To mark the end of another busy and exciting year in the language industry, Slator has compiled a list of the most noteworthy quotes of 2019, covering an array of topics from technology and M&A to markets, investment and the competitive landscape.
Technology
March 11, 2019: Language Industry Hires at Literra, Byword, Veris, and Milengo
“The biggest challenge is to combine technology and the human side without losing the latter” — Gordana Antonijević, Head of Translation Unit, Veris
March 20, 2019: Cautious Optimism as SDL Announces Full-Year 2018 Results
“Post-editing today is about 35% of the business. And it is a mix. There are languages where we do around 50% of post-editing and there are some languages still in the single digits due to the availability of neural machine translation (or lack thereof) in those languages. We do a lot more in life sciences, financial services, and others that lends itself less. In other areas like fund management, clinical labelling, we use less machine translation” — Adolfo Hernandez, CEO, SDL
March 26, 2019: Language Industry Hires at BTI Studios, AppTek, Xillio, and TransPerfect Connect
“The most valuable companies in the world — Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook — are leading the way in deploying speech applications, but every company should evaluate how to incorporate this technology in their business model” — Brian Keane, Senior Vice President of Corporate Development and Strategy, AppTek
March 26, 2019: Language Industry Hires at BTI Studios, AppTek, Xillio, and TransPerfect Connect
“Custom NMT models already show great promise for our multilingual email and chat support, and we see NMT and AI at large as great tools to augment and improve the current interpretation process — though we don’t anticipate it as a full replacement” — Steven Cheeseman, Vice President of Contact Center Operations, TransPerfect
April 2, 2019: Google Translate Shortcut Goes Viral, Lures Newbie App Localizers
“Using Google Sheets for translation is just a bad idea. It is one step forward and two steps back” — Pedro Souto, Head of Marketing, Lokalise
April 24, 2019: Terminology Assistance Coming to a Simultaneous Interpreter Near You
“CAI technology offers exciting possibilities for revolutionizing interpreting in the same way CAT tools revolutionized translation” — Alexander Gansmeier, Jonathan Downie & Alexander Drechsel, Interpreters & Podcast Presenters, Troublesome Terps
June 14, 2019: MT Post-Editing Boosts Swiss Bank’s Translation Productivity by Up to 60%, Study Finds
“Even with language pairs that have received little attention in research settings and small amounts of in-domain data for system adaptation, NMT post-editing allows for substantial time savings and leads to equal or slightly better quality” — Samuel Läubli, CTO, TextShuttle
June 19, 2019: Language Industry Hires at Diuna, IYUNO, Unbabel, Global Lingo, and Anzu Global
“If I think of something that is needed in the translation industry, it would be quality estimation integrated with automated post-editing. If I think of what will be the next big thing in MT, it will be something that we are starting to see: speech-to-speech translation in real time” — Carla Parra Escartín, Director of Linguistic Services, Unbabel
July 18, 2019: What’s so Massive About Google’s Massively Multilingual Neural Machine Translation?
“The scale of the data is 25 billion sentences, which is several orders of magnitude larger than previous multilingual models” — Graham Neubig, Assistant Professor, Carnegie Mellon’s Language Technology Institute in the School of Computer Science
July 30, 2019: Language Industry Hires at Tilde, Andovar, XTM, Acolad, and Mastervoice
“Translation buyers do not stop at the funny mistakes made by Google Translate anymore. They are now more aware of the possibilities offered by MT. Some buyers are expert in MT and know exactly what they want. Yet, others are still hesitant and want to hear more. In between, there are buyers who want to use MT thinking they will significantly drop costs or delivery times” — Christophe Eyraud, Head of Business Solutions, Acolad Group
July 30, 2019: Lingua Custodia Raises USD 1.3m Ahead of Luxembourg Launch
“Machine translation has become mainstream and there is a strong interest for domain-specialized machine translation services” — Olivier Debeugny, CEO, Lingua Custodia
August 19, 2019: What Makes a Good Post-Editor: Research Examines Activity Patterns of over 300 Linguists
“Understanding how human post-editors work could open the door to the design of better interfaces, smarter allocation of human translators to content, and automatic post-editing” — André Martins, Head of Research and António Góis, Research Scientist, Unbabel
August 30, 2019: Language Industry Hires at EC Innovations, Venga Global, AccuLing, and CQ fluency
