Rthrough the pages of my childhood, reminiscing a beautiful time. I traveled with my grandmother to a weekly spiritual gathering, where I repeated the words I heard from the speaker, trying to learn a new language I was unfamiliar with.
evisiting the vast shelf of the memory library, I glanced
Years later, when I was introduced to the anime world, I was intrigued and curious, unknowingly imitating the same I did as a child. I picked up on a few words and some Jutsu I came across while watching Naruto. However, at times I couldn't grasp Japanese quickly; this is where English subtitles came to my rescue. Now that I think of those moments, from learning different languages to coming across difficult ones, transcreation has helped me in several instances.
When you think about it, transcreation has been around us for decades, though we hardly identify it as a means that helps us understand things from a different cultural background much more swiftly. With the rising number of social platforms and streaming services, people are exposed to consuming content from corners of the world created in different languages.
The quote “The beauty of any verbal art form is in the language it is made” is genuinely true, but with the help of transcreation, these art forms can become widespread globally, generating a loyal fan base. If it weren't for transcreation, I wouldn't have been able to enjoy Squid Games the way I did, assisting me in learning more about the Korean language and culture.
The unsung heroes behind these transcreations are the leaders putting their heart and soul into translating several languages to help people worldwide, from fundamental to complex things. By developing AI programs that can make these translations seamless and precise, incorporated into the device, you are reading this note.
Ask your personal AI assistant to translate anything your heart desires Google, Siri, or Alexa; you'll be amazed. We appreciate the technology but never the ingenious mind behind them.
Thus, to celebrate the enormous efforts of these leaders, CIO LOOK came up with the edition “The 10 Most Iconic Founders and CEOs to Watch in the Language Industry in 2022.”
Flip the pages to know in-depth about the language as an industry and how it impacts people around the globe. Be sure to glance through the articles written by our in-house editorial team that will expand your array of the industry.
Start the new chapter!
Aditya Gaikar
FOLLOW US ON www.facebook.com/ciolook www.twitter.com/ciolook
WE ARE ALSO AVAILABLE ON Email info@ciolook.com For Subscription www.ciolook.com
CONTACT US ON
Copyright © 2022
in
in
remain
Agnew
Capita
Antonio
Agnew Multilingual is a leader
foreign-language
Capita TI is a leading global language
supplier.
Cloudbreak
CSOFT
Lan-Bridge
Shunee
Cloudbreak helps enable all of your telehealth solutions through a
of industry-leading services, at the push of a button.
CSOFT International is a world leader in localization and global
which provides turnkey solutions to companies
challenges in engaging customers and markets.
Michael
Lan-bridge is a specialist Chinese translation agency.
Mastervoice is
Pangea is a
Protrans is a
Traducta
Eric Bauwelinck CEO
Our goal is to offer a contribution to global understanding by speaking to the hearts and minds of decision - makers with native speakers as cultural ambassadors in all world languages.
Interpreters are people who see language in a way
that others don't, and for them, the sky is the limit.
Knowing various languages entails a thorough understanding of humanity's culture, and expanding this understanding throughout the world, Eric Bauwelinck reshaped the face of the interpreting industry.
Starting as a freelance conference interpreter and eventually launching a company that conducts online and onsite interpreting, Eric leads as the CEO of Mastervoice, addressing the necessity of online interpreting for many years, accomplishing the challenging task by transitioning from onsite to online interpreting.
Mastervoice promotes globalization by providing experienced interpreters to international organizations with an established track record of reliability and expertise with a human touch.
CIO Look caught up with Eric to learn in-depth about his experience and journey throughout the industry.
Below are the highlights of the interview:
Briefly describe your professional journey up until now.
Language has always been a true passion throughout my life and career. After graduating as a translatorinterpreter in 1990, I started my career as a freelance conference interpreter. In 1998, I founded Mastervoice to support international organizations with simultaneous interpreting, including audiovisual support in my mission as a total language solutions provider.
What challenges did you face along the way?
Before the outbreak of the health crisis, we had detailed procedures in place to support meetings with simultaneous onsite interpretation and audiovisual support. It has been very challenging to find the right balance between the expectations of qualified conference interpreters and the service requirements of international organizations in a changing market environment, which is critical to seize opportunities in the post-Covid era of hybrid meetings. My background as a conference interpreter was a great asset to achieving this balance and offering added value to meeting planners and interpreters alike.
What significant impact have you brought to the Translation and Localization industry?
As an early pioneer in the market of simultaneous interpreting, Mastervoice has been promoting the benefits of online interpreting since 2008 with campaigns in 2012, resulting in the publication of a book on the transformation from onsite to online interpreting in 2016. The health crisis proved to be the greatest accelerator of this transformation. We were ready and well prepared to forge strategic alliances with language technology partners offering reliable remote simultaneous interpreting solutions.
Tell us about Mastervoice and its foundation pillar. Our unique service model is built on a core interpreter management system with integrated quality management, qualification procedures, and interpreter selection criteria based on proven expertise with automated workflows tailored to the specific needs of multilingual conferencing. My background as a conference interpreter in more than 3,000 meetings in
Mastervoice promotes globalization by providing experienced translators with a human touch to international organizations with an established track record of reliability and expertise.
the past 30 years enabled me to offer this interpreting service model based on best practices, business ethics, fair competition, industry standards, and our core mission to exceed client expectations in interpreting.
How does Mastervoice promote workforce flexibility, and what is your role in it?
Our internal workforce management has undergone great changes to meet the fast-changing demands of the interpreting market in terms of scalability and the ability to adapt to these changing circumstances.
Instead of relying on isolated internal departments, Mastervoice values multi-skilled project coordinators to support meeting planners in their complete customer journey from a request for proposal to final delivery.
Selection and qualification of freelance conference interpreters is based on an adaptive interpreter sourcing model linked to client history, specific qualification criteria, and last but not least, client ranking based on proven performance.
As founder and owner of Mastervoice, my role is to consult clients on total language solutions with expertise in remote simultaneous interpreting. I see it as my mission to demonstrate the value of multilingual conferencing to our key stakeholders: our end clients, our audiovisual partners, our conference interpreters, and our employees.
What is your take on technology's importance, and how are you leveraging it?
Language technology solutions, and in particular remote interpreting applications, have proven to be a critical factor since the outbreak of the health crisis, but also considering the increasing importance of Sustainable Development Goals as formulated by the United Nations Global Compact. Online meetings are essential contributions to a greener environment with fewer people on the move for meetings, but also to international exchange, and cooperation.
What will be the next significant change in the Simultaneous Interpretation industry, and how are you preparing for it?
Besides the evident contribution to a greener meeting industry, remote simultaneous interpreting demonstrated clear benefits in cost and time efficiency for interpreters and participants in international meetings. At the same time, videoconferencing also exposed the limitations of a meaningful exchange versus traditional face-to-face encounters. An indefinite number of formerly highly interactive meetings gradually turned into watch-and-listen-only webinars without genuine human-to-human involvement. Meeting technology providers must meet essential expectations in human communication to earn a winning edge and should focus more on life-like presence with eye-to-eye and face-to-face human encounters, even in a virtual, augmented, or mixed reality.
To prepare for this virtual transformation, Mastervoice has partnered with world-leading audiovisual partners and strategic language technology providers to accomplish our core mission of empowering global understanding, exchange, goodwill, and cooperation.
