#125 RSI Pushback, Subtitling and Dubbing Land Grab, Meta MT ‘Breakthrough’

07/14/22 • 20 min

1 Listener

In this week’s news episode, Florian and Anna catch up on a month’s worth of news, with RSI receiving a lot of opposition. First, there was a UN Today article where interpreters pushed back on poor sound quality and unreliable audio levels causing hearing problems. Then interpreters went on strike at the EU Parliament after negotiations seeking improved work conditions failed.

Anna talks about Meta AI’s “breakthrough” claim in machine translation with the release of the I/O model called No Language Left Behind (NLLB). NLLB is an open-source machine translation model with 54 billion parameters and focuses on 200 low-resource languages, specifically from Africa and Asia.

In media localization, ZOO Digital released full-year results for 2022 which saw revenue grow by 78% from the previous year, and growth into the current year driven by the ongoing territory launches of major streaming platforms.

Keywords Studios’ interest in the space has become more apparent as CFO, John Hauck, shares the game localization provider’s plans to expand into adjacent markets and move more heavily into film and TV.

The duo also discuss the launch of Zoom’s translation feature. Business users can now have their Zoom meetings translated in real-time into and out of English from any of 10 languages. Anna then covers Disney’s experimentation with synthesized voices. The company partnered with voice-cloning startup Respeecher to feature a synthetic voice in The Mandalorian miniseries.

Previous Episode

#124 How to Become a Successful Freelance Interpreter With Jan Rausch

In this week’s SlatorPod, we’re joined by Jan Rausch to discuss his experience in the interpreting industry as a freelance conference and business interpreter.

Jan talks about his background in teaching modern languages and how he transitioned to freelance interpreting, where he eased himself into a highly competitive market. He shares the range of scenarios he has worked in; from European Works Councils and clinical trials to sales meetings and political and diplomatic interpreting for German delegations.

Jan discusses the need to multitask and formulate good language that is easy to understand for the listeners when it comes to simultaneous interpreting. He also talks about how the pandemic has impacted interpreting with the explosion of remote and hybrid meetings.

Jan outlines the pros and cons of remote simultaneous interpreting (RSI) and the preventative measures interpreters can take to protect their hearing and general health. Jan touches on the challenge of staying fully up to date in one’s native language when living outside the country, especially with social linguistic development.

Jan unpacks the perception of on-site pricing versus remote interpreting, where clients can sometimes assume RSI is cheaper when, in fact, it can be more demanding for the interpreter. He concludes the podcast with tips for graduates who want to break into institutional or freelance interpreting, particularly when it comes to networking.

Next Episode

#126 Dubverse’s Anuja Dhawan on AI Dubbing for YouTubers, TikTokers and Content Creators

Dubverse co-founder, Anuja Dhawan, joins SlatorPod to talk about launching the machine dubbing startup and powering video content dubbing using the latest AI language models and tech.

Anuja starts with her journey to co-founding Dubverse with Varshul Gupta as a result of the rise of English speaking video-generated content during the pandemic. She goes through the company’s core team structure where the focus is on scaling through AI and technology.

She discusses how they tailor their product to language demand in India as roughly only 10% of the population understands or speaks English fluently. She talks about their approach to tackling technical challenges when producing highly natural, emotional AI voices.

Anuja notes the importance of dubbing short-form content from large social media and video networks like YouTube, TikTok and, specific to India, ShareChat. She unpacks a human-in-the-loop model where they onboarded a translator to improve linguistic nuances in their automated workflow.

She also shares the story behind connecting with Dubverse’s first investor, Kalaari Capital, and the lessons learned from the interview process. The pod rounds off with the startup’s future plans to make dubbing published content even simpler for creators, so they can break the language barrier.