“In my experience, whenever a client has requested PEMT, it is often riddled with so many errors that it takes as long, if not longer, than it would have taken if the linguist had just done the initial translation” — Amanda Hadlock, Director of Project Management, AccuLing
December 2, 2019: BLEU Has Measured Machine Translation Quality Since 2002. It’s Fast Becoming Useless
“This perspective of BLEU becoming useless is actually not that scary. This is happening because of increased quality” — Marcin Junczys-Dowmunt, Principal NLP Scientist with Microsoft’s Machine Translation Team
December 3, 2019: Key Takeaways from SlatorCon Amsterdam 2019
“By the time we’ve got to coffee, things will have changed [in AI]” — Andrew Bredenkamp, CEO and Founder, Acrolinx
December 5, 2019: A Warning About Data Annotation as a Business From a Man Who Sells AI to AI Firms
“When it comes to delivering value, none of the algorithms will deliver value without data. Data trumps algorithms every time” — Andrew Bredenkamp, CEO and Founder, Acrolinx
December 6, 2019: Which Engines Work for Me? Machine Translation as a Managed Service at One Hour Translation
“There are two main reasons why customers are approaching us and asking about taking advantage of machine translation. One is price, and the second one, which I like more, is, ‘I have tons of content to translate’” — Yaron Kaufman, Co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer, One Hour Translation
Markets
January 16, 2019: Lionbridge Acquires Gengo to Bolster AI Business
“I can envision a day when our AI business is actually larger than our localization business” — John Fennelly, CEO, Lionbridge
February 5, 2019: Semantix Snaps Up Remote Interpreting Startup Tolkvox
“The Nordic markets have traditionally relied heavily on pre-booked interpretation, even for over-the-phone assignments. On demand offerings do exist, but often suffer from low reliability, few languages, and long connection times due to low volumes” — Patrik Attemark, CEO, Semantix
February 20, 2019: Automated Transcription Provider Verbit Raises USD 23m in Series A
“In the legal industry, Verbit’s solution is able to help tackle the court reporter shortage and provide companies with the technology to make reporters more efficient to cover all jobs” — Tom Livne, CEO, Verbit
February 28, 2019: Language Industry Hires at Betranslated, Alamma, Technica, and Summa Linguae
“The most critical issue is how to find good linguists for an acceptable fee. Baltic countries are not that big and the resources are really limited. Sometimes, it seems that a good translator’s name is more top secret than your client’s name” — Karmela Molodok, Vendor Manager, Technica Translations
March 12, 2019: Inside the Contractor Debate Affecting US Freelance Translators, Interpreters, and LSPs
“Simply making those workers employees of every agency with whom they engage is wildly inefficient and financially untenable for the agencies” — Rick Antezana, President, Association of Language Companies
Slator 2021 Language Industry Market Report
March 26, 2019: Language Industry Hires at BTI Studios, AppTek, Xillio, and TransPerfect Connect
“Making the subtleties of language and emotion of a spoken or sung performance carry across to whatever language […] those creative elements are not easily replicated by AI, just yet” — Chris Carey, Chief Revenue Officer and Managing Director for The Americas, BTI Studios
April 15, 2019: Media Localizer Lylo Acquires Italian Dubbing Studio
“Volume commitment is very hard to get from a client, pricing will always be the priority, and clients will never guarantee you a specific number of hours” — Grégoire Parcollet, CEO, Lylo (since acquired by TransPerfect)
May 7, 2019: Morningside Translations Buys Net-Translators, Expands Israel Presence
“In some instances, the technical nature of IP lends itself well to NMT, while the fact that each and every foreign filing is novel limits the application” — Tom Klein & Roland Lessard, co-CEOs, Morningside Translations
May 22, 2019: Stratus Video and InDemand Merge in Bid to Consolidate US Video Interpreting Market
“If bilingual staff act as interpreters in a dual role, they end up with dual motivation, having to diagnose and treat and interpret, which is not ideal” — David Fetterolf, President, Stratus Video
June 19, 2019: Language Industry Hires at Diuna, IYUNO, Unbabel, Global Lingo, and Anzu Global
“At the moment, I don’t think there should be a concern that this [automatic lip sync dubbing] is going to take over the dubbing industry as we still need an actor to deliver a believable and empathetic performance; and I have not seen any technologies yet that can deliver a ‘performance’ rather than [just] a ‘read’” — Mike Cardinal, VP of Global Dubbing, IYUNO
June 19, 2019: Language Industry Hires at Diuna, IYUNO, Unbabel, Global Lingo, and Anzu Global