What are your goals in the upcoming future?
The ongoing global crisis places a heavy burden on the world economy, and this will also impact the meeting and language industry at some point in time. Global understanding and goodwill remain fundamental in international communication. Our goal is to support global understanding by speaking to the hearts and minds of decision-makers with native speakers as cultural ambassadors in all world languages
What advice would you like to give the next generation of aspiring business leaders in the language industry?
Linking technology to human resources is not sufficient to make a meaningful difference in the language industry today. High-end language technology must meet human expectations in terms of connectivity, affordability, and reliability. This is a labor-intensive and highly competitive environment that is not for the faint-hearted. You can make a difference, however, by focusing on niche solutions for niche markets with a qualified pool of expert linguists and by adopting the latest solutions in applied language technology with reliable technology providers. This was our own successful approach in very challenging times.
Corporations are shifting their marketing services in-house and re-defining relationships with their suppliers. This is a strategic shift brought about by a confluence of technical, social and political change on a global scale. At the core of this movement is the corporation’s need to control global brand messaging quickly in an increasingly regulated world. Is this a temporary shift or is there more to it, and how far might it go?
About the Author Murray Oles is the President of CHALEX Corp. The company is specialized in Workow Management for Marketing Communications Projects through the use of SmartFlo and integrated third party tools.
Murray Oles President CHALEX CorpVirtuoso's Vision
The rise of mobile computing combined with an explosion in SaaS software development has led to more intuitive purpose-built applications with built in learning tools. The net effect is that corporations can do much more with less. Hence, the rapidly accelerating move to take internal control of the corporate global supply chain. More specifically, control of process, digital assets, resources, and the brand message. Evidence of the shift can be seen in global corporations like P&G who in recent years consolidated their packaging prepress supply chain from hundreds of companies to only three. The ANA (Association of National Advertisers) committee for in-house agencies includes members from hundreds of the Fortune 1000. A Google search reveals many recent articles detailing the rise of in-house ad agencies.
The drivers of this shift are affordable and effective new technology and the need for speed to market. The value of a middleman controlling portions of the marcom workflow has diminished. This does not mean that everything is being produced in-house, just internally controlled and managed by in-house staff who are defining new best practices for their agile enterprise. Many companies go back and forth between insourcing and outsourcing, but this time it is different. Companies are focused on process, and it is not just marketing, legal and business analytics, recruiting, employee services and even providing in-house healthcare.
With change comes opportunity. Demand for business process management tools is growing rapidly. Many new companies are developing SaaS products to further enable the agile business. Online workflow modeling and business process management tools are becoming main stream. File sharing and digital asset management services are widely accepted. Integrating these services to meet the requirements of a project has never been easier now that RESTful APIs have become widely available. Artificial intelligence applied to big data analytics will provide the agile business with insights previously inconceivable. Best of all, the enterprise can securely access most SaaS services without making any upfront investments or long term commitments.
At the core of the agile business is an integrated business process management platform. This is the tool that enables distributed process control. In-house is only practical when the technology enables the staff to do an order of magnitude more with less. BPM systems capture huge amounts of data
that can be analyzed as a service in real-time. The ability to analyze any combination of process and behavioral data yields valuable predictive insights. Standards such as BPMN notation and the XPDL file format have allowed developers to simplify the user experience for defining, managing, and sharing process maps across BPM platforms. A virtual task can automatically serve up the tools the user will need. SaaS tools have one thing in common. They can be called through a RESTful API without the need for a software developer. The workflow can be configured to invoke access to tools based on the nature of the task. For healthcare workflows a digital radiology file format (DICOM Web) enables secure cross-platform viewing and collaboration over a patient’s scanned images and medical history.
Business agile companies adjust to market conditions faster by adopting a culture of managed change. It is no longer acceptable to be so disconnected from your projects that you can’t even access your own brand packaging and promotion files. The same is true for legal, regulatory and compliance work. The agile company controls all of these processes. Their DAM enabled BPM system interacts with a SaaS reporting service like EZBI that concatenates and reports on data across distributed systems. Lean manufacturing and Six Sigma programs are used to configure these systems to monitor compliance to regulated processes.
These changes are far more profound than may appear on the surface. The gig economy is fueling a virtual cottage industry that circles the globe. Project managers are increasingly in demand. This is not just an IT thing, every business runs on projects. The certified project management professional PMP is a new college certification. Rachel Burger in a Capterra article explained The 5 Biggest Project Management Trends Shaping 2018. In brief, “business agile” is the new way of doing business. A visit to the Fiverr.com web site will show how one SaaS service is bringing buyers and sellers of creative services together.
This in-house trend is not just another swing of the pendulum.
In today’s business world, communication is playing a more vital role than ever. The need for language services is rapidly increasing across the globe. Organizations ranging from multinational companies to small-scale enterprises are looking for professionals to translate, interpret, localize and globalize their content for all types of customers. In this scenario of growing demand for language services, Agnew Multilingual has been a leader in providing foreign-language translation, interpretation and multicultural communication services.
Founded in 1986, Agnew provides culturally sensitive and highly effective language solutions to Fortune 500 companies and small businesses alike. It serves companies which are expanding into the emerging markets of the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America. Located in Westlake Village, California, Agnew draws on over 1,500 translators and multilingual talent worldwide. A woman-owned business, Agnew is ISO and WBENC certified, and registered as SBE, WBE and DBE with state and national agencies.
The orchestrator behind Agnew Multilingual is Irene Agnew, the Founder and President. She has more than 30 years of experience in the translation field. Prior to establishing Agnew in 1986, she was a consultant for Bunker Ramo Corporation on machine translation research. She translated Russian radio broadcasts for the U.S. State Department. She was the head translator for Rand Corporation and wrote a monthly column for Science Digest.
Irene’s primary goal is to make sure that clients’ multilingual marketing efforts not only meet but exceed
their expectations. She is fluent in Russian, with a working knowledge of Japanese and Spanish.
Distinguishing Agnew from industry competitors is the fact that it is not burdened with layers of bureaucracy. Its team can respond immediately to its clients’ needs. The company keeps its administrative staff lean, but expandable at a moment’s notice. It has carefully assembled a large and diverse talent pool composed of linguists, programmers, narrators, designers, web developers, and video editors to create accurate, on-time and on-budget deliverables for print and digital projects.
Agnew is a company managed by translators and linguists dedicated to providing the best possible services and solutions based on linguistic skills and technology. The company commits to exceeding its customers’ expectations for translation quality, responsiveness, and professional excellence. It does not limit its service to project delivery but is always watching out for new opportunities for its customers to get the most return on their investment. It strives to pursue new developments in language technology, cultural & international markets, and political & economic conditions that affect its customers’ mission in international business. It also maintains the highest standards of ethical behavior and professional integrity.
Agnew’s language solutions help clients achieve measurable results by reaching out to non-English speaking communities and consumer markets both domestic and international. It serves various industries including aerospace, healthcare, media & entertainment,
advertising & marketing, biotechnology, consumer products, utilities & communications and government.
The top priority at Agnew is to ensure the meeting of its clients’ communication needs in a fast-paced and everchanging environment. Agnew Multilingual provides interpretation for interactive webinars, small meetings, and large conferences with thousands of attendees from across the globe. Its interpreters are selected on the basis of their subject-matter expertise, education and experience. It provides full linguistic, logistic and technical support for all interpretation events, including equipment and professional audio engineers.
