In a SlatorPod first, four guests — Scott Cooper, CEO of Language Services Associates (LSA), Pablo Tercero, COO of LSA, Jerry Song, CEO of Lingolet, and Edward Varela, VP of Business Development at Lingolet — shared their insights into a newly forged partnership.

Scott explained that the decision to partner instead of building an in-house AI solution allowed LSA to stay focused on its core strengths while leveraging Lingolet’s technical edge. The alliance goes beyond a vendor agreement, with LSA taking an equity stake in Lingolet, anchoring the relationship in shared strategy and long-term commitment. 

For Jerry and Edward, the partnership is a natural progression, rooted in their deep knowledge of both software development and the language services market.

In a standout use case, the two companies helped a Major League Soccer team enable multilingual, AI-assisted communication in coaching sessions — bridging language gaps in real time for international players.

On the tech front, Jerry and Edward explained that Lingolet doesn’t build large language models from scratch but instead acts as an orchestrator, offering clients the ability to customize and deploy AI tools within secure, dedicated environments. 

Pablo underscored LSA's HIPAA and PCI compliance, as security, compliance, and privacy are essential pillars, especially in regulated sectors like healthcare.

Looking ahead, LSA and Lingolet are preparing to offer hybrid solutions where AI can bridge the gap during interpreter unavailability, even for brief moments, potentially transforming session wait times. 

Their roadmap includes broader language coverage, deeper integration with healthcare platforms, and innovative pricing models that will reshape how interpretation services are sold and scaled.

Rong Yan, CTO of HeyGen, joins SlatorPod to recount the company’s transformation from a Metaverse-focused startup to leading the emerging field of AI video generation.

Rong recounts HeyGen’s beginnings and the pivot to its current avatar model, which saw ARR go from zero to USD 1m within six months.

Rong attributes HeyGen’s success to its emphasis on three key elements: quality, consistency, and controllability. The company’s newest model, Avatar IV, enables full-body video generation with natural gestures, synchronized audio, and emotion to speech.

While some of the platform’s growth has been viral, Rong believes sustained success comes from building something users truly value, with a focus on pushing video quality from 70% to 95%.

The platform extends beyond avatars, offering translation, voice cloning, and real-time interactivity. Its dynamic duration feature adjusts translated speech to fit original video timing, preserving realism. Rather than build everything from scratch, HeyGen integrates external models with its own orchestration and user data, optimizing output across languages and contexts.

Rong emphasized that HeyGen’s long-term vision is not entertainment or Hollywood, but helping everyday professionals, especially marketers and educators, who lack traditional video production skills.

Looking ahead, Rong sees video agents, tools that generate complete videos from simple prompts, as the next frontier, driving accessibility and transforming storytelling through AI.

Véronique Özkaya, Co-CEO of DATAmundi, returns to SlatorPod for round 2 to talk about the company’s strategic rebrand and how it is positioning itself as a key player in the data-for-AI space.

Véronique details her journey to leading DATAmundi, formerly known as Summa Linguae, where she now drives a strategic shift from traditional language services to AI-focused data enablement.

The Co-CEO explains that their LSP background makes them well-suited to offer fine-tuning services for AI, especially in multilingual and domain-specific contexts. However, she cautions that language expertise alone isn’t enough; deep tech infrastructure, data science capabilities, and the ability to quickly build custom workflows are also essential.

While many companies still rely on crowd-sourced, basic annotation, DATAmundi targets higher-complexity projects requiring domain experts and linguists. Véronique notes the market for data-for-AI is growing significantly faster than traditional LSP work and sees a second wave of demand from enterprises needing to adapt pre-trained models.

Véronique highlights data scarcity, hallucination, and bias as core AI challenges that DATAmundi tackles through technical solutions and expert guidance, helping enterprises as they face pressure to implement AI despite legacy systems and unclear strategies.

