Hosted by Florian Faes and Esther Bond, with guest Anna Wyndham, in their SlatorPod year-end 2024 episode, key language industry trends over the course of the past year, including trends, drivers, and predictions, 2025, will be discussed.
First, language industry news of the week: LXT acquired clickworker with the goal of doubling revenues by 2025 by expanding its AI data capabilities. Esther also shares how EzDubs, a speech translation startup, raised USD 4.2m in seed funding.
Florian comments that RWS published revenues for 2024 that are stable with £180m from AI-powered products and services. Additionally, YouTube announced the rollout of AI dubbing, enabling content creators to reach new language-speaking audiences, but admitted limitations at this point, including poor voice quality.
In their discussion, the trio talked about the UK House of Lords inquiry into court interpreting and translation, highlighting pay issues for interpreters, quality issues, and how AI is being deployed for quality assurance.
Reflecting on 2024, Anna outlines three major trends: speech-to-speech translation, "translation as a feature," where translation capabilities are integrated into everyday software like project management tools, and the evolution of localization roles toward AI-driven skills.
Looking forward, Anna foresees rapid adoption of AI by the public sector given the cost constraints and the need for scalability, whereas Florian envisions further breakthroughs in machine translation quality estimation and, possibly, IPOs in the language tech industry. Esther predicts higher levels of M&A activity in the industry, where niche providers seek stability and scalability in a competitive market.
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