Agnew Multilingual’s expertise goes far beyond language translation. The interactive nature of the internet requires a coherent design to address the technical challenges of presentation in other languages and the cultural expectations of the target region. Its video production department delivers superior-quality audio and video production services to help its clients reach their English and non-English speaking customers. Agnew’s ability to provide both translation/trans creation and audio recording or subtitling makes it an ideal choice for discerning clients.
Agnew is a versatile and forward-thinking translation agency. Since its inception, it has been committed to
continuously improving its services. In 2013, Agnew established a dedicated Digital Department to manage the growing number of multimedia projects required by today’s technology-driven business environment. Its expertise in proposals, websites, corporate videos and video games has set a benchmark in the Language service Industry.
Agnew translates hundreds of pages of proposals for international business into Middle Eastern languages for one of the nation’s largest aerospace and defense contractors. It localizes hundreds of web pages with thousands of words into multiple languages along with periodic updates and maintenance. It provides repetition discounts for large scale projects and full-service technical support and staging for worry-free content management. It produces corporate videos with voiceover and/or subtitles with on/off capability for web streaming ranging from 1-minute to 60-minutes for tech companies, biopharma corporations and international manufacturing firms. Apart from these, the company also produces retail trailers and demos into multiple languages with voice-over, animated graphics, international ESRB ratings, UPC codes and packaging using Sony and Microsoft templates. Its clients are among the industry’s largest developers and international distributors of videogames.
— Irene Agnew Founder & PresidentWe bring your message to the world.
When was the last time you watched a film not in your native language and noticed the subtitles or dubbing didn’t sound right? Or maybe you were trying to follow an instructional manual and the directions didn’t make sense? As the world becomes more connected, localization plays an important role to businesses across a variety of industries and sectors. Localization goes beyond straightforward translation, it ensures that the new content resonates with the intended audience, taking into account culture and dialect. One company who understands this challenge is Capita Translation and Interpreting.
Capita Translation and Interpreting, also known as Capita TI, is a leading global language services supplier, with a strong focus on innovation and technology. It is a part of Capita plc, the UK’s leading provider of business process management and integrated professional support service solutions.
Capita TI provides translation and interpreting services to commercial and public sector customers via 2 technology platforms, namely SmartMATE, a translation, automation and workflow integration platform, and LiveLINK, a remote interpreting platform.
SmartMATE provides customers with instant and secure access to all technology products at their fingertips. From one central place, customers can request a translation or interpreting project, download reports, track and retrieve projects and view historical information. CMS connectors allow users of WordPress, Magento and Drupal to send content for translation within their CMS dashboard, removing the need for copying and pasting or downloading content.
LiveLINK is a voice and video remote interpreting platform which allows customers to reach an experienced interpreter
in as little as 15 seconds. LiveLINK covers 170 languages and can be accessed via mobile app, web browser, telephone, or direct integration with customer communication systems.
Managing Director of Capita TI, Antonio Tejada has over 25 years of experience in the localization industry. He began his career as a translator, with subsequent roles in operations, sales and technology. It is his experience and understanding of technology, and how it can be leveraged within translation, that has impacted Capita TI the most in bringing new developments in both the SmartMATE and LiveLINK product suites to improve the customers’ experience, increase efficiencies and help to deliver sustainable services to them.
There are two key factors that set Capita TI apart from the competition:
Ÿ Its capacity to integrate the best people in the industry with cutting-edge technology, to deliver an innovative and customised language ecosystem. Capita TI’s technology focuses around translation technology and remote interpreting.
Ÿ Its reliability as a corporate partner, based on the strong foundations and governance that comes with being part of Capita plc and the understanding of the requirements of large corporations.
Acquired in 2011 by the Capita group, the company has undergone many changes and improvements in the past 7 years. Initially, it was highly dependent on a large interpreting contract with the Ministry of Justice in the UK, but now the business has transformed towards a highly
innovative technology-based language service provider, with a balanced service offering in translation and interpreting.
In late 2016, Capita TI also re-focused their interpreting and public sector services, deciding not to re-bid for the Ministry of Justice interpreting contract, following a strategic decision to focus on developing the contracts with other public sector customers and further developing remote interpreting offering with the launch of LiveLINK.
In 2016 and 2017, Capita TI acquired 2 niche translation providers, including ITR, which focused on software and elearning localization, and amity communications, highly geared towards financial and legal content, which involved integration and optimization of systems, processes, customers and suppliers.
Capita TI firmly believes that as a society, we are living in an increasingly visual world, reliant on multimedia. Clients use video and audio to connect with their employees, partners and potential clients, and as such, the demand for high-quality audio-visual localization grows.
In audio-visual localization projects, there are so many variations to consider, such as translation of the script, cultural nuances, voice-over artist talent, matching the speed of the target language speech to the source and the list goes on. And if any of these components don’t go according to plan, it impacts the entire project. Therefore,
Capita TI has adopted a 6-step process for audio-visual localization, ensuring that all these components and teams work together for a cost-effective project. The steps are:
Ÿ Prepare a brief
Ÿ Confirm and sign-off script
Ÿ Use high-quality audio
Ÿ Synchronizing script, voiceover, subtitles and animations
Ÿ Select preferred voiceover artist
Ÿ Quality assurance check
According to Capita TI, translation and interpreting have become more of a basic requirement for businesses. The need for speed has increased, whilst still maintaining a high-quality output and meeting budget expectations. Hence, automation is vital in addressing this need and bringing efficiencies, allowing customers to respond to market demands in different languages through automation of tasks including file processing, linguist assignment and quality controls.
What’s more, the company also believes that machine translation has developed in recent years. What started as software translating simple and short phrases has advanced to custom-built, sector-specific translation engines with huge translation memories, delivering cost reductions of up to 30%.
Our mission is to combine innovative people, process and technology, to enable our clients to communicate with anyone, anywhere.
thocalization is the 4 fastest growing industry in the United States. The concept started back in 1980s when
L American software enterprises decided to expand globally. Clearly, there was a need for these services to adapt according to the given market and this need contributed in the development of Language Service Industry. The language service industry is growing at an annual rate of 6.46% and is expected to be $45 billion by 2020. It is listed as the most favorable industry to start a business.
All these facts raise the question on why the Language service industry is not causing any disruption in the market. The answer is lack of attention. The industry is specific to communication but as the demand for global communication is increasing, the popularity of the industry is also growing. In recent studies it was found that 75% of the people preferred their local language while shopping online. There is growth in other aspects as well including the translation in the written material and documents, interpreting and sign language services and digital documentation.
• Glossaries: Glossaries makes sure that the translation is accurate in terms of style and voice from the original text and maintains the quality of translations. For example one word in English language means something else when translated in French.
• Style Guide: It is a standardized pattern writing and formatting documents. It can be for generic use or it can be used specifically for an industry. Style guides bring standardization and consistency to the content.
• Translation Memory: Translation memory is a set of stored information that is already translated before. In order to perfect the new content, it is compared with the translation memory. This will enhance the accuracy and reduce the cost at the same time.
• CAT Tools: The process of translation taking place through CAT tools. This improves the efficiency and the quality of the process. The tool breaks the text into segments and translates them separately and compiles it like the original source.