Looking ahead, DATAmundi plans to expand its consultative services through further acquisitions, focusing not on tech per se, but on organizations that deepen its expertise in data application and AI deployment.

Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, with DeepL becoming the first third-party translation app users can set as default on the iPhone, a position gained by navigating Apple’s developer requirements that others like Google Translate have yet to meet.

Florian and Esther examine RWS’s mid-year trading update, which triggered a steep 40% share price drop despite stable revenue, healthy profits, and manageable debt.

On the partnerships front, the duo covers multiple collaborations: Acclaro and Phrase co-funded a new Solutions Architect role, Unbabel entered a strategic partnership with Acclaro, and Phrase partnered with Clearly Local in Shanghai. 

Also, KUDO expanded its network with new partners, while Deepdub was featured in an AWS case study for its work with Paramount. Wistia partnered with HeyGen to launch translation and AI-dubbing features and Synthesia joined forces with DeepL, further cementing the trend of avatar-based multilingual video content.

In Esther’s M&A corner, MotionPoint acquired GetGloby to enhance multilingual marketing capabilities, while OXO and Powerling merged to form a transatlantic LSP leader. TransPerfect deepened its media footprint with two studio acquisitions from Technicolor, and Magna Legal Services continued its acquisition spree with Basye Santiago Reporting.

Meanwhile, in funding, Linguana, an AI dubbing startup targeted at YouTube creators, raised USD 8.5m, and pyannoteAI secured EUR 8m to enhance multilingual voice tech using speaker diarization. The episode concluded with speculation about DeepL’s rumored IPO, which could have broader implications for capital markets.

John Worne, CEO of the Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIOL), joins SlatorPod to discuss CIOL’s mission to support and promote language professionals and the value of languages for the public good through professional standards, advocacy, and intercultural understanding.

John highlights the challenges of applying AI in high-stakes contexts like court interpreting. He references the UK House of Lords inquiry into language services in the legal system, which emphasized the risks of AI, particularly for low-resource languages and nuanced human communication. He warns that casual, unsupervised AI use in public services risks serious harm without proper oversight.

The CEO describes the industry’s current AI experience as mixed. While late 2024 saw falling workloads and experimentation by clients with generative AI, early 2025 brought a more stable picture, with some freelancers regaining lost business. Still, the community remains divided: about half of CIOL’s members embrace AI tools, while the rest resist them, concerned about quality and trust.

John raises questions about AI’s influence on how we use and shape language. He notes how generative AI introduces patterns into the linguistic mainstream, creating an "AI-mediated average" that may dilute cultural identity. He argues that language is a “human meta skill”, encoding not only communication but identity, culture, and belonging. 

Looking ahead, John is cautiously optimistic for the next generation of linguists, as digital natives may be more adept at using AI creatively and multitasking across tools. CIOL plans to expand free resources and community engagement in 2025, ensuring that the future of language work remains inclusive, ethical, and informed by real human insight.

Luke Innes, CEO of Creative Translation, joins SlatorPod to discuss how the global transcreation agency puts “human at the heart of the process” of multilingual branding by combining creativity, cultural insight, and strategic use of AI.

Luke recounts his unconventional entry into the language services industry, charting a path from his roots in design to leading Creative Translation. Despite early skepticism around the term “creative translation,” he built a business model that puts creativity at its core, serving global brands with distinctive voices seeking international reach.

The CEO explains that the company’s talent pool includes not just translators, but copywriters, cultural consultants, subject-matter experts, and art directors, tailored to the unique needs of each project.

While large enterprises were once the primary clients for transcreation, Luke notes that AI is lowering barriers and enabling smaller companies to invest in higher-quality multilingual branding.

Luke emphasizes that AI is a productivity tool — not a creative replacement. It supports tasks like workflow automation and translation memory management but cannot replicate the insight and originality of a human linguist.

To prepare professionals for this evolving landscape, Luke founded the Creative Academy. It supports both new graduates and experienced linguists in mastering creative briefs and adopting AI responsibly.

