Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to Localization Today. My name is Eddie Arrieta. I'm the CEO here at Multilingual Media. This is where we explore how language, technology and community converge to unlock ideas for everyone everywhere. I'm Eddie Arrieta. Once again, today's episode will take us into the concept of language intelligence and also into the Language Intelligence 2025 event which will take place from November 12th to the 17th in Vienna. To help us unpack these, I'm joined by Bruno Hermann, Vice Chairman of LT Innovate Language Technology and Intelligence Industry Association.
He has more than 30 years of experience leading globalization and localization operations at organizations like iqvia, Nielsen and hp. Bruno, welcome and thank you for being here.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: Thank you for having me, Eddie. It's nice to be here.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: Yeah, and it's great. Off the recording, we were going a little bit over some of the concepts for tonight and saying, tonight it's morning for me, but maybe some of the listeners are listening to it at night and then it's tonight for them. But what we were saying were some of the concepts. We have to be very specific here because we're going to be talking about intelligence, we're going to be talking about language, your association, your event. So we want to do a good job of outlining what the conversation is about. Bruno, welcome. Tell us anything you want about yourself, but also tell us about language intelligence. What is it? How do we understand it? How can we start unpacking it?
[00:01:46] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks a lot for this first question.
It should be the starting point for this conversation because indeed, probably language intelligence means different things to different people, just like other concepts. By the way, it's not the only one. I would say that just to keep it simple and short, I would say that language intelligence is all the solutions that enable humans to communicate, to communicate between themselves. So communicate with other humans, communicate with machines. Because now, of course, there is a higher degree of automation.
So everything that is enabling those conversations, those communications is important. Of course, it is not just technology, it is also the processes, which is how you are using technology, because that's important to define and design and the people, humans. I know it sounds a little bit strange today to talk a lot about humans, but we are in a tech driven world. So language technology is really driving many actions, many channels that we are using to communicate, to communicate in the same language, but also in different languages. So content intelligence is broader than translation, localization or transcreation.
These activities are critical. But language intelligence goes, goes beyond and just to reach to everything that we do and everything that we say when we communicate, you know, again, either between us, between us humans, or more and more today, of course, with machines, with agents, for instance. I know many people talk about AI agents for the moment, but that's an example of how we humans, we might be able to communicate with the machine which are the agents. So that's in a nutshell, what you know, Language Intelligence is covering.
[00:03:51] Speaker A: And thank you for, for that outline. It helps us have the conversation in the proper frame. Language Intelligence 2025, another year.
For those of us that are familiar, could you recap a little bit of the history of the most previous events and what can we expect to see in Language Intelligence 2025 and anything else you want to share?
[00:04:16] Speaker B: Of course. Yeah, absolutely. So, as you mentioned, Eddy, this year we are going to have the event in Vienna again, just like last year, from November 17 to November 19. So it's going to be the best event probably ever that we, that we are going to organize.
Because obviously in the past years we had those events on language intelligence. But now with AI being on the table of nearly everybody, we have an opportunity actually to really frame Language Intelligence into more pragmatic and to more realistic, I would say, discussions.
In the past, of course, I remember the previous conferences, we were talking a lot about automation in general, which were at that time mostly about nmt, neural machine translation, sometimes about other types of automation like rpa, robotic process automation.
So those conversations were in line with, you know, what was hot at that time in the previous years. And the thing that we noticed very interestingly actually, is that we were able to welcome more people who are not the usual suspects in the language industry. When I say the usual suspects, I mean the people who are presenting in other conferences and the people who are labeled as translation or localization, for instance. And you know, I remember five, six years ago, we had quite a bunch of people, you know, localization managers, translation managers, etc.
And we had of course, also other roles, other people with different roles, like product managers, marketing managers, IT leaders, et cetera. And now, interestingly, a few years ago, I could see some sort of evolution in the audience which is now more made of people dealing with content, not just dealing with multilingual content, but dealing with content in general. So people creating the content, people testing the content, people designing solutions. All these people don't have the label called localization, or they don't have the label translation, transcreation, et cetera. They are responsible for what I personally call global content operations or global product management.
So this is a very interesting evolution in the audience and also for the conference because of course we can include more topics and to include topics that are about integrating and elevating translation and localization and you know, multilingual content management as a whole, we can integrate those activities into something bigger, which is called global content operations or global content management. And I know that this discussion is taking place in other parts of the language industry.