• With the MNCs Booming
For enterprises that cross the borders or fly overseas to expand their business, language services has become a must have strategy. It becomes convenient for MNCs to run a business using the regional language. Moreover it enables the companies to share and receive information from across the globe from different branches, without any miscommunication. Proper translation of language makes sure everyone is on the same page.
• External Affairs
Nations communicate on various global issues including business, politics, environment, etc. These issues are addressed in various events where the ideas and thoughts are shared among the authorities. However, the language barrier may take the toll on the purpose of the event. This is why the language services are very important for governments. It can be a new economic policy or a global summit in which global leaders express their thoughts.
• Accuracy in Transfer of Information Language services are the most important instrument for news and broadcasting agencies. These agencies share news and information from across the world and it needs to be translated into local languages. Be it international or regional, effective translation of language helps in order to transfer the news.
• Travel and Tourism Tourism is one of the major resources for countries as it notonly generates revenue but helps in trade and the overall development. But lack of communication can reduce the level of satisfaction from the tourists and that is why language service industry is complimentary to tourism industry. Proper translation services like preferred language materials and personals enriches the experience of tourists and also increases the popularity of the country.
The entertainment industry and the literary society cross theborder for business and the content needs to be translated in order to be relatable to the local audience. While the translated and subtitled versions of films are earning tremendously on global platforms, the music industry and the writers are also benefited by the language services.
Enterprises that are on the verge of expansion need language service strategies in order to establish overseas. But it is not an easy job to set up the team that insures quality and consistency. It is a better option for them to outsource the services from professional services. There are various advantages of hiring a language service provider rather than having in-house team including guaranteed quality, cost efficiency, professionalism, and better services.
In conclusion, the journey of this underdog industry has just started. It may have been on the surface up till now but has great potential and a very promising future. However there is huge scope for quality players that are yet to enter the market. The future seems bright because as the globalization and localization is growing, the demand for language services will keep growing and it will come out as an important service for many industries.
Medicine as a field does not just treat illnesses, it treats human beings. However, complications can arise that get in the way of quality care. That is where Cloudbreak Health comes in.
Cloudbreak Health is a leading telemedicine platform that specializes in providing assistance to non-English speakers, deaf patients, and patients with mental impairment. Cloudbreak Health is unifying telemedicine, making it easy to access multiple specialities with at push of a button.
About Cloudbreak
Cloudbreak Health is headquartered in Columbus, OH and on a mission to #HumanizeHealthcare. They deliver on that mission by resolving healthcare disparities with their unified telemedicine platform which includes Cloudbreak Connect (their private broadband network optimized for telehealth), Cloudbreak Catalyst (a fully private-labeled software solution, video contact center and workflow engine) and Cloudbreak Collective (a marketplace of healthcare services that breaks down silos between healthcare facilities, allowing them to collaborate seamlessly).
Their Martti (My Accessible Real-Time Trusted Interpreter) service line pioneered the video medical interpreting industry. It currently performs over 90,000 consults per month at over 800 hospitals nationwide, building trust through communication between healthcare providers and their Limited English Proficient and Deaf patients.
The Cloudbreak brand was established in 2015. However, the company is an industry pioneer which was originally founded as The Language Access Network in 2003 by Andy Panos. At that time, the technology to deliver the platform was very expensive and a single cart cost more than $25,000.
As the industry evolved, technology costs decreased significantly. The Martti platform is now available on a multitude of devices, including any PC, iOS or Android device. In addition, Cloudbreak has pursued a device-
agnostic strategy which allows interoperability across many of the mission-critical systems used in hospitals.
Before Cloudbreak, hospitals and medical centers found it difficult to staff interpreters because it was impossible to accurately predict the demand for the service on any given day. Cloudbreak pioneered a model which allowed these institutions to subscribe to a monthly minute package to meet the staffing demand curve of their clients. This dedication to quality has been the hallmark of Cloudbreak’s service.
Due to connectivity challenges for video over the open internet, they implemented a strategy to connect to partners over their own private broadband path allowing the Company to provide more secure connections that ensured higher quality video. While more expensive, this strategy provided a more direct path between Cloudbreak and its clients as well as the deployment of Quality of Service (QoS) on its network and insulation from changes in Net Neutrality moving forward.
Behind Cloudbreak Jamey Edwards is a Co-founder & CEO of Cloudbreak, a leading Telemedicine and Language Services company currently performing over 90,000 encounters in more than 800 healthcare organizations nationwide.
Prior to Cloudbreak, Jamey was the CEO of Emergent Medical Associates (EMA) and led its growth into the leading multi-specialty group in the Southwest US. He remains with EMA as a Board Member and is also a Board Member of the Santa Monica chapter of the American Red Cross, Partners in Care (a healthcare think tank innovating solutions for the underserved), and Run to Remember (a charity honoring first responders who have died in the line of duty).
He is also a member of the Santa Monica Bay chapter of the Young Presidents Organization. Jamey has been an Honoree for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award three times and twice an Honoree of the Los Angeles Business Journal Healthcare Leadership Awards. Under his
guidance, Cloudbreak has been recognized as a MedTech Breakthrough Award Winner, a Patrick Soon Shiong Innovation Award Winner and as one of the top entrepreneurial companies in the country by Entrepreneur Magazine.
Jamey was also recognized as one of the Top 40 Healthcare Transformers nationwide by MM&M and as a Healthcare Transformer by Startup Health for actively addressing the Cost to Zero and Increasing Access to Care moonshots. He is a proud member of the #PinkSocks Tribe of healthcare innovators who are working to disrupt healthcare from the ground up and drive positive change for patients and providers.
Jamey received his MBA from Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management.
With its core Martti platform, Cloudbreak is an end-to-end services partner that can fulfill all its clients’ language needs from outsourcing their departments, to taking advantage of their expertise and network effects, to selecting services from Cloudbreak’s offerings based on a client’s specific requirements.
The company offers healthcare providers a full suite of services including video medical interpreting (VMI), over phone interpretation (OPI), document translation, on-site interpretation, language access plan development, education, training and other consulting services that optimize and drive ROI on their language services department.
Cloudbreak has been regularly recognized for its leadership and commitment to excellence while its interpreters serve as subject matter experts for national certification exams.
While initially targeting to ensure a level standard of care for non-english speaking and deaf patients vs. their English
speaking counterparts, the Company realized that its video endpoints and expertise could be deployed to help its partner hospitals with their broader telemedicine strategies and bring skilled specialists to underserved communities.
Cloudbreak offers its partners single vendor simplicity, customized workflows and a fully private-labeled solution spanning multiple telemedicine specialties. This is complemented by the integration of its live video medical interpretation services for Limited English Proficient and Deaf and Hard of Hearing patients.
The company pioneered Video Medical Interpreting and has grown rapidly as a result of its focus on quality and customer service. All of the company’s video interpreters are based in the United States in HIPAA-compliant language centers and are all Certified Medical Interpreters or on the path to certification within 6 months of employment.
Cloudbreak also offers unified reporting services that allow a hospital to gain a full perspective on their language services departments, with interactive dashboards giving them the insights they need to optimize the management of these departments to drive better compliance and patient satisfaction across vendors.
Making a Global Mark Cloudbreak has experienced dramatic growth over the last few years and their rate of growth is accelerating. The demand for their services will only increase as the country shifts to a Majority-Minority population, a change which is happening faster than expected.
