Slator - Language Industry News

As 2024 comes to a close, it is time to reflect on the most popular stories, trends, innovations, and themes that made the Slator headlines throughout the year, highlighting key developments in the language industry. Here is a selection of stories that attracted the most attention and engagement from our readers around the world. Will Large Language Models Edge Linguists Out of the Language Industry? One of Slator’s  most-read stories in 2024  detailed a May 2024 paper from the  University of Zurich  and Georgetown University that explored the role of linguists in the evolving field of  machine translation  (MT). The entrance of  large language models  (LLMs) has reduced the reliance on linguists for grammar and semantic coherence while designing a system.  However, the authors concluded, there are a number of points in the process where linguistic expertise is still essential. These include building parallel corpora for MT; developing techno...

For the language industry , the year 2024 will go down as a year that had multiple developments and innovations at a fast pace, but this growth came with some distinct trends on the technological front that included translation feature as a service (TaaF), the emergence of multimodal AI , and retrieval augmented generation (RAG) and the use of large language models (LLM) enabled applications.  The integration of AI tools and human skill was in the central place in the deliberations of the industry specialists even as the different size companies had their perspectives. The responses of the readers and viewers as revealed in the weekly Slator polls are snapshots of the sentiments, preferences and scopes across the industry.  1. Is it Time for Language Service Providers to Change Their Mindset?  The language service sector has survived difficult times in the past but it was not business as usual for an industry that started 2024 on the wrong foot as reports of some firm...

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. https://youtu.be/CtrVDikK7lE In their discussion, the trio talked about the UK House of Lords inquiry into court interpreting and translation , highlighting pay issues for interpreters, quality i...

Stoquart, an language services provider  based in Belgium, has acquired Brussels-based ETC Europe, which holds the status of being a translation agency accredited by the European Union and other governmental and international organizations. The transaction was closed on 24 October 2024 after Stoquart's takeover of French competitor Version Internationale in 2023 . The founding managing director of Stoquart Translation Services, Dimitri Stoquart, found contact person ETC Europe General Manager Angelina Janssen due to meetings with the Belgian Association of Translation Companies or BQTA. He stated that Janssen suggested Stoquart form a consortium with ETC Europe and another language service provider, VerbiVis, to respond to the European Commission's TRAD23 RFP . This resulted in Stoquart achieving second place for English-French translation. In 2024, he mentioned that Janssen wanted to step back and suggested that Stoquart assume control of ETC Europe. Before the acquisition, ...

New SAG-AFTRA Game Localization Contract Restricts AI Usage in Dubbing On November 14, 2024, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA)  announced  an updated version of a previous agreement that covers the localization of  video game  projects produced in a non-English language. With approximately 160,000 members, SAG-AFTRA calls itself the “world’s largest union representing performers and broadcasters.” The union also represents voiceover artists, including those who provide dubbing.  As comics and gaming website Bleeding Cool  reported , the new Independent Interactive Localization Agreement is essentially an updated version of the base terms from the union’s Tiered Budget Independent Interactive Media Agreement, plus  AI  protections. The new agreement is signed on a project-by-project basis by employers whose project was originally scripted in a language other than English, and whose intellectual ...