SlatorPod

Shamus 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 consisted of small to mid-sized companies, with a significant portion coming from the US. 

Shamus provides insights specific to interpreting services, noting strong revenue growth and the rise of remote interpreting. He discusses the impact of AI, challenges in sourcing skilled interpreters, and pricing trends.

Anna highlights that companies are focused on growing revenue, developing new service offerings, and cutting operational costs. She also discusses the heightened interest in M&A activity, with smaller companies more interested in selling, while larger ones remain opportunistic buyers.

Shamus recaps the ALC annual summit in Montreal, highlighting the camaraderie, networking, and potential business opportunities that arose from the event.

Looking ahead to 2025, Shamus shares that the ALC aims to focus on AI integration, workforce development, service diversification, and M&A support.

Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, where they give their impressions from SlatorCon Silicon Valley and touch upon the findings from the 2024 ALC Industry Survey.

In a significant funding update, Esther reports that Smartcat raised USD 43m in a Series C round, bringing their total funding to USD 70m. This funding will support product innovation in AI translation and multilingual content generation.

Florian talks about YouTube's potential launch of AI dubbing, a feature in testing that aims to generate translated audio tracks for videos, significantly enhancing content accessibility and engagement.

In Esther’s M&A corner, Cloudbreak, now rebranded as Equiti, acquired its competitor Voyce and brought on a new private equity partner, Heritage Group. Meanwhile, EasyTranslate acquired World Translation, expanding its reach in the Nordic and DACH regions.

The duo bid farewell to publicly traded Keywords Studios, which is delisting after being acquired by private equity firm EQT. They also note the shutdown of Viva Translate, a speech-to-speech translation company that will open-source its tools as it winds down.

George Bara, Founder and Chief Strategist of tech company Zetta Cloud, joins SlatorPod to talk about the nuances of AI technology and its applications in text analytics and multilingual data processing.

George shares insights from his career journey, including his tenure at SDL and RWS before co-founding Zetta Cloud, which focuses on building small, specialized language models rather than large, generalized ones.

The founder discusses the challenges and misconceptions clients have about AI, especially with the hype surrounding large language models (LLMs). George notes that many clients mistakenly believe LLMs can solve all their data processing needs instantly. 

However, Zetta Cloud's approach allows their models to be more efficient, flexible, and deployable in customers' infrastructures, which is particularly valuable for clients in the public sector who prioritize data privacy.

George highlights the differences in AI adoption and expectations across various industries and regions. He observes that public sector clients often have a more advanced understanding of AI's capabilities compared to commercial clients. 

The founder also discusses the importance of staying updated with the latest AI developments and how Zetta Cloud selectively integrates new technologies that align with their clients' needs.

George concludes by sharing his involvement in Romania's national AI strategy, stressing the importance of regulatory compliance and the potential for government grants and partnerships to drive AI innovation in Europe.

Dr. Christopher Kurz, Head of Translation Management at wind turbine manufacturer ENERCON, joins SlatorPod to talk about the development of ISO 5060, a new standard focused on the evaluation of translation output.

Christopher discusses how his involvement with ISO standards since 2011, coupled with his experience in translation quality management, led him to spearhead the creation of ISO 5060 in early 2020.

Christopher outlines that the primary aim was to produce a reliable international standard for evaluating translations objectively, countering the subjective judgments often encountered in the field.

The standard itself includes a detailed error typology, ranging from terminology and accuracy to style and audience appropriateness, and introduces four severity levels — neutral, minor, major, and critical — allowing for a nuanced evaluation of translation quality.

Despite advancements in AI, Christopher asserts that human judgment remains crucial for evaluating translation quality. AI can assist in identifying errors like typos or grammar issues, but understanding the meaning and context of a translation requires human expertise.

Christopher shares that ISO 5060 will undergo systematic review in five years, allowing for updates and improvements based on industry feedback. He hopes that the standard will be widely adopted by both the industry and academia, promoting a more professional approach to translation evaluation.

Florian 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 in revenue for its language services division, driven by strong utilization of video interpretation.

Florian addresses a recent content hack involving media localizer Iyuno, where unreleased Netflix shows were leaked online, underscoring the importance of security and confidentiality in the industry.

Esther touches on recent labor strikes affecting the game localization and dubbing sectors, driven by the Screen Actors Guild's action. Keywords Studios also announced layoffs of linguists in Italy, sparking a linguist strike and highlighting ongoing tensions between AI and human talent in localization. 

The podcast concludes with Esther’s M&A and funding corner, including Translate.One's acquisition of Intertext and funding rounds for Language I/O and Bering Lab, signaling continued investment and growth in the language industry.

Spence Green, CEO and Co-founder of LILT, the AI solution provider for enterprise translation, joins SlatorPod. On the podcast, Spence discusses the evolution of LILT's end-to-end platform, which integrates AI models with human verification to ensure quality standards.

The CEO notes a significant shift in enterprise approaches towards localization, now being more software-driven rather than service-driven, which has been influenced by the broader adoption and focus on AI technologies post-ChatGPT.