You know, people saying, yeah, we are going to move to, we are going to shift left, which personally I think it should be shifting left and right, not just left, but that's a different discussion. And actually, you know, that's a very interesting synchronization between the language industry and other industries. Specifically on the client side, when you see more and more client organizations integrating and elevating, I insist on elevating multilingual content management into global content operations so that for instance, people in charge of localization are no longer isolated in the organization. They are part of something bigger which is creating the value for the business. And this thing is called value chain, supply chain and of course, operational chain. So I think that's a very interesting evolution. And this year when people will look at the program, they will see that we are more diverse than ever.
We have industries, we will have industries like the defense industry, the transportation industry. These industries do not present very often in other events of the language industry.
But they come to talk about, not their translation or localization plans only, they come to talk about how they view and how they are positioning, you know, content leadership as something strategic for their organization.
So diversity in the topics, of course we will have diversity in the speakers.
I'm really glad to see that we are going to have speakers who have nearly never presented anywhere else in language industry events. That's great simply because these people are more than just translation managers, as I said before. So they are not limited to localization. These people have a much broader responsibility.
And last but not least, diversity in gender. Eddie, we will have more female speakers than male speakers in our event, which is quite.
Which I'm really excited about because I know sometimes some events may be like very, very male driven, but in our conference we will have more female speakers and female panelists than male. So that's great.
[00:09:33] Speaker A: Those are all really, really great reasons to seriously consider language intelligence. Bruno, I'm very also interested in exploring further the conversation on these roles and these new adaptations, this evolution, as you have put it. And you saying, of course, that the event in a way works as a catalyst to booster these conversations right in Terms of multilingual content, global content management, there might be some fear in the industry that is like centralizing something and then almost dissipating the industry per se into something that is unrecognizable.
Knowing that community and the awareness of the community, of its existence, it's a power in itself. So, of course, I still would like to ask, what does it mean in practical terms, what Language Intelligence 2025 proposes in terms of the main takeaways for the attendees? Me as an attendee? What am I going to get from these great perspectives that you are bringing? I can intuitively feel it already.
What are the perspectives that you will.
That we would get, but what do you think we are going to be getting from it?
[00:10:56] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great question. I think in terms of takeaways and in terms of practical, practical materials, this conference is made of use cases only. So there will be no theoretical discussions that will be, you know, even if it's a panel, it's going to be about use cases, about experiences from people doing it, not just people saying what they do, but, you know, explaining why they are doing it. So it's going to be very practical, very, very topical in a way, so that you, as an attendee and all other attendees can leave the room. If I can use that expression with information, not just information that is nice to hear, but information that they can replicate or that they can leverage in their own organization because they heard a speaker talk about, for instance, a process that they never thought about or that they met someone during the conference with a role in multilingual content management that they were not aware of. You mentioned, of course, the new roles and the new responsibilities for the language industry in this broader framework of global content management.
And I think there are quite a number of opportunities for language professionals, which I personally, I call them language experts. It's better than language professionals.
And there are quite a number of roles that are pretty new.
Not really for me, because in my previous job I was leading localization and globalization within the framework of Global Product Management or within the framework of Global Content Management. So I never considered localization as something separate. For me, it was always integrated in supply chains. But I know it's not the case for many other people. They were leading globalization localization a little bit separately.
And since now there is this integration move in progress, there are some new and very interesting, in my opinion, roles that are coming from, for instance, this is just an example, the integration and the deployment of generative AI.
If you want to deploy generative AI, multilingual, generative AI, properly and effectively. You need language expertise, you need language experts.
You cannot just do it with data scientists, only data scientists, they bring their data management expertise. But language professionals, they, they bring their language expertise. And if you combine those two types of expertise, you are in a much better position to actually deliver what you need to deliver with multilingual AI. And you will have better multilingual models, you will have better output.
And of course it means sometimes, well, not sometimes, very often actually, it means being quicker and spending less money.
And of course, some of these roles that language professionals are taking now, and there will be plenty of examples during the event in Vienna, many of these roles are actually connected more or less closely with data management.
I'm sure, Eddie, you heard already a lot about language data.
Language data is actually the lifeblood of generative AI. If there is no good language data, there is no good language model. Because there is, in LLM, in slm, there is a L call that stands for language.
So I think that now language professionals, some language professionals are sometimes a bit concerned, they are a bit afraid, some of them, that generative AI is going to take their job.