“Travel is an obvious area of high adoption for us. With numerous global OTA (online travel agents) and sites allowing us to compare before we commit, prices fluctuate, availability of flights and accommodations change constantly; and, in order to maintain profit margin, NMT is the best way to deliver great service at profitable cost” — Michael Ollitervo-Murphy, VP of Customer Experience, Unbabel
June 26, 2019: This Video on the Work of Interpreters Is Going Viral
“Interpreting is rather enigmatic for the general public. When done well by a professional, it looks like magic. When done poorly, it can be a real mess” — Barry Slaughter Olsen, Associate Professor, Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey
August 8, 2019: ‘Similar to Lyft or Uber’: California Judge Rules Interpreters Are Not Employees in IU Case
“In the case of certain languages, an interpreter might get no more than one or two assignments per year and it would make no sense to treat that person as an employee” — James G. Queenan, Administrative Law Judge, California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board
August 21, 2019: ‘We Are Not Gig Workers’ — Interpreter Associations Fight California’s AB5
“We are not the ‘gig economy’ workers AB5 is designed to protect, but rather highly trained and skilled professionals with established professional standards to adequately perform our work” — Michèle Stevens, Professional Conference Interpreter, Member of the International Association of Conference Interpreters (AIIC)
August 23, 2019: Expert Questions Legality of Danish Interpreters’ Plans to Boycott LSP EasyTranslate
“I fail to see how HK can have advocated for the current situation or otherwise been involved in it. Instead of bashing and blaming interpreters and HK for EasyTranslate’s shortcomings, I strongly recommend that EasyTranslate direct any legal concerns to the consultants in charge of the tender” — Susanne Frank, Police and Court Interpreter
August 30, 2019: Language Industry Hires at EC Innovations, Venga Global, AccuLing, and CQ fluency
“Transcreation and creative marketing localization requires the linguists to be able to move freely between the cultures they’re localizing into, not only language. And while there are many specialists with superb knowledge of languages, finding linguists with equally good understanding of the cultures is more difficult and it permeates all language combos” — Paulina Makles, Transcreation Solutions Director, Venga Global
September 24, 2019: Why Keywords Studios, Valued at USD 1 Billion, Is Moving Into Media Localization
“Video games, since the very beginning, have always gone into all languages simultaneously. That’s what those new streaming platforms are trying to do” — Andrew Day, CEO, Keywords Studios
October 30, 2019: Language Industry Hires at Unbabel, Multilingual Connections, Semantix, Acolad, and Andovar
“You can’t look past gaming, which is close to my heart. This is a booming industry and will only continue to grow. We partner with a lot of Asian gaming companies looking to bring their games to the West. I can’t see this slowing any time soon” — Ivan Tutka, Global Business Development Manager, Andovar
November 5, 2019: Two Crucial OTT Wins for Media Localizer ZOO Digital as Legacy Business Evaporates
“The OTT consumer video market is about to undergo a step change due to the forthcoming launches of several Direct-to-Consumer [D2C] services from major media companies” — Stuart Green, CEO, ZOO Digital
Corporate
January 14, 2019: TransPerfect’s Scary Good 2018
“If there’s a fight in the Disney boardroom about who’s going to control Disney, people don’t stop taking their kids to ride Space Mountain” — Phil Shawe, CEO, TransPerfect
May 8, 2019: PTW’s New CEO on How a Lost Opportunity Triggered a Corporate Transformation
“We made the change to our leadership structure because we found we didn’t have the right people in the right roles to allow innovation, creativity, and rapid growth. We are an incredibly close leadership team. We don’t believe that people can be creative when they are scared that failure could mean back-stabbing, so we don’t tolerate politics” — Deborah Kirkham, CEO, Pole To Win
May 14, 2019: Media Localizer BTI Studios Reshuffles Leadership, Hires New CFO and CTO
“BTI Studios is taking a new course with the new management, that I do not support, as a result I’m taking the consequences and am leaving the board” — Björn Lifvergren, Founder, BTI Studios
June 28, 2019: Lionbridge and H.I.G. Capital Seek Dismissal of TransPerfect Trade Secrets Lawsuit
“After losing the auction, Lionbridge / H.I.G. proceeded to download thousands upon thousands of TransPerfect corporate documents. What’s ‘farcical’ is their story that this post-auction document raid was made in the spirit of good faith due diligence” — Phil Shawe, CEO, TransPerfect