As the country’s patient population increases in diversity and the technology costs continue to drop, Cloudbreak expects to see even more rapid adoption of their services.
Our mission is to humanize healthcare by leveraging technology to break down language barriers, provide access to multiple medical specialties, and build trusted communication and relationships between patients and providers.
We live on a planet with more than 7 billion people who speak more than 7000 languages. Over 50 percent of the population speaks at least 2 languages. But the question remains, how do we communicate with each other when there is a language barrier? One company helping eradicate language barriers while bringing localization and global communications to individuals as well as businesses is CSOFT International .
CSOFT International is a leader in language localization and global communications which provides solutions to companies facing challenges in engaging customers and markets because of linguistic and cultural barriers.
CSOFT leads the localization industry with next generation, supple and on-demand translation technologies and solutions that disrupt legacy translation models. Most recently, they developed the world’s only fully automated human translation solution that can be deployed on all devices. The platform, Stepes, helps clients achieve unrivaled translation speed and scalability, while allowing multinational enterprises to accelerate global business growth and succeed internationally.
Shunee Yee is the Founder and CEO of CSOFT International. With over 25 years of experience in the industry, she worked as an executive in Asia Market Development for a major language service provider prior to founding CSOFT. Responsible for its organic growth from a start-up in a two bedroom apartment to an industry leader, Yee oversees CSOFT’s operations across dual headquarters, 16 regional offices, and 3 continents.
Led by Yee in June 2016, CSOFT launched the Shenzhen 100 report which utilized hard data and qualitative indicators to create a China Global Maturity Index to assist the Shenzhen Municipal Government in implementing policies to support global market strategies.
Yee is a recipient of the international Stevie Award for Best Asian Entrepreneur for Women in Business, a Fortune Most Powerful Women award, and was identified by CNN Money as one of Technology’s 36 most powerful disrupters.
Throughout her career, she has also been featured in a number of publications, including the Boston Globe, The Economist, Fortune Magazine, and Investor’s Business Daily.
CSOFT International brings together over 10,000 professional in-country linguists, culture experts, and the latest language technologies to deliver localization solutions to global businesses in IT & telecom, life sciences, automotive, manufacturing, financial services, consumer electronics and more. Few services provided by CSOFT are:
· Technical and Software Localization: CSOFT has a strong technical background due to extensive software development experience across many platforms. It provides end-to-end solutions for software localization including application GUI translation, linguistic testing and cosmetic testing. Powered by professional in-country technical translators, CSOFT provides consistent quality localization for virtually all software applications.
· eLearning and Training: In today’s globalized economy, businesses must effectively educate their internationally distributed workforces and customers to maximize business success across diverse regions. CSOFT has both the linguistic and engineering expertise to help organizations such as GE, EMC, Google, and others, effectively localize their training materials for global audiences.
· Medical Translation: MedL10N, which stands for medical localization, is CSOFT’s business unit that offers translations to the life sciences industry and
is also one of the first language service providers to hold ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 13485:2016 quality management system certifications.
· Global Communications: The GC business unit specializes in creating top-quality content written directly in target languages by a team of native speakers consisting of experts in marketing, journalism, PR, telecommunications, computing, life sciences, and design. By only employing highly-experienced content specialists native to target markets, the global communications team ensures a brand’s message is effectively communicated to all customers around the world.
Businesses today demand translations in hours or even minutes versus days and weeks in order to respond to changing market demands quickly. CSOFT’s ability to translate digital content fast and on-demand enables their customers to beat the competition and get ahead faster in the global market. CSOFT believes in improving customer experience by making their services better, simpler, and cost effective.
After establishing the company in 2003, a major challenge was running as a China-operated company and retaining global talent. CSOFT recognized the importance of a strong culture within their people and this unique quality has cultivated a strong corporate culture and identity in the multinational team.
Shunee always wanted to create a company that used the latest technology to power language communications
solutions; the perfect harmony of language and technology. This is the reason behind the name CSOFT: Communications Solutions of Foreign Trade, with the word ‘soft’ affording the implication of technology. As a technology-driven organization, CSOFT has created its own technology suite over the years including tools such as Termwiki, to help with terminology management, and Ubrta, for better management of translation projects.
CSOFT combines the power of AI and human translations to help customers achieve the highest return on their localization investment. They have simplified much of the workflow into an easy-to-use and 24/7 online model. CSOFT is a world class translation service provider with the experience, track record, breadth of services, and unique just-in-time (JIT) and translation technology. The digital transformation has fundamentally changed customer expectations for speed.
Lastly, as champions of providing language and globalization solutions, CSOFT people are true global citizens, working from around the world to enable better communications among businesses and their customers and more broadly, to enable better understanding between cultures.
CSOFT has run campaigns such as I Translate, I Transform, created to celebrate the world’s linguists, as well as the #GetSchooled Initiative that used CSOFT’s network in over 170 countries to train and educate about the problems girls face in education. Each day, they break down more and more of the world’s language barriers to realize their longcherished vision, One World, One Market, and One World, One Team
Market, and One World, One Team.
With so much attention focused on Artificial Intelligence (AI), it’s worth remembering that one size does not fit all. There are specific business-related pain points in mind when a company decides to deploy AI technology, so making the right choices can be a tricky task.
For example, several months ago, an AI related breakthrough was announced – a robot learned and demonstrated the ability to perform a perfect backflip. While it is well acknowledged that the invested research and development for this mission was huge and the commercial potential for some applications is enormous, it is somewhat unclear how this specific innovation or the core models and algorithms of it, can serve other industries and verticals. Herein lies the problem.
Mr. Jay Klein drives Voyager Lab’s technology strategy and core intellectual property. He brings more than 25 years of experience in data analytics, networking and telecommunications to the Company. Before joining Voyager Labs, he served as CTO at Allot Communications where he steered Allot’s data inspection and analytics core technology offerings, and as VP Strategic Business Development at DSPG, where he was responsible for strategic technology acquisitions. He also co-founded and held the CTO position at Ensemble Communications while founding and creating WiMAX and IEEE 802.16. He also served as the CTO and VP of R&D at CTP Systems, acquired rst by DSP Communications and later by Intel. Jay Klein holds a BSc in Electronics & Electrical Engineering from Tel Aviv University as well as numerous patents in various technology elds.
Gauging AI success in one field in many cases can be meaningless for another. To make things worse, even when trying to go deeper into the technology and attempting to evaluate, for example, which Machine Learning algorithms are utilized by the product, or what are the number of layers in the Deep Neural Network models mentioned by specific vendors, in the end it will be possibly pointless as it does not directly reflect the solution deployment ‘success’ implications.
Nevertheless, it seems that the market ignores this reality and continues to evaluate AI-based products by buzzword checklists using familiar and related AI terminology (e.g.,
Supervised, Unsupervised, Deep Learning etc.). While checklists are an effective tool for comparative analysis it still requires the ‘right’ items to be included. Unfortunately, what typically is absent are the items which are important to the customer, from a problem-solution perspective.
