#102 Björn Lifvergren on Subtitling, Dubbing, and Launching LinQ Media

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 to Netflix revealing its subtitling and dubbing stats for the first time.

Björn talks us through LinQ Media’s geographic market focus and experience in retaining dubbing and subtitling talent in the Nordics. He delves into dubbing services and the dynamics between owning a physical studio, using the cloud, and running a hybrid model.

Björn reflects on his experience working with private equity and gives insights on how language service providers can work with investors. He shares his outlook on the media localization market and how linear TV and cinema will evolve in the next decade.

Finally, he outlines how the strong demand for Nordic-language subtitling has allowed them to avoid post-editing machine-translation workflows for now and offer subtitlers a more traditional approach to their craft.

First up, Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, with an update on the lawsuit between Super Agencies Lionbridge and TransPerfect.

Esther talks about Netflix’s surprising revelation from the COO, who disclosed that the streaming service subtitled seven million and dubbed five million run-time minutes in 2021. She also touches on the website OpenSubtitles.org, which announced that a hacker had gained access to nearly seven million users’ personal data in August 2021.

Florian shares Meta’s latest unveiling of an AI supercomputer, which will be fully built out by mid-2022 to develop advanced AI for computer vision, NLP, speech recognition, and power translation in the metaverse.