May 8, 2019: PTW’s New CEO on How a Lost Opportunity Triggered a Corporate Transformation
“We made the change to our leadership structure because we found we didn’t have the right people in the right roles to allow innovation, creativity, and rapid growth. We are an incredibly close leadership team. We don’t believe that people can be creative when they are scared that failure could mean back-stabbing, so we don’t tolerate politics” — Deborah Kirkham, CEO, Pole To Win
Buyers
January 4, 2019: How A+E Networks UK Localizes 16,000 Hours of Media Content per Year
“We are looking into tools that offer a greater range of automated checks specifically designed for the file validation of language files” — Jan-Hendrik Hein, Director of Media Operations, A+E Networks UK
January 23, 2019: How Goodgame Localizes for Over 300 Million Gamers in 26 Languages
“Localization has become an integral part of game development” — Clara Gómez Pérez, Localization Manager, Goodgame Studios
February 8, 2019: Why Guest Acquisition Platform SiteMinder Wants to Know Their Translators
“I believe we will see an increasing demand for transcreation or even original copy written in local languages. Especially in very competitive industries, such as travel and tourism, you will need to stand out by providing a true local experience to your customers” — Matthias Borngrebe, Head of Localization, SiteMinder
May 31, 2019: Media Localization Buyers on Outsourcing, Automation, and Last-Minute Schedule Changes
“We use 55-plus different third-party vendors who are based in territory” — Amanda Smith, Director of Language Strategy and Content Business Operations, Discovery Networks
May 31, 2019: Media Localization Buyers on Outsourcing, Automation, and Last-Minute Schedule Changes
“We localize into 20 languages and create around 1,500 new language tracks every month” — Jan-Hendrik Hein, Director of Media Operations, A+E Networks UK
May 31, 2019: Media Localization Buyers on Outsourcing, Automation, and Last-Minute Schedule Changes
“ITV GE produced about 8,500 hours of programming last year and that comes out of about 12 different local centers as well, so we’re fairly global” — Justin Walton, Global Content Operations Manager, ITV
May 31, 2019: Media Localization Buyers on Outsourcing, Automation, and Last-Minute Schedule Changes
“If we notice that a competitor channel has a successful show at 9 o’clock, maybe we move our key shows to 8 o’clock or to 10 o’clock. Or we move them to a different day of the week, which will then impact delivery deadlines for localization” — Jan-Hendrik Hein, Director of Media Operations, A+E Networks UK
June 6, 2019: How Localization Boosts Conversion Rates at Food Startup Huel
“When we started, we kept adding more systems and resources to the localization process. At some point, we began to pare it down. We now only have one external resource — an LSP — and one third-party app for delivering the translations. So, from five systems to just two” — Mario Tarantino, Content and Merchandising Manager, Huel
June 27, 2019: Third Revolution in Language Is Upon Us and Will Impact Translators, Interpreters — EU
“The future smarter CAT environment is yet to be developed” — EU host paper
July 16, 2019: How Netflix Does Subtitling for the World (ex China)
“In two years, we added a couple more languages, a lot more global original content, and we therefore added to our membership” — Kathy Rokni, Director of Globalization, Netflix
July 16, 2019: How Netflix Does Subtitling for the World (ex China)
“If the content is not Netflix content, there’s a lot of licensing agreement that needs to happen. That licensing agreement is both for languages, what languages we can actually broadcast or show, and also what countries can have them” — Kathy Rokni, Director of Globalization, Netflix
July 16, 2019: How Netflix Does Subtitling for the World (ex China)
“Subtitles are considered kind of like an IP. So if the title was owned by Disney, for example, or by some other big or small studio, we don’t necessarily have the right to change those subtitles. But what we will do depending on how disruptive that experience could be for our members, is go back to them and give them feedback and ask them for a re-delivery, but we can’t change them ourselves” — Kathy Rokni, Director of Globalization, Netflix
July 16, 2019: How Netflix Does Subtitling for the World (ex China)
“[We] remove English as a pivot language whenever that makes sense” — Melissa Sakamoto, Project Manager, Netflix
July 26, 2019: EU Gives In-Principle Green Light to Use of Remote Interpreting Platforms
“The testing showed that, in principle, interpreting platforms can be used to provide interpretation services” — European Commission Directorate‑General for Interpretation