Introducing Authentic AI
Given all of this, there is a need to change the narrative around AI technology and solutions to something meaningful and authentic that reflects the real-life challenges and opportunities that businesses are facing. This is the time to introduce Authentic AI.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines ‘Authentic’ as both ‘worthy of acceptance or belief as conforming to or based on fact’ and ‘conforming to an original so as to reproduce essential features ’. This is not about ‘Fake’ to be contrasted with ‘Real’. It’s about the essential features of AI which need to be acknowledged, and hence, redefine the ‘checklist’. Often, these essential ‘authentic’ features are hidden and only surface when a CIO/CDO is faced with a new problem to be solved. This is seen especially when the AI aspects of a proposed product or solution are fully explored by asking questions such as:
- Is the AI technology utilized by the product aimed specifically for my problem, optimally (e.g., performance, cost, etc.)?
- Is it capable of addressing the complete problem or only a part of it?
- Can it be assimilated into the existing ecosystem without imposing new demands?
- Can it address the compelling environmental conditions of the problem space?
These issues can be grouped into three different ‘classes’‘Original’, ‘Holistic’ and ‘Pragmatic’:
Original – How innovative is the solution? This can be quantified by assessing the following:
- the invention of new algorithms or even new models and - the use of complex orchestration techniques or - through the capability to handle complex data formats and structures.
While there is no need to re-invent the wheel repetitively for any problem, there are distinctive characteristics which require optimizing.
Holistic – How complete is the proposed AI technology? It takes into account the capability of handling the end-to-end aspects of the solution, the competence of harmonizing the operation of the various AI components of the solution and the ability to adapt to ever changing conditions of the AI application.
Pragmatic – Can the technology solve real world problems in their actual and natural space in a commercially viable way? This means that for example the data sources can be processed in their most native format (both unstructured or structured) as well as provide insights or results matching the pragmatic needs of the specific market expectations. In addition, the ability to be quickly deployed and rapid to act are assessed.
All of these elements should be used to systematically assess and evaluate AI-based products and solutions to assess their authenticity and therefore effectiveness in specific use cases.
For example, many home-loan mortgage evaluation and recommendation systems utilize a somewhat isolated machine learning based applicant classification method, one of many other processes included within the solution. The AI in this solution cannot be considered Authentic AI to a high degree as it ‘scores’ low on the ‘Original’ and ‘Holistic’ classes as it isn’t innovative ‘enough’ (from an AI sense). In addition, the AI component itself does not cover on its own the end-to-end aspects of the solution (hence affecting the overall performance and precision). It could be considered to be ‘Pragmatic’ to some level if it can handle the required data sources of financial institutions or the customer applications natively, and if the solution ‘output’ are the explicit results required as a specific recommendation (e.g., loan conditions). However, the deployment timeline (time-to-market) and commercial aspects need to be evaluated as well. This is just one example of many others, covering all kinds of variations.
Perfect backflips may grant you a gold medal if you are a gymnast but if you are a master chess player don’t expect a winning move.
The language service industry is increasingly being supported by different technologies. There are companies that consider this as undesirable but some experts believe it is an exciting time to be at the forefront of this revolution. Language service providers are deploying modern technology to core language operations such as spellcheck and eliminating grammatical errors.
This has allowed expert translators to leave basic language operations to the machine and focus on their core objective of recreating/translating the essence of the original document. Due to the inclusion of modern technology, businesses have achieved higher productivity and efficiency in many cases. A company that is helping clients achieve such results is Pangea Translation Services . Located in Cyprus, this firm has adopted modern and up to date technology in the industry in order to stay ahead of the curve.
As a Translation and Localization company, Pangea focuses on delivering high-quality end product, professional service and fast turnaround. It specializes in a variety of sectors including online trading (Forex, Cryptocurrency, Binary), iGaming (Casino, Sports Betting, Lottery, Bingo) and video games (mobile, social, PCs/consoles). Real estate and tourism are two new sectors they are testing at the moment and they are recruiting the linguists needed to offer a high quality specialized result. The professional linguists at Pangea
have the experience and knowledge to translate various kinds of content ranging from articles, mailers, manuals, legal documents and platforms. They ensure that correct terminology is used, especially in sensitive industries such as the legal sector so that the original context is maintained. Currently, Pangea is offering localization services in over 50 languages. Its objective is to help businesses reach new markets worldwide by delivering impactful content in these competitive markets.
Michal Shinitzky is the Managing Director at Pangea Translation Services. She has over twenty years of experience in localization, software development and linguistics. Throughout her career, Michal combined her technical knowledge, linguistic curiosity and passion which helped her play an important role in managing the localization departments of several prestigious companies. In 2015, Michal decided to expand her horizons and explore different options which led to her experiencing many challenges. She then established Pangea Translation Services and today, she is bringing additional expertise to the language industry with her passion and experience.
The company’s project management services are catered to client needs. Some of its clients request for more tech-
based support or for localization consultancy and Pangea’s project management team can deliver just that. Apart from this, the project managers identify the needs of each client and propose additional services such as copywriting or localized graphic design. This way, it reassures the clients that Pangea is aware of their marketing needs too.
Although the company is rapidly growing as a fast-paced company, it still manages to nurture a close relationship between its project managers and clients. It embeds strict quality checks as part of the entire package and takes pride in achieving thoroughness and accuracy as a standard practice. Over the years, the company has learned to balance quality and speed to meet client expectations.
Sometimes, it uses cutting-edge translation technology to achieve the best results. The company only uses technology to a certain extent with translation management systems and translation memory, ensuring that all human jobs such as the actual translations are performed by linguist experts. To undertake these detailed operations, Pangea divides its translators into teams based on industry expertise. For instance, it never offers a chance for a financial writer to translate a piece on gaming.
Nowadays, Pangea has the capability to offer quality and fast turnaround services to its clients. It also recruits and
delegates the right staff members who can support Pangea to achieve its missions and conquer the next milestone.
The Pangea team expresses that their journey has been an interesting and surprising one so far. They find every experience to be filled with positive and refreshing vibes. The bright side of working for Pangea is the challenge present in every new project. About its future, although the company hasn’t delved too deeply into translations for multimedia experiences, it is dipping its toes into the water by offering subtitling services. As the director of the company, Michal says, “We are keen on looking further into audio, video and multimedia localization services in the near future.”
‘‘
There’s no fun if the whole journey is a smooth and simple ride.
R is a way to escape the real
Vworld into something more fantastic. It has the potential to be the most social technology of all time. — Palmer Luckey
Virtual reality (VR) has been around for many years now, in spite of this it is a very underdeveloped technology. It holds a vast potential outside of entertainment, it has taken over various aspects of our lives right from the way we shop, experience, converse and even ways to conduct business.
With time this technology has gained popularity with many powerhouses, which has encouraged them to invest profoundly in VR technology. It has become more and more accessible for users, with manufacturers having already released household sets and are continuing to do so.
The recent advancement in the VR technology has made it more accessible for the general public. Due to this, it has had a remarkable impact on the business world also. The sole aim of the technology is to change human perception using virtual systems. The adoption of VR by users is still in its nascent stages and has gained popularity, and more and more businesses are coming up with VR based solutions. The reducing prices of VR headsets have also posed to be an advantage for the consumers as well.
It has also posed to be an advantage for the consumers as well, with the reducing prices of VR headsets. This has proved that VR is a tough and emergent market, with great scope for platforms which can allow businesses to leverage VR for process development and advanced marketing.
VR has the potential to become the most important tool that businesses can leverage to add on to their success.
Established businesses are taking the help of VR to train their new employees in a more cost-effective and efficient way. With the help of VR, one can have an employee in Los Angeles meeting with the one in London as if they were/ are in the same room.
