Slator - Language Industry News

Amid growing uncertainty about translation careers due to AI advancements and sensationalized headlines, one California university is celebrating a transformative donation. On March 11, 2025, California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) announced that Mario Giannini, Executive Co-Chairman of private equity firm Hamilton Lane, has gifted $10 million to establish a Master of Arts program in Translation and Interpreting. The program is set to launch in the fall of 2026. This isn’t Giannini’s first significant contribution to CSULB. In January 2017, he donated $1.75 million to establish The Clorinda Donato Center for Global Romance Languages and Translation Studies, named after its current director. CSULB Center Expands Translation Studies with Additional $5.25M Gift Housed within CSULB’s College of Liberal Arts, The Clorinda Donato Center for Global Romance Languages and Translation Studies serves as a hub for both pedagogical research and instruction in Romance languages. Students c...

  A Pinch, a Twitch , and Everything in Between: Pinch’s Christian Safka and Twitch’s Susan Maria Howard were among the top language industry leaders who joined hundreds of attendees on March 18, 2025, for the first SlatorCon Remote conference of the year. Kicking off the day’s events, Slator’s Head of Advisory , Esther Bond, welcomed attendees and invited Managing Director Florian Faes to share the latest findings and insights in his highly anticipated 'industry health check. In his presentation, Faes began by reflecting on the challenges of 2024. He discussed data from Slator’s 2025 Language Service Provider Index (LSPI) and highlighted the growth of interpreting-focused companies, contrasted with the struggles faced by small, undifferentiated agencies and the rapid rise of language AI, driven by companies like ElevenLabs and DeepL . Faes also highlighted key findings from Slator’s 2025 Localization Buyer Survey , including the challenges buyers face in implementing AI and the ...

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 ...

Slator’s 30-page 2025 Localization Buyer Survey provides key insights from enterprise buyers of translation and localization services. The survey of 50 enterprise buyers uncovers the challenges buyers expect to face in 2025 and assesses the extent to which they have extracted value from language AI to date. Slator 2025 Localization Buyer Survey The findings offer valuable insights for both buyers and providers. For enterprise buyers, the report serves as a benchmarking tool — buyers can compare their strategies on budgets, AI adoption, and operational challenges with industry peers. For language service providers (LSPs) and translation management system (TMS) providers, the results provide direct insights into where buyers perceive gaps in support. The survey responses shed light on buyer expectations and priorities, helping inform service development, technology investment, and client engagement strategies. Respondents represented a diverse range of industries, offering a broad ...

An  article  on the Android Authority site from March 2025 states that the instant translation function could soon be available as a permanent feature within “Circle to Search.” Android’s Instant Translation Gets Enhanced in ‘Circle to Search’ If enabled, users will be able to translate whatever they select on the screen using Circle to Search on the screen into a device’s supported languages (this varies by device brand and model) without navigating out of the search function. Back in March 2024,  Google  announced the rollout of Language Translation Technology in the “ Circle to Search ” function for Android, which allows users to circle or tap text or an object on their mobile device screen and automatically search for it without switching apps.  So far, users have been able to translate things like menus on photos or PDFs by long-pressing the home button or navigation bar, and then tapping the translate icon.  Google’s  Android XR , the opera...

In a February 20, 2025   paper , researchers Danni Liu and Jan Niehues from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology proposed a way to improve how large language models (LLMs) perform across different languages. New Research Explores How to Boost Large Language Models’ Multilingual Performance They explained that LLMs like Llama 3 and Qwen 2.5, show strong performance in tasks like machine translation (MT) but often struggle with low-resource languages due to limited available data. Current fine-tuning processes do not effectively bridge the performance gaps across diverse languages, making it difficult for models to generalize effectively beyond high-resource settings. The researchers focus on leveraging the middle layers of LLMs to enable better cross-lingual transfer across multiple tasks, including MT. LLMs consist of multiple layers . The early (or bottom) layers handle basic patterns like individual words, while the final (or top) layers focus on producing a response. The midd...

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. CEOs React as Trump Declares English the Sole Official Language of the US 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 historic...

A new Executive Order published on March 1, 2025, by the US White House designates English as the only official language of the United States and revokes Executive Order 13166 , “Improving Access to Services for Persons with Limited English Proficiency ” (LEP), signed in 2000 during the Clinton administration. Trump Makes English the Only Official Language of the US, Revokes Clinton Language Access Order The new order states that it is in the country’s best interest for the federal government to designate only one official language. It also argues that “Establishing English as the official language will not only streamline communication but also reinforce shared national values, and create a more cohesive and efficient society.” The order also specifies that agency heads, defined as “the highest-ranking official of an agency,” are “not required to amend, remove, or otherwise stop production of documents, products, or other services prepared or offered in languages other than Engli...