September 20, 2019: How Cloudflare Deploys a Data-Guided Strategy to Localize a Seamless User Experience
“Right now, we localize about 10 to 17 languages for consumer apps […], but we do see the need to localize beyond CCJK [Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean] and FIGS [French, Italian, German, and Spanish], and go deeper into emerging southeast Asian countries as well as European languages” — Claire Tsai, Head of Globalization, Cloudflare
November 22, 2019: Former Translation Head at EU’s Translation Centre Joins European Investment Bank
“Multilingual communication is crucial at a time when the EU Bank, which has been Europe’s climate bank for many years, has just confirmed its increased ambition in climate action and environmental sustainability and launched a very ambitious climate investment strategy” — Thierry Fontenelle, Head of Linguistic Services Division, European Investment Bank
December 13, 2019: How Localization Is Run at Nike, Bose, and KAYAK: SlatorCon Panel Insights
“[Good account management] is something that has been lacking in the localization industry for years, good accounts teams to partner with the clients. This is something that marketing agencies have done a lot better and the localization industry needs to catch up on” — Alvaro Villalvilla Merelo, Senior Global Localization Manager, Nike
Competition
January 28, 2019: Pricing Pressure Intensifies in EUR 21m Lithuanian Language Services Contract
“Translation prices go down each year because the competition among the suppliers is very hard” — Dainius Sabaliauskas, CEO, Eurotradus
March 11, 2019: Language Industry Hires at Literra, Byword, Veris, and Milengo
“This is one of the few industries that has been around forever but still shows double-digit growth just about every year” — Richard Loyer, Managing Director, Byword
March 11, 2019: Language Industry Hires at Literra, Byword, Veris, and Milengo
“The exponential development and interest in MT is reshaping our industry and impacting the way we do business on a daily basis” — Liliana Henriques, Head of Client Services, Milengo
March 22, 2019: Sweden’s Semantix Acquires Boutique Local Rival Teknotrans
“The traditional business model for LSPs is ripe for disruption” — Patrik Attemark, CEO, Semantix
May 24, 2019: Interprefy Valuation Doubles to USD 21m After Latest Funding Round
“LSPs need to innovate and offer value-added services to their clients, otherwise these will bypass them, in a similar way to travel agencies when travellers started to buy tickets online” — Kim Ludvigsen, Founder and CEO, Interprefy
July 11, 2019: Trump Administration’s Deregulation Drive Begins to Impact Language Industry
“We know that there has long been a desire by the current administration to roll back, cut and, eventually, repeal the ACA (Affordable Care Act); and, along with that, any provisions to support healthcare services in any language other than English. In my opinion, this is of course a very myopic and potentially dangerous path backwards” — Dieter Runge, VP of Marketing and Global Business Development, Boostlingo
July 11, 2019: Trump Administration’s Deregulation Drive Begins to Impact Language Industry
“We know it will certainly have a significant impact on SME language service agencies and, frankly, it will also impact the 800-pound gorillas in this business as well” — Dieter Runge, VP of Marketing and Global Business Development, Boostlingo
September 25, 2019: Survival By Growth — Phil Shawe on Maintaining TransPerfect’s Momentum
“You could get more efficient and you don’t have to grow. But even with the greatest MT in the world, eventually, your efficiency flattens out” — Phil Shawe, CEO, Transperfect
October 25, 2019: Gould 2.0: Joshua Gould Named New Group CEO at thebigword
“If we are ever going to get Brexit done successfully, we could easily see our revenues increase by USD 20 or 30 million when the pound bounces back. If there is a hard Brexit, we have prepared well. We have hedged very well because we are such a huge operation in the UK that it would make our operation incredibly cheap under a hard Brexit” — Joshua Gould, CEO, thebigword
November 8, 2019: Fresh Off BTI Merger, IYUNO Media Group Hires Allan Dembry as CTO
“The competitive landscape hasn’t changed much in localization for a long time, so new entrants are very welcome. It’s my view that the landscape will continue to change, and there’ll be fewer, bigger global players who move seamlessly between pure localization and other adjacent verticals” — Shaun Gregory, CEO, IYUNO
November 27, 2019: What We Learned From Listening in on the Straker Translations H1 2020 Investor Call
“I think it was TransPerfect that bought three media companies. They’re obviously, in our view, just trying to buy scale. And scale will not win. Innovation will win. We’ve proven that. We wouldn’t exist if we hadn’t come up with innovative ways to grow into this business. So these guys aren’t coming up with innovation and we are” — Grant Straker, CEO, Straker Translations