I hear that all the time. But actually, you know, generative AI cannot live without language professionals. That's the reality.
Sorry. Multilingual AI needs language expertise from humans and it starts with data.
Of course, you need language expertise for prompt engineering, you need language expertise for model training. But it starts before all that. It starts with data, and it starts with language data and language intelligence. Since, you know, language intelligence is a theme of our conference, is of course also focused on how data is actually, you know, making language, sorry, is making language intelligence alive, how it is boosting, how it is fueling language intelligence. Because of course, you know, we talk a lot about content and of course the purpose is to create, you know, adapt and deliver content. But you cannot these days, you cannot sort of separate content from data.
Data is everywhere. Data is in every piece, in every phase of AI. But of course, AI is also, sorry, data. Language data is also strategic asset. And there are some very interesting roles that in my opinion, language professionals might be willing to consider around, you know, language data management, around, you know, language data curation, for instance, language data segmentation. For all that, you know, you need language expertise and it's a way actually to leverage AI in your favor. If you are a language professional, you may want to say, no, I don't want AI to take my job. I don't want AI to be in the driver's seat. I want to be in the driver's seat and have AI sitting next to me. But obviously my role is going to change. I'm not going to be post editing anymore. I'm going to manage language data, but it's still a way to leverage my expertise, that is language expertise. So I think that's, that's part of the takeaways that people will get during and after the conference.
[00:17:03] Speaker A: And of course, we'll be paying close attention to what people say about the conference and also what's in the program. So what else can you tell us about your favorite parts of the themes, the tracks, the discussions that you see coming up for November? Anything that you can share with us to give us an idea of those specifics that we're going to be seeing?
[00:17:27] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a very interesting question. I'm not going to be very objective here because I'm part of the organizing committee, but I'm excited about everything. But there is one thing I'm excited about, which is that in the program, and if you read the program, you will see that after the first day, there is a mix, not just a mix of, you know, use cases, a mix of industries, but there is also a mix of clients and suppliers in the same room, which is very interesting because sometimes there is some sort of disconnection or a lack of understanding between clients and suppliers. And I think, you know, in my career I always wanted to avoid that. I think clients have to create value and suppliers.
So solution, suppliers, services, suppliers must contribute to that value. So that's my personal perspective.
And when, you know, when I read, when I. When I promote the program of the conference, I'm really glad to say that we have this balance of voices from the client side and from the supplier side. And I think it's very important for the language industry to meet the language community. Community being more on the client side and industry being more typically being more on the supplier side. Because I think the industry and the community must work together. And I think in the framework of Language Intelligence, Eddie, I think it's really critical that when there is an event like Language Intelligence 2025, it's more than just a meeting place between clients and suppliers. It's a forum of discussion. Sometimes people will have different perspectives, might even disagree on what is the future of, for instance, localization management.
But I think it's really essential to have those discussions now, not just to bring suppliers and clients closer together, but also to together again collectively ensure that the future of Language Intelligence and the future of multilingual content and products is really in control by humans, remains in control by humans.
Because I know in some organizations there is a trend to replace all people dealing with content by AI, by agents or by generative AI. And we've seen already some companies making some quick decisions to say, oh, we're going to save a lot of money. We're going to replace the localization team with a very robust LLM, for instance. And of course, it's a sort of black and white decision. Very, you know, it's the one or the other, but the reality is that it's not the one or the other, it's the one and the other. So that's for us also a way to promote and to highlight why, again, based on use cases. I insist on that. It's not theoretical. We are really going to dive into use cases from pharmaceutical companies, from the defense industry, from the retail industry.
We will see how those industries are keeping their multilingual content strategies alive. And they are even more than alive. They are keeping their strategies moving, growing by, you know, getting this balance right between, you know, well, machine intelligence and human intelligence. Just to summarize it, and I think that's something that excites me personally in the program, is that it's not easy to have a mix like that. It's even very challenging, I can tell you, because you have to, you have to ask some people, as I said before, who are not very familiar with presentations in conferences. But I think it's really necessary to sort of discuss those challenges and those opportunities very openly, not just in small circles. I think we need events like that.
And I think last year the audience was really engaged. They were very interactive, so which is great. And you know, they said that they were very happy, of course, that we were able to discuss topics or even to present use cases that were not so often described elsewhere, either on conferences or even in articles of magazines, because some people are not, sometimes some people are not authorized to speak about what they do.
