SlatorCon Remote March 2025 Offers Essential Insights on the Language Industry and AI

 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 growing need for AI partners to address inefficiencies. He also noted the mixed outlook for the industry in the year ahead.

LLMs Are Just the Beginning

The first expert presentation was delivered by Sara Papi, a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Fondazione Bruno Kessler, who discussed the current state of research in simultaneous speech-to-text translation.

Papi highlighted discrepancies between the original definition and current practices in the speech translation field, identified through a review of expert literature. She specifically pointed out issues related to the use of pre-segmented speech and inconsistencies in terminology.

Slator’s Head of Research, Anna Wyndham, moderated the first panel of the day, featuring Simone Bohnenberger-Rich, Chief Product Officer at Phrase; Simon Koranter, Head of Global Production & Engineering at Compass Languages; and Matteo Nonne, Localization Program Manager at On.

The panelists discussed the evolving role of generative AI in localization, highlighting its shift from initial experimentation to scalable solutions that drive growth. They shared insights on how AI is transforming localization from a cost center into a strategic function by enabling customized, context-aware content adaptation and addressing challenges related to return on investment (ROI) and stakeholder expectations.

Slator’s Alex Edwards, Senior Research Analyst, moderated another panel discussion focused on the adoption of large language models (LLMs) for AI translation in enterprise workflows. Panelists Manuel Herranz, CEO of Pangeanic, and Bruno Bitter, CEO of Blackbird.io, explored whether LLMs truly represent the state of the art.

Herranz and Bitter emphasized that middleware and techniques like Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) are more advanced, and highlighted the importance of fine-tuning smaller, domain-specific models. They also discussed the role of orchestration technology in effectively managing a range of AI tools.

In his presentation, Supertext’s CEO Samuel Läubli echoed insights shared by other speakers, emphasizing that LLMs generate fluent texts by considering broader context. He explored the implications of an AI-first era for translation, the rise of smaller competitive players, and the continued importance of human expertise.

Läubli highlighted that the new Supertext resulted from a 2024 merger between LSP Supertext and AI translation company Textshuttle. He remarked, “I’ve been working in this field for 10 years now, but I haven’t seen a system or AI agent that can guarantee a correct translation — and I’m quite sure I won’t see it in the next 10 years.”

Teresa Toronjo, Localization Manager at Malt, discussed collaboration within leaner localization teams, stressing the importance of diverse partnerships, scalable processes, and maintaining quality consistency with cost-effectiveness guided by experts.

If you missed SlatorCon Remote March 2025 in real-time, recordings will be available soon through our Pro and Enterprise plans.

AI Enhances Multilingual Patient Care with Insights from Jaide Health CEO Joe Corkery, MD

Joe Corkery, MD, CEO and Co-Founder of Jaide Health, joins SlatorPod to discuss how Jaide Health is driving medical interpreting and translation with AI, bridging communication gaps for limited English proficiency (LEP) patients and improving healthcare accessibility.

With a background in computer science, medicine, and AI product leadership at Google, Joe co-founded Jaide Health with Julie Wilner, RN, in 2023 to address a long-standing need for real-time, interactive communication for the LEP patient population.

Unlike older machine translation models, which worked sentence by sentence without context, Joe shares how generative AI can maintain coherence, track gender references, and infer meaning from prior context — crucial in medical settings.

The CEO remains pragmatic about Trump’s executive order designating English as the US’s official language and revoking previous language access mandates. He argues that such policies will not change the healthcare industry’s commitment to multilingual patient care but may push hospitals to seek more cost-effective solutions — potentially accelerating AI adoption.

Looking ahead, Jaide Health is focusing on expanding into document translation, particularly for discharge instructions and patient portal messaging, areas where current solutions are slow or impractical.

Slator 2025 Localization Buyer Survey

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 perspective on localization strategies, operational hurdles, and technology-driven shifts.

AI’s impact on localization budgets was a key theme. The survey explored how buyers expect AI-driven efficiencies to influence spending — whether cost savings will reduce budget, be reinvested, or reallocated. The survey also assessed how successfully buyers have integrated AI to date, tangible value realized, and common barriers to realizing AI value.

The survey looks at changes in per unit base rates for translation over the past year and expectations for pricing in the next 12 months. These insights offer a view of how pricing strategies may evolve, allowing LSPs to anticipate pricing pressures and align with buyer expectations.

Operational challenges and inefficiencies were another key focus. Buyers identified their greatest cost inefficiencies and barriers to achieving Localization Buyer Survey goals. Open-text responses were categorized, revealing 10 common inefficiencies and five key challenges for 2025 — highlighting persistent hurdles from technological integration to internal complexity.

The survey also explored buyer expectations for AI implementation, particularly the role of LSPs. Buyers indicated whether they seek strategic guidance, hands-on support, or fully integrated AI solutions. The results show that most buyers view LSPs as strategic partners, expecting proactive support to scale AI solutions and optimize workflows.

Finally, the survey looked into buyer expectations for AI integration within the TMS. The results show that almost all buyers now see AI capabilities as a baseline requirement, with many expecting customizable AI workflows and integrated machine translation. 

Ultimately, these insights aim to help stakeholders navigate the changing localization landscape in 2025 — enabling buyers to benchmark strategies, optimize workflows, and address operational challenges, while supporting LSPs and TMS providers in adapting services, aligning with buyer expectations, and responding effectively to emerging industry shifts.