SlatorPod

John Worne, CEO of the Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIOL), joins SlatorPod to discuss CIOL’s mission to support and promote language professionals and the value of languages for the public good through professional standards, advocacy, and intercultural understanding.John highlights the challenges of applying AI in high-stakes contexts like court interpreting. He references the UK House of Lords inquiry into language services in the legal system, which emphasized the risks of AI, particularly for low-resource languages and nuanced human communication. He warns that casual, unsupervised AI use in public services risks serious harm without proper oversight.The CEO describes the industry’s current AI experience as mixed. While late 2024 saw falling workloads and experimentation by clients with generative AI, early 2025 brought a more stable picture, with some freelancers regaining lost business. Still, the community remains divided: about half of CIOL’s members embrace AI tools, while the rest resist them, concerned about quality and trust.John raises questions about AI’s influence on how we use and shape language. He notes how generative AI introduces patterns into the linguistic mainstream, creating an "AI-mediated average" that may dilute cultural identity. He argues that language is a “human meta skill”, encoding not only communication but identity, culture, and belonging. Looking ahead, John is cautiously optimistic for the next generation of linguists, as digital natives may be more adept at using AI creatively and multitasking across tools. CIOL plans to expand free resources and community engagement in 2025, ensuring that the future of language work remains inclusive, ethical, and informed by real human insight.

Luke Innes, CEO of Creative Translation, expertly merges creativity with AI to revolutionize multilingual branding. He shares his unique journey from design to leading a transcreation agency, emphasizing that AI enhances productivity but can't replace human insight. Luke discusses the diverse team of specialists supporting high-quality projects and how AI is democratizing access for smaller brands. He also highlights the importance of cultural consultants and strategic partnerships in effective global communication, promoting responsible AI adoption through the Creative Academy.

Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, breaking down Slator’s 2025 Language Service Provider Index (LSPI), which features nearly 300 LSPs and reports 6.6% combined growth in 2024 revenues, totaling USD 8.4bn.Florian touches on a surprise USD 10m donation from private equity executive Mario Giannini to launch a new MA translation and interpreting program at California State University, Long Beach. The duo talks about McKinsey’s State of AI report, which continues to classify translators as AI-related roles and shows that hiring them has become slightly easier.In Esther’s M&A corner, TransPerfect announced two acquisitions, Technicolor Games and Blue Digital Group, further expanding its presence in gaming and media localization. In Israel, BlueLion and GATS merged to form TransNarrative, and Brazilian providers Korn Translations and Zaum Langs joined forces under the Idlewild Burg group.Meanwhile, in funding, Teleperformance invested USD 13m in Sanas, a startup offering real-time accent translation for call centers to improve global communication. Lingo.dev raised USD 4.2m, while Dubformer secured USD 3.6m to develop the ‘Photoshop of AI dubbing’.Florian shares insights from Slator’s 2025 Localization Buyer Survey, which found that over half of buyers want strategic AI support from vendors and many cite inefficient automation as a key challenge.

Joe Corkery, MD, CEO and Co-Founder of Jaide Health, joins SlatorPod to discuss how Jaide Health is driving medical interpreting and translation with AI, bridging communication gaps for limited English proficiency (LEP) patients and improving healthcare accessibility.With a background in computer science, medicine, and AI product leadership at Google, Joe co-founded Jaide Health with Julie Wilner, RN, in 2023 to address a long-standing need for real-time, interactive communication for the LEP patient population.Unlike older machine translation models, which worked sentence by sentence without context, Joe shares how generative AI can maintain coherence, track gender references, and infer meaning from prior context — crucial in medical settings.The CEO remains pragmatic about Trump’s executive order designating English as the US's official language and revoking previous language access mandates. He argues that such policies will not change the healthcare industry's commitment to multilingual patient care but may push hospitals to seek more cost-effective solutions — potentially accelerating AI adoption.Looking ahead, Jaide Health is focusing on expanding into document translation, particularly for discharge instructions and patient portal messaging, areas where current solutions are slow or impractical.

Anna Albinsson, CEO of Gridly, joins SlatorPod to talk about the company’s evolution into a content operations platform, its expansion beyond gaming, and the increasing role of AI in localization.Anna discusses Gridly’s transition from a niche CMS for gaming companies into a comprehensive content operations platform. Initially built by game developers for game developers, the company is now expanding into fintech and edtech, as demand for streamlined multilingual content management grows.The CEO also announces the launch of integrated translation management system (TMS) and translation productivity (CAT) functionalities within its platform. This consolidation helps companies streamline workflows, reduce costs, and improve collaboration, particularly for enterprises with complex content pipelines.Anna sees AI as an opportunity rather than a disruption, emphasizing that accountability remains key. While AI can accelerate translation and localization processes, companies still need governance, workflow management, and quality control to ensure accuracy.Anna shares her views on sales and marketing, pointing out that Gridly’s lead gen is nearly 100% inbound-driven, with strong brand recognition in gaming. While SEO and digital marketing remain crucial, Anna emphasized the importance of human relationships.Looking ahead, Gridly plans to further develop AI capabilities to improve contextual accuracy, consistency, and automation in multilingual content.

