SlatorPod

Bryan Murphy, CEO of Smartling, joins SlatorPod to share insights into the language technology leader’s position as a turnkey cloud-based language AI solution.Bryan talks about his background in software and e-commerce and how he joined Smartling to leverage technology in the translation and localization business.Bryan expands on how Smartling has built a sophisticated translation and localization management platform and expert-in-the-loop productivity technology. The CEO explains Smartling’s decision to leverage its technology to gain an edge in the language services market.He highlights the impact of large language models and generative AI in enhancing productivity, improving translation quality, and reducing costs. Bryan also touches on recent product launches like Smartling Translate, which targets the individual contributor within the enterprise.Bryan discusses the impact of AI in the industry and its transformative potential, likening it to the advent of the commercial internet. He elaborates on the role of human language experts in the industry, emphasizing that AI enhances their productivity rather than replacing them.Looking ahead to 2024, Smartling aims to improve the quality for customers, simplify processes, and further boost translator productivity.

Jakub Absolon, CEO of ASAP-translation.com, shares insights on AI in the language industry. He criticizes full post-editing, believes in the role of project managers, and explores the use of large language models. The industry will shift towards post-edited machine translation and content creation.

The podcast discusses the growing interest in AI-driven translation technologies, ZOO Digital's financial struggles, the viral moment translation AI is experiencing, XL8's recent funding round, and Adobe's new project called Dub Dub Dub.

Sebastien Pare, CEO of VIQ Solutions, joins SlatorPod to discuss the evolution of transcription for multi-speaker content in challenging legal and regulatory settings.Sebastien explained that VIQ initially started in Canada and expanded to other Commonwealth countries, focusing on courts thanks to their need for advanced audio and video solutions.The conversation delved into the challenges of working with multi-speaker content and Sebastien highlighted the importance of AI in enhancing transcription accuracy, especially in industries where the quality of the source material varies widely.Sebastien addressed linguistic challenges in the transcription industry, including dealing with varying speech quality, jargon, local dialects, and slang. He highlighted VIQ's flexibility in working seamlessly with third-party technologies and its commitment to offering various pricing models.Sebastien also discusses the challenges of operating a public listing (the company on September 30, 2023, announced it will stop its dual listing on Nasdaq but remain listed in Toronto). He also touched upon the impact of the AI hype, buyer expectations, and the macroeconomic environment on VIQ's operations.The discussion shifted to the shortage of court reporters and transcriptionists, where Sebastien explained how VIQ is attracting younger talent from diverse backgrounds and leveraging AI to increase productivity.Sebastien shared some developments in VIQ's roadmap as they plan to enhance their summarization capabilities, and further localize their platform for different regions and languages.

Spotify introduces voice translation for podcast creators. ALC Summit recap reveals key findings from survey. Basque, Catalan, and Galician become official languages in Spanish Congress. UK announces GBP 400 million tender for language services. Straker announces share buyback. Writer.ai raises USD 100 million. Google changes guidelines for AI-generated content.

Mark Shriner, CEO of memoQ RFP, discusses the challenges of RFPs in the language industry. He highlights the advantage of size in crafting polished responses and shares experiences with multilingual RFPs. He unveils memoQ RFP, a solution to streamline the process for small to medium-sized businesses using technology like translation memory. memoQ RFP will focus on finalizing its minimum viable product, recruiting beta customers, and gathering feedback.

“The face is the uncanny valley. The nuance and detail in the face and the way it moves is a very difficult thing to animate,” Jonathan Bronfman, CEO of MARZ explains on SlatorPod. Canada-based MARZ, which stands for Monsters Aliens Robots Zombies, was founded in 2018 to leverage AI and bring quantifiable metrics like time and cost to the business of visual effects (VFX).Bronfman recounts how their research for Vanity AI, a solution that creates effects such as de-aging, cosmetic, wig, and prosthetic fixes, led to them becoming an “expert at the face” and launching LipDub AI, a solution to solve the “mismatch between spoken word and visuals for viewers”.According to Bronfman, users can take an audio stem (the dialogue track), the original piece of footage, and push both through LipDub and have a lip-synced visual in 30 seconds. Bronfman also explains that their USP is that LipDub is Hollywood-grade and works on 4K and ProRes files.The two also discuss how actors feel about the emergence of lip-syncing visual effects and why Bronfman does not think an expansion into the creator market is on the cards for MARZ.Florian shares that as a life-long consumer of dubbed content he sees the massive potential in a solution that improves the viewer experience and makes it more natural.

Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, where amid ChatGPT's new enterprise launch, Florian tested ChatGPT's translation quality and came across mistranslations and awkward phrasing.Florian highlights the launch of the Slator Pro Guide: Subtitling and Captioning, providing an overview of its content and use cases. The discussion shifted to Meta's latest release SeamlessM4T which handles various translation-related tasks, including speech recognition, speech-to-speech translation, and more, across 100+ languages.Meanwhile, Appen shares price dropped considerably, so they aim to reposition themselves more toward generative AI but may face stiff competition from companies like Scale AI which recently announced a strategic partnership with OpenAI. The duo give their view on a Twitter post by a freelancer who was asked to provide discounts for typos by an LSP. When posed this question in Slator’s newsletter, the community's response was divided, with the majority opposing discounts for typos.

Georg Ell, CEO of Phrase, talks about merging Memsource into the Phrase brand, AI-driven growth of localization, upcoming pricing structure revamp, and the future of a hyper-personalized internet enabled by generative AI. He also advises on how LSPs should embrace AI and MT, and discusses funding in the language technology sector.

Longyue Wang, a Research Scientist at Tencent AI Lab, discusses the advancements in Chinese-to-English machine translation and the challenges in translating Chinese to non-English languages. He explores the impact of large language models (LLMs) on machine translation, including their superiority in document-level translation. Longyue also highlights various promising research directions for LLMs in machine translation, such as stylized MT, interactive MT, and translation memory-based MT. Additionally, he sheds light on Chinese researchers' efforts to build Chinese-centric MT engines and reduce reliance on English as a pivot language.