#62 Netflix A/B Testing, Travod CEO Elena Grigoras, Ban in Japan

Travod CEO Elena Grigoras joins the pod to discuss LSP’s past, present, and future. Elena talks about the company’s client mix and how Travod manages the balance of servicing both third-party LSPs — initially the company’s primary focus — and end customers. 

She discusses the relationship with Travod’s sister companies, Worldminds and Traduno (translation technology arm), and parent company Mondia Technologies Group. Elena outlines Travod’s technology stack, which includes their proprietary business management system, Traduno, and discusses market demand for customer portals.

Elena shares Travod’s approach to business development and hiring sales talent, and talks about the company’s recent website relaunch. She also gives her insight on translation pricing trends, touching on the role of the per-word rate, the impact of effort-based pricing, and her vision of a value-based pricing model.

As CEO of a UK-headquartered business with a large employee base in Moldova and Romania, Elena talks about the unfolding impact of Brexit. She also unpacks the differing approaches to geographical expansion: building from scratch vs. M&A.

First up are Florian and Esther, who share more insights and analysis from the Slator 2021 Language Service Provider Index (LSPI). Florian talks about Netflix’s approach to A/B testing website copy in various languages, and Penn’s State College’s research into machine-generated content detection. 

Esther shares some recent financial information from interpreting giant LanguageLine, which derived more than 90% of its USD 618m revenues from remote interpreting services in 2020. The two close with a few words on an intriguing company memo from Japan-based LSP Rozetta, which has banned its employees from speaking any language other than their native one.