SlatorPod

Slator’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 o...

Augustin Prot , Co-founder and CEO of Weglot , joins SlatorPod to talk about the startup’s journey as a no-code website localization technology provider.  Augustin discusses his not-so-typical professional background in M&A and how he got into the language services and tech industry. He talks us through the transformation of their client segments, from self-service SMBs to large enterprises, a...

In 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...

Nico Herbig and ​​Josef van Genabith join SlatorPod to talk all about their project, called MMPE , a multi-modal interface for post-editing machine translation. Nico shares the motivation behind starting MMPE and how they aim to improve the collaboration between human translators and language technology. Josef explains how they geared the project toward a human-in-the-loop model. The duo reflect o...

In a guest solo, Meta ’s VP of Internationalization, Product Quality, and Product Experience, Iris Orriss, joins SlatorPod to talk about the company’s mission to give people the power to build communities, bringing the world closer together. Iris recounts her journey to joining the language industry, from training as a geologist to working in big tech, from Microsoft to Meta . She also reveals her...

Felix 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...

Brigham Tomco, CEO of Emmersion , joins SlatorPod to talk all about automating language evaluation and the underlying tech behind it. Brigham begins with his journey into the language education and tech industry, where he started two venture-backed companies. He recounts the early days of Emmersion, where they offered language tutoring and how they evolved into building language assessment tech. T...

In 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 f...

In this week’s SlatorPod, we’re joined by Marco Assis , CEO of Propio Language Services (Propio), a US-based interpreting and language technology company. Marco begins with his unusual route into the language industry where he spent most of his career in finance and M&A before taking over Propio from its long-term owners in 2017. He talks about Propio’s highly specialized healthcare domain and...

Alessandra 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 casti...

In this week’s SlatorPod, we are joined by Lynne Bowker, Professor at the University of Ottawa to discuss the Machine Translation Literacy Project , whose eye-catching infographics have proven very popular on Twitter . Lynne shares her background working in higher education and how this led to her running the MT Literacy Project. She talks about the evolution of machine translation (MT) systems an...

Björn Lifvergren , Executive Chairman of LinQ Media Group , joins SlatorPod to talk about dubbing, subtitling, and the media localization industry. Björn starts with his route into the media & entertainment and language space; where, after two decades of leading (and eventually selling) BTI Studios, he founded LinQ Media . He gives his take on delivering localized content at scale and reacts t...

Katrina 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 Engli...

In SlatorPod’s 100th episode, Andrew Bredenkamp , CEO of CLEAR Tech, joins the Pod to talk about the evolution of CLEAR Global , formerly known as Translators without Borders (TWB). Andrew recalls his path to joining CLEAR Global, with leadership roles at content governance platform Acrolinx and TWB, and why he stepped in to drive the tech piece of the puzzle with CLEAR Tech. He also defines how C...

In 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 o...

John Fennelly , CEO of Lionbridge , joins SlatorPod to talk about the Super Agency ’s journey  over the past 25 years since its founding by Rory Cowan . Fennelly recalls his path to joining Lionbridge in mid-2017 after leadership roles at Thomson Reuters and Hireright — and why he stressed the theme of simplification and relentless customer focus in his first years as Lionbridge CEO. He discusses...

Luis 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 importan...

Rik Grant, Transcreation Partner at London-based Tag Collective Arts , joins SlatorPod to talk about all things transcreation as well as multi-language content creation. Rik discusses his route into the language industry; from working as a Lead Account Manager to entering the creative industry. He outlines the careful process behind recruiting transcreation talent and their varied copywriting, age...

Natalia Levitina and Karen Combe, Members of the GILT Leaders’ Forum ,  talk about GILT’s Globalization Strategy Playbook , arguably the industry’s most comprehensive, open-source guide to globalization, internalization, and localization yet. The co-authors recall the various stages of their career in the localization industry and their journey to becoming part of the GILT Leaders Forum. They refl...

Diego Cresceri , CEO of Creative Words , joins SlatorPod to talk about his journey in the language industry, from founding the language service provider (LSP) to becoming President of Elia . Diego recounts his beginnings as a Translator, Project Manager, and eventually branching off on his own to create Creative Words . He also shares the motivation behind the founding of Creative AI for multiling...

Véronique Özkaya , CEO of Argos Multilingual , joins SlatorPod to talk about the recent acquisition and integration of language service provider (LSP) Venga Global . Véronique Özkaya walks us through her extensive career in the language industry and taking up her new role as CEO at Argos amid the pandemic. She also shares insights into the acquisition of Venga merely three months after announcing...

In 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 Bi...

In 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...

Andrzej 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 Fun...

In this week’s SlatorPod, we’re joined by Anja Peschel, Managing Director of Peschel Communications , a Germany-based boutique languages service provider (LSP) that offers translation and interpreting. From the perspective of a practicing interpreter, Anja discusses her initial experience of providing consecutive interpreting via Zoom when the pandemic first prevented in-person meetings and confer...