Slator is coming to Tokyo. Japan is one of the world’s major language services markets. And as Tokyo gears up to host the Olympics in 2020, the country is emerging as a hotspot for innovation in language technology.

Following three highly successful events in London, New York, and Zurich in 2017, SlatorCon Tokyo 2018 again assembles a stacked line-up of speakers that cuts across all areas of the language industry, from business leaders and startup entrepreneurs to technologists and investors.

Presentations will be in Japanese and English. Remote Simultaneous Interpretation will be powered by Interprefy.

Agenda

1:00pm
Registration

1:45pm
2018 – The Make or Break Year for the Language Industry
Florian Faes, Co-Founder and Managing Director, Slator

2:10pm
Winning with Suppliers: Ecosystem of SAP Language Services
Eiji Sano, Director, SAP Language Services Japan, SAP

2:35pm
Inside Japan’s Language Services Startup Ecosystem
Oya Koc, Founder & CEO, Oyraa

3:00pm
Networking Break

3:45pm
Ikuo Higashi, President, Honyaku Center Inc.

4:10pm
Kayoko Takeda, Professor of Translation and Interpreting Studies, Rikkyo University

4:35pm
Chizu Tanaka, Translations & Content Agency Team Leader, Booking.com

5:05pm
Speaker’s Panel

5:30pm
Networking Reception

8:00pm
End

Speakers

Ikuo Higashi, President, Honyaku Center Inc. 

Our Growth Strategy in The Changing Market

• Introduction of Honyaku Center
• About the market size and demand trends of language services in Japan
• Our growth strategy by domain expertise

Higashi was appointed as the Director of Honyaku Center in 1997, then became the President in 2001.He also holds the post of President in four subsidiaries, as well as President of Japan Translation Federation since 2006.

Oya Koc – Founder & CEO, Oyraa

Inside Japan’s Language Services Startup Ecosystem 

• Brief introduction of the Japanese startup ecosystem
• Japanese language services startups and how they are positioned
• The way forward: challenges and opportunities

Oya Koc founded remote interpretation startup Oyraa in 2016. Originally from Turkey, Oya has lived in Japan for the past ten years. After graduating from Yildiz Technological University in Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering, Oya received her Master’s degree in Precision Engineering from the University of Tokyo. From 2013 to 2016, Oya was a Consultant with The Boston Consulting Group’s Tokyo office.

Eiji Sano – Director, SAP Language Services Japan, SAP

Winning with Suppliers: Ecosystem of SAP Language Services

• Introduction of the language services at SAP
• Best practices: supplier engagement and communication
• Celebrating further successes with suppliers

Eiji Sano joined SAP as the manager of SAP Language Services Japan in 2000, and experienced the changes of business models of language services. He received his Master’s degrees in Education (TESOL) and Business Administration from Temple University, for which he worked as Director of Business Office of the Japan Campus from 1996 to 1999. Eiji has 3 years’ experience of a translator.

Kayoko Takeda – Prof. Translation and Interpreting Studies, Rikkyo University

Translator and Interpreter Education at Japanese Universities

• Idiosyncracies of translator and interpreter training in Japan
• Overview of translator and interpreter education at Japanese universities
• Advancing translator and interpreter education in Japan: measuring up to international standards

Kayoko Takeda has been involved in translator and interpreter education for over two decades. She was the head of the Japanese translation and interpreting program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey before joining Rikkyo University as Professor of Translation and Interpreting Studies in 2011. Kayoko’s main research interests lie in social, political, and historical aspects of translation and interpreting, and translator and interpreter education.

Chizu Tanaka, Translations & Content Agency Team Leader, Booking.com 

Speaking the Language of Global Guests 

• Who we are
• How the Translation & Content Agency is structured
• How do we support product localization?
• How do we scale?

Chizu Tanaka joined Booking.com in 2012 as Japanese Language Specialist and currently manages a team of Japanese Language Specialists and a Geo services specialist who support the product localization and maintain Geo data on Booking.com. Prior to that she worked as a translator for Coca-Cola Japan, Weber Shandwick, and Toyota Motors. She received her Master’s degree in Translations & Interpreting, Linguistics from MacQuarie University.

Florian Faes – Co-Founder and Managing Director, Slator

2018 – The Language Industry’s Make or Break Year

• Why 2018 will bring the most profound changes the language industry has seen since the introduction of translation memory
• Integrating neural machine translation into the supply chain
• How the leading language service providers are consolidating the market

Based in Zurich, Florian Faes spent over eight years working in Asia, stationed in Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai. Before launching Slator in 2015, he was with CLS Communication as Head of Asia and he was part of group management during the trade sale to Lionbridge.