Florian 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, TransPerfect announced two acquisitions, Technicolor Games and Blue Digital Group, further expanding its presence in gaming and media localization. In Israel, BlueLion and GATS merged to form TransNarrative, and Brazilian providers Korn Translations and Zaum Langs joined forces under the Idlewild Burg group.

Meanwhile, in funding, Teleperformance invested USD 13m in Sanas, a startup offering real-time accent translation for call centers to improve global communication. Lingo.dev raised USD 4.2m, while Dubformer secured USD 3.6m to develop the ‘Photoshop of AI dubbing’.

Florian shares insights from Slator’s 2025 Localization Buyer Survey, which found that over half of buyers want strategic AI support from vendors and many cite inefficient automation as a key challenge.

Joe Corkery, MD, CEO and Co-Founder of Jaide Health, joins SlatorPod to discuss how Jaide Health is driving medical interpreting and translation with AI, bridging communication gaps for limited English proficiency (LEP) patients and improving healthcare accessibility.

With a background in computer science, medicine, and AI product leadership at Google, Joe co-founded Jaide Health with Julie Wilner, RN, in 2023 to address a long-standing need for real-time, interactive communication for the LEP patient population.

Unlike older machine translation models, which worked sentence by sentence without context, Joe shares how generative AI can maintain coherence, track gender references, and infer meaning from prior context — crucial in medical settings.

The CEO remains pragmatic about Trump’s executive order designating English as the US's official language and revoking previous language access mandates. He argues that such policies will not change the healthcare industry's commitment to multilingual patient care but may push hospitals to seek more cost-effective solutions — potentially accelerating AI adoption.

Looking ahead, Jaide Health is focusing on expanding into document translation, particularly for discharge instructions and patient portal messaging, areas where current solutions are slow or impractical.

Anna Albinsson, CEO of Gridly, joins SlatorPod to talk about the company’s evolution into a content operations platform, its expansion beyond gaming, and the increasing role of AI in localization.

Anna discusses Gridly’s transition from a niche CMS for gaming companies into a comprehensive content operations platform. Initially built by game developers for game developers, the company is now expanding into fintech and edtech, as demand for streamlined multilingual content management grows.

The CEO also announces the launch of integrated translation management system (TMS) and translation productivity (CAT) functionalities within its platform. This consolidation helps companies streamline workflows, reduce costs, and improve collaboration, particularly for enterprises with complex content pipelines.

Anna sees AI as an opportunity rather than a disruption, emphasizing that accountability remains key. While AI can accelerate translation and localization processes, companies still need governance, workflow management, and quality control to ensure accuracy.

Anna shares her views on sales and marketing, pointing out that Gridly’s lead gen is nearly 100% inbound-driven, with strong brand recognition in gaming. While SEO and digital marketing remain crucial, Anna emphasized the importance of human relationships.

Looking ahead, Gridly plans to further develop AI capabilities to improve contextual accuracy, consistency, and automation in multilingual content.

In response to President Trump’s executive order designating English as the official language of the US, SlatorPod gathered Dipak Patel, CEO of GLOBO, and Peter Argondizzo, CEO of Argo Translation, to discuss its implications for the US language industry.

The discussion highlighted that language access has long been a key part of US policy, particularly in healthcare, education, and legal services. Dipak pointed out that eliminating language services would create inefficiencies, making it harder for medical professionals to provide accurate care.

Peter emphasized the broader uncertainty the order creates as many organizations rely on federal funding for language services, and a lack of clear guidance could lead to reduced support in schools, courts, and public services.

Both CEOs acknowledged that while this order presents challenges, the language services industry has historically adapted to change. Dipak suggested that financial pressures may push the industry to innovate, potentially accelerating AI adoption in interpreting. 

While the long-term impact remains unclear, the consensus is that language access will persist — driven by business needs and market demand.