Slator - Language Industry News

Two seasoned venture capital investors, Shesh Amathnadu and Pramod Gosavi, joined the Investor Panel at SlatorCon Silicon Valley in early September. The pair shared their view on the language AI thesis and areas of opportunity within language AI with a 200-strong audience.  Amathnadu is Senior Investment Director at SK Telecom Ventures, the corporate venture arm of South Korea’s largest telecom operator SK, whose investments include Anthropic, Perplexity, and 12 Labs. Gosavi is Senior Principal at Blumberg Capital, a US-based B2B generalist investor, which makes investments from Pre-Seed to Series B from its two funds. With solid engineering backgrounds and more than a decade of investment experience, both Amathnadu and Gosavi have become experts in AI investing. Amathnadu discussed the current AI cycle and described the launch of ChatGPT in 2022 as an inflection point, which created a “clear differentiation of traditional machine learning [ML] versus generative AI.” In summary of ...

  YouTube  has  announced  that it has rolled out its Multi-Language Audio (MLA) feature to “millions of creators,” enabling them to upload their own audio tracks in multiple languages using human voiceover artists or recordings from other AI tools. The announcement follows YouTube’s decision in June to  roll out automated AI-generated dubs  to 80 million creators worldwide, which creators  slammed  as “too robotic” and “cringe,” triggering some creators to demand access to the MLA tool. YouTube, which made the MLA tool available to a limited number of YouTube creators in  early 2023 ,  stated  that “on average, creators uploading Multi-Language Audio tracks to their videos saw over 25% of their watch time come from views in the video’s non-primary language.” In addition, YouTube commented that MLA tracks “ amplified views by 3x ” on Jamie Oliver’s channel, with one creator, Mark Rober, having the “highest number of MLA dubs uploade...

Known as much for its flagship write-assist offering as for ubiquitous advertising, the  Grammarly  Editor platform raised USD 1bn from  General Catalyst ‘s Customer Value Fund. The funds will operate like a loan or credit line with capped returns tied to revenue, rather than an equity stake. The financing,  announced  on X on May 29, 2025, by the company’s current CEO, Shishir Mehrotra, is structured in a way that allows General Catalyst to increase their investment in Grammarly without diluting ownership by issuing new shares to other investors — according to  Reuters . The Reuters article also said the capital is intended to support and accelerate Grammarly’s growth through increased spending on sales, marketing, and strategic acquisitions. The investment is also expected to allow 16-year-old Grammarly to reallocate funds towards product development, particularly expanding its AI-driven offerings with communication-centric tools and integrated external a...

Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, breaking down Slator’s  2025 Language Service Provider Index  (LSPI), which features nearly 300 LSPs and reports 6.6% combined growth in 2024 revenues, totaling USD 8.4bn. Florian touches on a surprise USD 10m donation from private equity executive Mario Giannini to  launch a new MA translation and interpreting program  at California State University, Long Beach. The duo talks about  McKinsey’s State of AI report , which continues to classify translators as AI-related roles and shows that hiring them has become slightly easier. In Esther’s M&A corner,  TransPerfect  announced two acquisitions, Technicolor Games and Blu Digital Group, further expanding its presence in gaming and media localization. In Israel,  BlueLion and GATS merged  to form TransNarrative, and Brazilian providers Korn Translations and Zaum Langs  joined forces  under the Idlewild Burg group. Me...

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 ...

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...