VR offers an added advantage when it comes to the outward focus of the businesses; it allows a novel way to connect with customers. The company can build up a more story driven way of marketing which draws people into the company's brand, in a tangible and relational way. Virtual reality has potentially transformed the world of media. It has opened doors for businesses; to advertise in a way they had never imagined before.
Consumers are now equipped with the ability to test out and experience products, that they intend to purchase, in an entirely new way. It allows you to precisely visualize how a piece of furniture or painting would look in a particular room, or even test different makeup styles without leaving the room. A structured assessment, planning of the future of businesses, and with the right data VR can even give a valuable insight into the success of the business.
VR is now being used to simplify and reduce the cost of the process of product prototyping. Since VR has made it very cost-effective for businesses to design a product or an intricate component of an outsized machine virtually than actually build
the prototype, the use of VR in this sector is likely to develop quickly. VR and AR have also advanced the area of Computer-Aided Design (CAD).
Prototypes can now be shaped within the virtual space, allowing designers to accurately pin down its working way before the resources to build the product are acquired. This has eased the process of testing the product while saving both money and time.
The major setback that the e-commerce industry faces is the sales; customers are reluctant to buy products that they haven’t tried. With the help of VR, the consumers can potentially try out and visualize demonstrations for various product categories. Allowing a more clear vision of how their post-purchase experience will look like.
There are as many applications for VR as you can think of; it’s restricted by your imagination. — John Goddard.
Virtual Reality has numerous businesses perspective; not just by providing innovative features to the business products, but also in helping innovators create novel businesses with these technologies at the core.
Just like old-fashioned cafes, VR cafes would soon be a hit. These places will be a social gateway for people looking for augmented and virtually enhanced experiences. VR cafes would offer choices on diverse virtual reality equipment, comprising of games, videotapes, team-building exercises, social media practices, 3D books and content experiences, and virtually enriched meditation.
In real estate markets, VR platforms
permit house tours to people from anyplace around the globe. People can design and even paint their homes with this technology as they would in real life setting, to provide an outlook into the future look of their homes.
Cars like Audi R8 offers a VR-powered “test drive” experience. Similarly, even Airbus has introduced aircraft tours for its airline executives, which allows them an enriched experience and tour of the aircraft without actually visiting it.
As VR and AR carry on development, more and more knowledge about how it can be efficiently incorporated into the businesses has come to light, this amalgamation of new with the old will potentially have a huge positive impact on every sector. New entrepreneurs, startups, and businesses should surely keep an eye out for this technology, as it has become an integral part of marketing and businesses processes in the near future.
Bearing in mind how several industries and businesses are quickly validating and accepting virtual reality, the estimate is that it will take over the business scenario almost completely, isn’t bloated by any means.
International communications have become a vital part of the business world. This global reach is achieved through effective comprehension of various languages. Language is one of the most complex yet most important medium to maintain clear communication and data transmission. To give simplicity to language and its understanding, Professional Translators & Transcribers, Inc., (dba Protrans ) has come up with its cutting-edge solution. Protrans is a private corporation which provides federal, state and local law enforcement with Analytic Linguists. These are elite language experts who work alongside the law to investigate crimes.
Protrans occupies a specialized niche that other Language for Specific Purposes (LSPs) entities do not provide. Protrans is dedicated almost exclusively to providing expert language services in support of law enforcement. It screens, trains, assesses and certifies its Analytic Linguists through Translation Skills Training’s™ (TST ’s) program, administered in partnership with Montclair State University (MSU).
In addition, Protrans sponsors applicants in the process of obtaining security clearance once they are accepted into TST ’s training program. Since Protrans is a sole proprietorship, it has no bureaucracy, making it able to adapt to change of all kinds and respond quickly to satisfy the needs of clients.
The CEO of Protrans, Elena G. Rojas , founded Professional Translators and Transcribers, Inc. (dba Protrans ), in 1972. Since its inception, she has been the sole and continuous owner, expanding its operations and
creating Translation Skills Training™ (TST ) in 2014. Along the way, in addition to providing expert language services, she has also won prestigious awards and recognitions, inspired her staff and transformed lives all along the way. A dedicated CEO who never considered herself as the boss, counted herself as more of an employee, to maintain discipline at work.
She began by providing her services to the California Department of Corrections, then to the Los Angeles Police Department, and eventually to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA ). While at the DEA , the need for elite language experts like her grew exponentially, and Ms. Rojas was asked by them to train more language experts to do the even more specialized levels of work she was doing for the DEA
Protrans has grown because Ms. Rojas committed herself to develop the company’s operations alongside maintaining harmony with the changes in the general work environments in the linguistics industry. Being au fait with relevant emerging technologies alone is not enough. Protrans always aims to have a personal touch and never let the computers do the work.
This personal touch extends to Ms. Rojas’ spinoff company, Translation Skills Training™ (TST ) which is exclusively dedicated to screening, training, assessing and certifying Professional Analytic Linguists.
Protrans provides Analytic Linguists to a variety of federal, state and local agencies and private entities, offering language services in various languages, to interpret or translate from one language into another, to
monitor oral communication intercepts in foreign languages, summarizing them in English, as well as transcribing verbatim oral communication intercepts in the source language for subsequent translation into English.
The most prominent changes in the language service industry have resulted from technology. Technological innovations have and will continue to impact all types of LSPs in many ways. Word processing and email have enabled LSPs and freelancers to work remotely, freeing everyone from even the most severe geographical restrictions.
The internet and access to vast amounts of lexical data and information have empowered the LSPs and language experts to harness these tools and work smarter. Some LSPs and freelancers have advanced in ComputerAssisted-Translation (or Machine-Assisted Translation) which is known as CAT/MAT software that has increased output and earnings.
Similar to the case with literary works, the idiosyncratic nature of the spoken language of various groups and types, especially the colloquial, cannot be translated by automated means. This reality highlights the fact that skilled language experts need to be trained further in order to work as Analytic Linguists.
The challenges involved knowing what was needed from a pedagogical perspective in order to develop training
that specifically addressed the skills sets needed by Analytic Linguists. This training requires technologies for delivering instruction and assessment efficiently, while maintaining high standards. This twin challenge offered opportunities and Ms. Rojas sought experts of various kinds to develop an in-house curriculum. The demand continued to grow until it was too great to handle under one roof and that became the stimulus for Ms. Rojas’s creation of Translation Skills Training™ (TST ).
Protrans and TST are ceaselessly delivering their respective cutting-edge services, and in so, defining the future of their industries, and are committed to remaining so. Whether in terms of developing and continually improving its intuitive, effective website interactions with clients in need of language experts on the one hand, or, on the other, delivering online learning, Protrans and TST are already ahead of the curve due to the specialized nature of each of their activities.
— Elena G. Rojas Founder & CEO
Protrans will always have a personal touch, never allowing only the computers to do all the work.
In the present business world, multilingual translation services are extremely important if one is observing opportunities in the international market. To reach the global market, organizations need to constantly communicate with clients from all over the world and make effective interactions. One of the prominent requirements of doing business nowadays is a strong online presence. The official website is the face of a business to the world and while it targets a wider spectrum of audience, it needs to be translated and localized into preferred languages.
