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to translating according to cultures. That’s when transcreation works its magic for brands, slogans and marketing content. Listen to transcreation specialist Sheryl Sze, who’s worked with major brands such as Sotheby’s and Deliveroo. Sheryl outlines how technology and humans can work together to achieve the right equilibrium – and why, it’s optimal that transcreation is included at the early stages of content development.

How does a well known household brand ensure that it consistently projects a strong brand image on the global stage? You might think you need to...