In response to President Trump’s executive order designating English as the official language of the US, SlatorPod gathered Dipak Patel, CEO of GLOBO, and Peter Argondizzo, CEO of Argo Translation, to discuss its implications for the US language industry.The discussion highlighted that language access has long been a key part of US policy, particularly in healthcare, education, and legal services. Dipak pointed out that eliminating language services would create inefficiencies, making it harder for medical professionals to provide accurate care.Peter emphasized the broader uncertainty the order creates as many organizations rely on federal funding for language services, and a lack of clear guidance could lead to reduced support in schools, courts, and public services.Both CEOs acknowledged that while this order presents challenges, the language services industry has historically adapted to change. Dipak suggested that financial pressures may push the industry to innovate, potentially accelerating AI adoption in interpreting. While the long-term impact remains unclear, the consensus is that language access will persist — driven by business needs and market demand.

Peter Reynolds, CEO of memoQ, joins SlatoPod to talk about the impact of AI on translation technology and how memoQ is enhancing its tools to meet the changing needs of enterprises, LSPs, and translators.Discussing AI, Peter recounts memoQ's response to the rise of generative AI, leading to the launch of memoQ AGT (Adaptive Generative Translation). By providing contextual data to LLMs, they replicated the advantages of custom machine translation without extensive training.The CEO acknowledges industry concerns about AI replacing human translators but argues that expert linguists remain essential. He compares this shift to software development, where AI tools enhance, rather than replace, skilled professionals.Peter discusses memoQ’s acquisition of Globalese, explaining how its on-premise AI translation capabilities strengthen memoQ’s offerings for high-security industries like banking and life sciences.On the product side, Peter teases upcoming developments, including a fully revamped web interface and research into handling larger translation segments beyond the traditional sentence-level approach. 

Florian and Esther, along with Slator Head of Research, Anna Wyndham, discuss the language industry and AI news of the week, with findings from Anthropic’s recent research on Claude’s usage. The analysis of over 4 million conversations revealed a surprising fact about how people use AI for translation.Turning to YouTube, Florian discussed CEO Neal Mohan’s statement that AI dubbing is among the platform’s "big bets" for 2025.In a spree of AI announcements, Deepgram unveiled its Nova-3 speech-to-text model for enterprise use and Panjaya launched Pod Pro, an AI-powered multilingual sync tool. Meanwhile, Adobe expanded Firefly to include language capabilities, and Centific launched FLOW, an enterprise-grade AI solution.In Esther’s M&A and funding corner, Lingopal secured USD 14m in funding to enhance real-time multilingual broadcasting, focusing on sports and live events, and TransPerfect acquired Apostroph Group to solidify its position in the DACH region.Anna discussed Meta’s Language Technology Partner Program, which aims to improve AI for low-resource languages and preserve linguistic diversity. The episode wrapped with Florian noting Supertext’s rebranding and comparison with DeepL, where it claimed superior results in document-level translation quality.

Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, where they reviewed ElevenLabs’ AI dubbing, on the back of a USD 3bn+ valuation. While they found the translation quality was strong, minor timing issues and lack of lip-syncing meant the output felt slightly unnatural.Esther then provided an update on M&A activity, where UK-based XTM International acquired US-based Transifex and DEMAN Übersetzungen expanded its presence in Germany by acquiring life sciences translation specialist German Language Services.Meanwhile, Sorensen Communications acquired Hand Talk, which uses AI-powered avatars for automated sign language translation, and OmniBridge, which employs computer vision to convert sign language into speech or text.Florian shared how experts received DeepSeek’s AI translation capabilities, noting its strong Chinese-English performance and cost efficiency but highlighting skepticism over data security, domain-specific accuracy, and potential political bias​.The duo noted that ZOO Digital has joined Amazon Prime Video’s Preferred Fulfillment Vendor Program, a positive development amid its recent market fluctuations and historically low share prices. Florian gave his thoughts on Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses with live translation, noting their inconsistent performance with fast or quiet speech and questioning their usefulness for media consumption compared to traditional subtitles​.

Bryan Forrester, Co-founder and CEO of Boostlingo, returns to SlatorPod for round 2 to talk about the company’s growth, the US interpreting market, and the evolving role of AI.Bryan shares how the company has tripled in size since he last appeared on the pod, driven by strategic acquisitions, including VoiceBoxer and Interpreter Intelligence, and a rebranding effort to unify its product portfolio.Bryan explains how Boostlingo balances innovation with practicality, ensuring that new features align with customer needs. He highlights the company’s three-pronged strategy: retaining existing customers, enabling growth, and making long-term bets on emerging trends.While tools like real-time captions and transcription enhance efficiency, Bryan stresses that AI alone cannot replace human interpreters in complex industries like healthcare. He highlights privacy, compliance, and the nuanced expertise of human interpreters as critical factors, positioning AI as a supportive tool rather than a replacement.Bryan discusses market dynamics and regulatory changes, including how those under the new US administration could influence language access demand, particularly in areas like healthcare and public services. He describes Boostlingo’s strategy of leveraging third-party AI models, optimizing them with proprietary data, and rigorously testing to ensure quality and reliability. Looking ahead, Boostlingo plans to expand internationally and integrate AI ethically and effectively into its offerings, guided by its newly formed AI Advisory Board.