#105 Healthcare Interpreting in the US and Beyond With Marco Assis

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 outlines the similarities and differences between servicing public vs. private sector clients.

The CEO shares his experience teaming up with private equity and what Triple Tree Capital Partners brings to the table in terms of operations. He also gives listeners a behind-the-scenes glimpse at recruiting, training, and working with translators and interpreters. Marco gives his take on the competition from in-house services at major hospital systems and insurance companies.

He then talks about the motivation behind building proprietary technology and launching the mobile app platform Propio ONE. The pod rounds off with Propio’s plans for 2022 with Marco announcing the launch of the company’s first international operations hub in Mexico.

First up, Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, with machine dubbing startup Deepdub raising USD 20m in a series A round. Meanwhile, Florian unpacks a CNET article on the “dying art of subtitling,” where he points out that subtitling is actually thriving despite subtitlers being hard to source.

Esther talks about “Why Eye-Tracking Matters in Machine Translation Post-Editing,” where eye-tracking has been found to be a promising tool for MT error identification and fair post-editing pricing models. Florian shares the latest on SlatorCon Remote March 2022 with Deluxe CEO Cyril Drabinsky and Straker CEO Grant Straker joining the 20 speaker lineup.