Traducta excels at delivering professional translation services offers industry-specific business translation services to support fields as diverse as Retail, Healthcare and Pharmaceutical, Real Estate, Human Resources, Marketing, Consumer Electronics, and many others. The company’s value-added services are Desktop Publishing, Terminology Management and on-demand Over-thePhone and Video Remote Interpreting (OPI and VRI). It delivers consistent quality in any language, any subject matter and any format an organization may require.
Yves Desjardins is the Founder and CEO of Traducta He did his graduation from the University of Montreal with a Specialized Degree in Translation in 1976. Yves acquired solid experience in translation as an employee of large International Corporations such as Merck Sharp & Dohme, Stelco Canada, RCA Canada, and IBM Canada. The wealth of experience and unified
knowledge in language translation inspired Yves to initiate his own translation firm.
Therefore, in early 1978 Yves founded Traducta a Multilingual Translation Services Company which majorly focuses on translation solutions for business professionals. Yves manages the whole business and contributes to the continued success of the company. He’s also actively involved in the company’s Quality Assurance processes.
Traducta is celebrating 40 years in business, making it one of the oldest Translation Companies in North America. It aims to consistently deliver quality, regardless the complexity of projects. The company has standard processes and unified tools, along with an expert team which guarantees its customer to get best value and quality.
Traducta offers many unified services including Multilingual Translation Services, which covers Document Translation, Adaptive Translation, and Professional Interpreting. The company also offers leading Language Review Services which consist of three types of revisions, namely Unilingual Revisions, Multilingual Revisions, and Third Party Revisions. Traducta also delivers Language Process Consulting Services to its clients to ensure their entire languagerelated workflow.
Yves states that “Traducta has been providing professional multilingual translation services for 40 years into over 150 languages. The most popular translation services we provide in North America are English to Spanish, English to French and English to German, close to English to Portuguese.”
Traducta is providing its customers using functionality with the help of unified Customer Portal. It enables them to securely submit their documents, track their status and retrieve final versions 24/7. The company also offers services to connect a user with a professional interpreter over the phone or via video call in any language. The whole process works within 30 seconds through an app installed on their smartphone.
Over the years, Traducta has reinvented itself several times to adapt to the changing prospect of the industry. Back in 1978, the firm received documents by courier, which were translated on typewriters using carbon copies.
In the 1990’s, the company was revolutionized with computers and text processing. At present, the company’s production capacity enables it to turn around large quantities of text in the same day, while ensuring the same quality.
Globalization and the rise of the Internet have had a significant impact on the language industry. More content is created every day, and businesses need to communicate in more than one language to stay competitive.
Traducta is also focused on this primary reason to develop a compact network of translators to cover practically all language combinations. The company is consequently working on translation services more effectively to enhance business communication.
Over the last years, Traducta has developed processes and tools to help its customers with audio, video, and multimedia localization requirements. The company has developed some projects including National TV Campaigns, Radio Spots, E-Learning Materials, Microsites, and Social Media Content, etc. Traducta is also established in handling any file format virtually and delivering publishing-ready content in any language.
— Yves Desjardins Founder & CEO‘‘
Leading Translation Services for Professionals.
Dave Gullo Co-founder & CTO VideoAmp
VideoAmp turns 4 years old this month. So many memories, and so much growth. Let’s reflect on some of the worst decisions and associated learnings that have been fundamental to our growth. Why the worst you say? Because when you accelerate your learning rate in a fail-fast environment, it then allows you to make fast decisions vs the analysis paralysis predicament.
One of my favorite wildcard interview questions for managers is: “Describe the failure you’re most proud of.” This sometimes catches people off guard, so I’ll share mine first to get the conversation going. Inevitably it comes down to choosing because there are so many.
You can’t talk about growth and success without talking about these failures. Unless you’re some kind of hybrid AIrobot-space-alien who’s absolutely perfect, there’s going to be mistakes. What’s important is that as a leader you own your mistakes and be transparent about them.
Finding the right people is the single most important aspect of growing a startup. The biggest mistakes in hiring have been:
Ÿ “Hiring out of hand” or short cutting the normal processes because the candidate is well known by other engineers in the group.
Ÿ “Promoting out of hand” is another variation of this where you don’t put someone through the normal due diligence because they already present. In our case, individual contributor (IC) engineers don’t go through the rigorous reference checks that new managers do.
Ÿ “Hiring under duress” or lowering your bar simply to meet headcount goals. I strongly advise to hire fewer “full-full stack” senior engineers vs a bunch of junior or mid-level career developers who require more time, nurturing and precious attention units from your senior staff.
This is a moving target, and one which has definitely been an ongoing series of blogs. In the early stage, we “over prescribed scrum.” Something that a very early stage company can do, along with too much agile processes too soon.
For example, prototypes and proof of concepts should not have a rigorous definition of done, with endless unit, functional, and end-to-end tests because the product’s requirements will probably zig-zag wildly.
Conversely, having too little process when you are supporting enterprise customers can also be a problem. I spent my prior days as an IC and
contractor retrofitting and scaling CI/CD pipelines and training engineers how to write better tests.
The challenge is right-sizing this all along the way, and the trigger points on when to change may not be obvious. I say this because we grew headcount by 22 engineers from Oct 2017 to Feb 2018, and in the process we did not modify our simplified Kanban approach to a prescribed Scrum process quickly enough. Growing pains emerged, to say the least. Now we’re in a spot where we can withstand a magnitude scale of growth with roughly the same squad and tribe-level process.
Riffing off rapid growth of Brains in engineering, we didn’t scale management fast enough. Almost all startup engineering orgs start very flat, with all ICs and no management. You have “tech leads” who may split their time doing light managerial functions, but they all write code and dive into the operations.
The biggest fail here in scaling the ICs was not scaling the org and management structure to follow. At ~44 engineers and data scientists, we have a duty to deliver on our mission to provide an environment where they have the opportunity to do the best work of their lives and be worth more in the marketplace.
Without this vital management structure, there is a vacuum. Do not bolt this on later, build it as you go. We took inspiration from Spotify’s model of engineering organizational scaling.
We’ve talked about all of these fails, how about something that has worked well for us?
When doing initial contact with a candidate, I often ask “why are you in market?” I have seen countless folks who are looking because their current management does not have their growth and career pathing in mind. In extreme cases, they can do a day’s work in four hours, feel like they are under-challenged, and have not learned anything in years. They work in an environment like the movie Office Space.
Taking an opposite approach is to engage in the growth and pathing of every individual. We do this by:
Ÿ Aligning the growth of the individual with the company’s growth.
Ÿ Having management check in frequently on the success of this, and
Ÿ Setting up formal quarterly check-ins on measuring these goals. Google adopted this early on from John Doerr in the form of OKRs, and there are great platforms out there which can formally measure and track these objectives.
Career pathing is a longer-term concern. I ask candidates from the start “so what’s the next job after VideoAmp?” This often catches them off guard, then after careful thought most reply with a role 1-2 levels beyond where they’re at now. It’s our goal to help steer them in whatever path they currently see.
Many earlier-career engineers think management is their ultimate path, but I have found that many will stay on a tract of engineering excellence. Whether it’s a Principal Engineer or a VP of Engineering, the goal is to orient the new challenges in a manner which grows them in that direction, even if we can’t fully realize their ultimate pathing goal while at the company.
By paying careful attention to these details, we have found our annual retention rate in the high 90%.