December 12, 2019: Serious Data Protection Violations: Denmark Terminates Giant EasyTranslate Contract
“The data breach issue seems to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Apparently, EasyTranslate neglected to protect sensitive information, and content such as indictments and arrest warrants have been available to uncleared staff” — Susanne Frank, Police and Court Interpreter
M&A
January 16, 2019: Lionbridge Acquires Gengo to Bolster AI Business
“Gengo AI did factor heavily into our decision to purchase Gengo” — John Fennelly, CEO, Lionbridge
June 20, 2019: TransPerfect Refinances USD 445m Loan Used in 2017 Buyout, Gears Up for M&A
“Given our current leverage position, we feel very comfortable that we have sufficient ‘dry powder’ to complete a major acquisition should the right opportunity arise. Fortunately, because of the investments we’ve made over the years, such in our sales force and in our technology products, we are not dependent on M&A to drive growth” — Phil Shawe, CEO, TransPerfect
June 26, 2019: Brink Is Back With Big Language Solutions, Buys ProTranslating
“I believe the timing is good to aggregate small to medium-size LSPs because rapid technology advancements are making it increasingly difficult for these companies to compete on their own, and some owners are uncertain what the technology landscape will look like several years out. There’s a whole generation of LSP business owners who have built nice lifestyle businesses that have morphed into something larger, and now they’re trying to determine how and when to exit” — Jeff Brink, CEO, Big Language Solutions
September 6, 2019: TransPerfect Acquires Game Localization Specialist MoGi Group
“Gaming is one of the most highly specialized areas of the localization market. Only a few key players have truly made the investments necessary to compete at scale” — Phil Shawe, CEO, Transperfect
October 7, 2019: TransPerfect Buys Lylo, Lassostudios, Sublime, and AGM in Media Loc Acquisition Spree
“We believe that the need for producing high quality, in-language media content represents a significant growth opportunity for TransPerfect” — Phil Shawe, CEO, Transperfect
Slator 2021 Video Localization Report
October 22, 2019: Jeff Brink’s Big Language Solutions Appoints Dave Perlman as CFO
“Value creation in a successful buy-and-build strategy is highly correlated to the success of the integration” — Dave Perlman, CFO, Big Language Solutions
November 20, 2019: Summa Linguae to Acquire Canada-Based Localizer and Data-Annotator Globalme
“Our new investor is hungry for follow-up acquisitions” — Krzysztof Zdanowski, CEO, Summa Linguae Technologies
Investors
February 13, 2019: Meet the New Owner of Translate.com
“This is one of our long-term strategic investments, so we don’t expect it to follow the investment horizon that is common to venture investments” — Oleksii Vitchenko, founding partner, Digital Future
September 24, 2019: Unbabel Raises USD 60m Series C Taking Language Industry Startup Crown
“I absolutely think that over the course of the next five years, there will be a tremendous amount of pricing pressure in the language translation market [in areas such as] high-quality translations for healthcare, financial services, and legal, etc. But I think it is going to be more than made up for by the fact that technology is going to make possible a whole lot of new cases. As a result, the best companies are not going to shrink, they are actually going to grow, because they suddenly are able to deliver far more to an enterprise customer than what they were delivering before” — Sri Chandrasekar, Partner, Point 72 Ventures
October 2, 2019: The Right Dynamics: Why Private Equity and Venture Capitalists Invest in the Language Industry
“I think NMT will actually price at a premium to humans. So there will be a deflationary force — lots of content where you can have some marginal error and that’s going to commoditize, and it’s going to go from 24 cents a word to 15 cents a word, maybe 10 cents a word. But, I think there’s going to be a category of translation where it absolutely has to be right and it absolutely has to be consistent, and machines are way better at doing repetitive work than humans are” — Tomasz Tunguz, Partner and Managing Director, Redpoint Ventures
October 2, 2019: The Right Dynamics: Why Private Equity and Venture Capitalists Invest in the Language Industry
“It’s a really exciting industry that has the best kinds of customers; the stickiest kinds of customers, who spend a lot of money. And those are all things that we as venture investors love to look at” — Sri Chandrasekar, Partner, Point 72 Ventures
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