#191 Translation AI Watershed Moment in German Parliament

Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, with the release of Slator’s new Pro Guide: Scaling an LSP Key Account. The duo analyzed the job requirements and responsibilities for an AI Localization Analyst at Chubb, an insurance company. Florian discusses when he, for the first time, realized he briefly fell for a third-party-created video. A speech by Joana Cotar, a member of Germany’s lower house of parliament, was translated and lip-synced into English using AI. Far from being critical of her voice being cloned and her speech being machine translated without any edits, Cotar gushed about how  “wonderful” it is that her speeches are now accessible in “English, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Indonesian, and even Chinese”. Florian touches on a study by Microsoft Azure researchers evaluating the performance of GPT-4 in post-editing machine translation. Esther provides updates on recent M&A and funding activities in the language industry. difuze, a Canadian media localization company, acquired WANTED!, a post-production studio, while The Translation People secured GBP 10.5 million in debt financing. Additionally, she gives a mixed financial update on ZOO Digital, Ai-Media, and AMN Healthcare. Florian concludes the episode by discussing OpenAI"s release of GPT capabilities for customization. He shares his experience building a chatbot using the new feature and emphasizes the potential for creating customized language models for niche applications.