SlatorPod

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...

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...