SlatorPod

Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, with German machine translation (MT) company DeepL said to be in the final stretch of closing a major investment round led by Silicon Valley venture firm, IVP. This will allow DeepL to expand further into the enterprise, as it ramps up hiring of customer success, account management, and related enterprise-focused roles . The duo ta...

Konstantin Savenkov , CEO and co-founder of Intento , joins SlatorPod to discuss how they enable enterprise clients to choose best-fit machine translation (MT) services and technology. Konstantin outlines Intento ’s services and product offerings, which include an MT Hub for localization and office productivity, an MT studio, as well as MT evaluation and maintenance. He talks about why there is a...

Scott 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 la...

In this week’s SlatorPod, we are joined by Virpal Singh , CEO and co-founder of DigitalTolk , an interpreting services provider that uses technology and automation to help match interpreters to clients. Virpal begins with his journey to setting up DigitalTolk ; from studying computer engineering and electronics to entering the language industry with co-founder Leyla Sarac. The duo saw a gap in the...

The co-founder of Cohere , Nick Frosst, joins SlatorPod to talk about rapidly scaling one of the most exciting natural language processing (NLP) startups. Nick shares his journey to establishing Cohere alongside Aidan Gomez and Ivan Zhang with Aidan’s seminal paper, Attention Is All You Need , serving as an inspiration to the startup. He reflects back on his experience at the Google Brain team in...

Florian 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 si...

In this week’s episode, Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, with various natural language generation (NLG) startups gaining traction of late. Esther covers whether these NLG startups, which can help content creators write copy in multiple languages, are a threat or an opportunity for LSPs . Over in Europe, the strike at the European Parliament among interpreters cont...

Tim 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 Me...

Machine Translation (MT) Researcher, Yasmin Moslem, joins SlatorPod to talk about her research on Domain-Specific Text Generation for Machine Translation — a project she conducted with Rejwanul Haque, John D. Kelleher, and Andy Way at the Adapt Center in Dublin. Yasmin shares her experience working as a translator, discovering translation productivity (CAT) tools, and experimenting with translatio...

Adrian Probst, German Language Specialist and Content Creator behind the YouTube channel Freelanceverse , joins the pod this week to talk about how he became arguably the most successful YouTuber in the language industry. The YouTuber looks back on his journey; from commercial apprenticeship and studying translation at university to working as project manager and branching off on his own as a free...

Joseph Lambert ( Lecturer in Translation Studies at Cardiff University) and Callum Walker ( Lecturer in Translation Technology at the University of Leeds) join SlatorPod to talk about their paper Because We’re Worth It : Disentangling freelance translation, status, and rate-setting in the United Kingdom. Joseph discusses the top three challenges for translators when it comes to pricing their servi...

In 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...

Dubverse co-founder, Anuja Dhawan, joins SlatorPod to talk about launching the machine dubbing startup and powering video content dubbing using the latest AI language models and tech. Anuja starts with her journey to co-founding Dubverse with Varshul Gupta as a result of the rise of English speaking video-generated content during the pandemic. She goes through the company’s core team structure whe...

In this week’s news episode, Florian and Anna catch up on a month’s worth of news, with RSI receiving a lot of opposition . First, there was a UN Today article where interpreters pushed back on poor sound quality and unreliable audio levels causing hearing problems. Then interpreters went on strike at the EU Parliament after negotiations seeking improved work conditions failed.  Anna talks about M...

In this week’s SlatorPod, we’re joined by Jan Rausch to discuss his experience in the interpreting industry as a freelance conference and business interpreter. Jan talks about his background in teaching modern languages and how he transitioned to freelance interpreting, where he eased himself into a highly competitive market. He shares the range of scenarios he has worked in; from European Works C...

Theo Hoffenberg, Founder and CEO of Reverso , joins SlatorPod to talk about specializing in AI-based language tools and translation aids used by millions online. Theo begins with his background in the software industry, where he helped launch tech companies in Europe and how he got into the language technology industry with Reverso. He discusses the evolution of the company, from a downloadable so...

Mila Golovine, CEO and President of MasterWord , joins SlatorPod to talk about the important topic of stress and trauma that linguists may experience on the job. Mila walks us through her journey in the language industry: immigrating from Russia, founding the Texas-based LSP straight out of university, and leading it to where it is today. She reflects on MasterWord ’s diversification, expanding fr...

TransPerfect Senior Vice President in charge of technology, Matt Hauser, joins SlatorPod to share his experience in building the technology division at what is now the world’s largest language service provider. Hauser explains why they bet early on the cloud when building their translation management system, Global Link, and how the TMS is deployed across much of production at TransPerfect and acr...

We 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...

In this week’s SlatorPod, we are joined by Maria Schnell to discuss her recent appointment as Chief Language Officer at RWS — pointing to the Super Agency’s investment in linguistic expertise. Maria begins with her journey as a trained translator and how she worked her way through commercial and operational roles at SDL , before the company was acquired by RWS . She then talks about what the new r...

Smith Yewell , Co-founder and CEO of Welocalize , joins SlatorPod to talk about how the team built the company from the first order, translating a single word 25 years ago, into what is now a global Super Agency . Smith talks about co-founding Welocalize with wife Julia Yewell in 1997, and how they did not have a common language when they first met. He recalls how he navigated the many complex end...

In this week’s SlatorPod, we are joined by Kirsten Brecht Baker , Co-founder and CEO of Jeenie , an on-demand healthcare interpreting platform that recently raised USD 9.3m in Series A funding . Kirsten begins with her journey as a daughter of linguists and how she transitioned from working in international education to co-founding Jeenie . She tells us about the pivot to servicing healthcare in t...

In this week’s SlatorPod, we are joined by Genoveva Ruiz Calavera , Head of the Directorate-General for Interpretation ( SCIC ) at the European Commission, the world’s largest employer of conference interpreters. Genoveva reflects back on her 30-year journey working for the European Commission in an array of different roles; and what led her to switch to leading SCIC. She shares SCIC’s mission to...

In 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 m...

In this week’s episode, Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, with shares in Netflix taking a 35% dive after the streaming giant lost 200,000 subscribers. The company continues to push international content and is currently building capacity in gaming faster than when they entered film. Amazon announces the release of 51 language datasets, which will help Alexa add mor...