Spence emphasizes the importance of continuous training and customization of AI models to improve accuracy and efficiency in translation. He highlights how localization has emerged as an early winner to showcase the return on investment in AI.

Spence addresses the impact of AI on the translation industry, including the potential for linguist shortages due to low rates driven by machine translation post-editing. He predicts that the market will eventually adjust, but in the meantime, there is a need for higher-skilled linguists to manage the gap left by AI models.

The podcast concludes with insights into LILT's recent features, such as AI Analytics, which provide clients with deeper insights into the impact of AI on their localization processes. Spence also talks about the potential for multilingual content creation using AI, the challenges of segment-level interfaces, and the importance of workflow orchestration in localization.

Paul Ghio, Co-founder of AI video localization startup Supernative, joins SlatorPod to talk about how language AI is reshaping how we create and consume content globally.

Paul shares how his passion for helping creators and his experience with internationalization at Shutterstock and Yelp led him to start Supernative, with a mission to democratize video localization using AI.

The Co-founder outlines Supernative's technology stack, which includes well-known models like Whisper for speech-to-text, ChatGPT for translation, and ElevenLabs for speech generation. He highlights the importance of improving these core capabilities, such as voice cloning and lip-syncing, to deliver high-quality dubbing at a competitive cost. 

Paul discusses the current landscape and challenges of the AI localization market. He notes that while there is significant interest and potential in AI-driven localization, retaining users remains a challenge due to the novelty factor wearing off. 

He elaborates on Supernative's strategy to introduce collaborative features to better align with the workflows of content creators and businesses, which could be a more sustainable strategy for user retention and growth.

Paul also touches on their long-term vision, including more comprehensive localization tools that cater to cultural and contextual nuances, and the possibility of localizing video content itself.

Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, with a nearly USD 4m settlement involving Language Line Services and ongoing disputes in Canada, where freelance interpreters are protesting against unpaid breaks during debates.

Florian highlights a YouTube video about UN simultaneous interpreting and the rigorous standards and working conditions for UN interpreters.

Esther shares a significant procurement opportunity from the UK's Crown Commercial Service, which plans to issue a GBP 250m tender for various language services.

In tech news, the duo talk about DeepL’s new LLM launch that claims to outperform competitors in translation quality. They also touch on the trend of adding translation features to various SaaS platforms, like Airtable and Happy Scribe.

A tweetstorm by venture capitalist Olivia Moore from Andreessen Horowitz introduces the concept of "AI Scribes," suggesting a significant market opportunity for AI-driven transcription services.

In an M&A and funding corner, AI video startup Captions raised USD 60m at a USD 500m valuation and Mantra, a Japanese manga translation startup, raised nearly USD 5m. Toppan Digital Language acquired Austria’s Meinrad and Universal Music Group partnered with SoundLabs AI for voice cloning and language transposition in songs.

João Graça, Co-founder and CTO of language operations platform Unbabel, joins SlatorPod to talk about the present and future of large language models (LLMs) and their broad impact across all things translation and localization.

First, the CTO explains how Unbabel was founded to address language barriers for people using services like Airbnb, combining MT with human validation to improve translation quality.

João believes that LLMs are quickly replacing neural MT models as much more R&D is going into LLMs vs NMT. He highlights that LLMs can handle more complex tasks like automatic post-editing, source correction, and cultural adaptation, which were previously difficult to achieve with traditional models.

He also tells the backstory of the company's decision to develop TowerLLM. João shares how Unbabel's approach involves using open-source LLMs, fine-tuning them with multilingual data, and applying techniques like retrieval-augmented generation to improve translation quality in production settings.

Despite the advancements, João acknowledges that human intervention is still necessary for high-stakes translation tasks.

The podcast concludes with the hiring environment for AI talent and the future directions for LLM development, with João expressing optimism about the continued progress and potential of these models.

Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, with a legal battle in the UK involving public sector interpreting and the classification of interpreters as freelancers or workers, which could significantly impact the business models of language service providers (LSPs).

The duo explores Google Translate's recent expansion to support over 200 languages, adding 110 new ones using their large language model, Palm 2.

Florian talks about the insolvency of Landexx, a German LSP, following a pattern of recent bankruptcies in the language service industry in Europe.

Meanwhile, Keywords Studios, a major player in game localization, is set to be acquired by the private equity firm EQT, valuing the LSP at approximately USD 2.2 billion.

Esther gives an M&A corner, including Translate.One's acquisition of Enable2 in the UK, Valorem Group's purchase of Ireland-based TRANSLIT, and difuze's acquisition of the accessibility division of Blackstone Sight and Sound in Canada. Additionally, Esther covers a pre-seed funding round by Dubme.io, a Spanish startup specializing in AI-powered dubbing.

The podcast concludes with a discussion on the Interpreting SAFE AI Task Force, which has released guidelines for the ethical use of AI in interpreting, emphasizing the importance of maintaining quality, accountability, and transparency in the industry.