The Video Localization Panel at SlatorCon Remote March 2022 was moderated by Slator Commercial Director, Andrew Smart, and featured a vendor-client duo to discuss opportunities for localization companies in this high-growth sector in Australia and Apac.
Dion Wiggins, CTO at Omniscien Technologies, outlined the transition his company made over the past few years. Language processing and machine translation (MT) company Omniscien shifted from being a pure-play MT provider “to doing a lot of very specific features for a number of industries,” Wiggins said. One of the main verticals they now focus on? The high-growth media sector.
Wiggins was joined on the panel by Alphie Larrieu, Head of Localization at Astro, a Malaysia-based multi-platform content company and Omniscien’s long-time client. Astro uses Omniscien’s project management and MT editing platform, Media Studio, in its localization operations. Larrieu said that Astro is “the ultra-automation example of how you can integrate a system like Media Studio into an existing broadcast platform.”
In adopting Media Studio, Astro managed to “successfully pull people out of their ‘executable, single-user-on-PC-or-laptop’ language correction tools into a platform,” Larrieu said. Astro uses Media Studio, which includes a data-processing platform that ingests content, to help automate the task of dealing with vast daily volumes of content for localization.
The duo discussed Astro’s internal system for training and managing both freelance and in-house translation resources. “Omniscien is working in that space next, by taking the analysis of actual translators and constantly analyzing their performance — which means being able to predict the effort and find the right person for the client’s work,” Wiggins said.
According to Larrieu, one of the main aims of localization at Astro is to “get translations through the door, simplify processes, and predict errors in the back end of our platform,” while also measuring engagement.
Meanwhile, Omniscien’s next-gen tools will focus on “object detection and words on screen to influence the MT. We will also be open to incorporating AI in our day-to-day services; also open to cloud services,” Wiggins added.
Transcreation Trends
The Transcreation Panel during the Europe and Americas session at SlatorCon Remote March 2022 was moderated by Slator Research Director, Esther Bond. It featured three subject-matter experts, who talked about transcreating for marketing and advertising clients.
Lindsay Hong, COO at Locaria, set the tone for the panel by observing that “there is no better time to be able to do volume and transcreation” due to the shift toward digital and marketing.
Slator 2021 Video Localization Report
According to Hong, the current trend in “the proliferation of online channels across multiple media sources” means that an initial campaign and asset are now oftentimes split across multiple channels, which can cause localization volumes to multiply.
“The number of assets you need to create also drives volume,” she said. Hong compared this to how things were in the past where “you might have had a master campaign that would go across two or three channels such as magazines, out of home, or online.”
On the topic of customers, Nina Sattler-Hovdar, Founder of Transcreation Experts, offered tips on how to work effectively with different types of clients. She explained that the sheer diversity within the market necessitates engaging with a range of customer profiles.
Sattler-Hovdar contrasted working with end-clients and advertising agencies. While “end-clients tend to have more long-term planning, the advantage of working with advertising agencies is that they, generally, have a better understanding of the kind of information that is needed (i.e., the briefing),” she said.
“The brief is the cornerstone of transcreation” — Nina Sattler-Hovdar, Founder, Transcreation Experts
Another important factor Sattler-Hovdar identified is knowing the difference between translation and transcreation. “The processes and, above all, the level of conversation that you need to have with the client, are different,” she advised.
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The discussion turned to transcreation resources, with the experts trading views on what the profile of the ideal transcreation professional. Laura Fernández, CEO of Corporate Solutions at Supertext, said the perfect transcreator “is definitely a copywriter who will focus on their mother tongue and has a good command of one or two foreign languages.”
Sattler-Hovdar concurred, adding that it is possible to coach professionals into the role, such as “people with a journalism background who are usually quite amenable to this kind of work.”
In her view, another category of professionals with potential to be skilled at transcreation are “literary translators, because they are not so much focused on subject-matter expertise niches; or on working with segmented translation systems.”
Sattler-Hovdar said this means “they are often better able to think in bigger contexts and can make good transcreators with the right kind of training.”
More discussions from both panels and the full conference video available now via Slator’s Video On-Demand channel.
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