So this time we got some people who had to get their permission to speak. Of course, specifically, in regulated industries, you cannot just go to conferences without permission.
But that's another type of value. And again, beyond the theme, which is language intelligence, I think, Eddie, if there is one word that people will hear every two minutes is going to be value.
Where is the value?
How is the value?
What is the value?
Why is the value? All these questions around value that are important for everyone because I think that all of us, we have to create value, otherwise we don't have a job.
I don't know anyone in my circle of friends or in my family who works without creating value.
No value equals no job. But beyond having a job, creating value is essential in this time of change.
You mentioned the evolution, Eddie, you mentioned the evolution in the language industry. It is of course a little bit, sometimes a little bit scary what you see, you know, because the pace of change is really significant. It's even I think, unprecedented.
But you know, as long as you create value, you are on the right track. That's what I keep saying to everyone.
If one day you don't create any more value, you may want to either think about your job or look for another one.
[00:23:47] Speaker A: Certainly, certainly. And we've heard in several occasions in this podcast about that conversation. You know, we have to be affair. You've of course Bruno, spoken about the diversity of the roles that are going to be attending the event. You've talked about the diversity of the organizations that are going to go there and such diversity bringing in. Then as you are mentioning value, I feel myself talking as if we're talking about startups. It feels very startup.
All this pace and this change that we see in our industry. For those that of us that have been in the startup world, Bruno, who would benefit most and being fair with you, you've mentioned several types of organization, you've mentioned several types of professionals. Could you put a few words about the organizations and the roles that you believe could benefit most from this gathering in 2025?
[00:24:46] Speaker B: Yeah, another great question, Eddie. Well, since as you said rightly so, we are focusing a lot on diversity, we want these two days to be really diverse in many ways.
Of course we are also expecting, just like several years ago, and even last year it was even better.
We're expecting quite a diversity of attendees, people who are of course in the so called conventional language roles, like as I said, project managers, program managers, you know, localization managers, et cetera. But obviously we will have in the audience, just like on stage, we'll have other people with other roles, specifically in marketing, legal, IT and operations.
When I say operations, I include product management in operations.
So this is going to be of course another source of discussion, not just during the presentations, but also during the breaks, during the dinner, etc. Because obviously last year I remember just to give you a personal example, last year during a coffee break I saw an old friend of mine who is in the localization industry working for one of those super agencies.
No name but okay, people might, might discover who it was and I said, oh, it's nice to see you. It's, it's great, you know, let's have a chat. And then at the same time, a few, a few minutes before, I met another person, an ex colleague who is a product director in a big multinational.
And of course, naturally those two people came to me for a discussion around the coffee. And I realized, you know, they started talking to each other. I was not even existing anymore because you know, the product director was asking, oh, you are dealing, you are leading localization, so what are your solutions? Because me, I'm a product director, I'm working in the market research industry and of course we are dealing with a lot of content, multiple languages, multiple markets, et cetera, etcetera. And so the conversation started like that and after a few minutes I said, oh, I will leave them, you know, they are well connected. So this is an example of how the discussions are going really beyond what many people might expect. Because I know last year several people came, came to me and they said, well, you know, it's so great actually to be able to talk more about, you know, to be, to be talking more about the non typical topics.
Of course process management is interesting.
Of course, you know, cost management, the pricing models, all that is very interesting topics.
But you realize that, you know, if you are meeting a general from the Austrian army or if you are meeting a leader, a marketing leader in the retail industry, if you are a language professional, you will have a very different type of conversation. You will not talk so much about how you manage your files and how you transaction your files in the system, in the TMS or in the cms. You realize that with those people you are discussing topics that are really from the trenches in the field happening, not just something that is there, but it's not used, it's really heavily used.
And of course people in the audience and people presenting, speaking, sorry, will be benefiting from this diversity of roles. And personally I think it's something that the language industry should do more, not just in our conference, but more inviting people who don't have in their job title, who don't have the word language. You know, I worked myself in different industries, market research, tech industry, life sciences. You cannot imagine the number of people I met throughout the years who are responsible for language management, multilingual or monolingual, and who didn't have a job title that was leading you to think that they were responsible for language management. They had the title of, you know, senior director of global operations and that that person was responsible for, you know, multilingual content management.
So sometimes it's difficult to detect where the responsibles, when I say the responsibles, not just the buyers, but also the decision makers, because the buyers are not always the decision makers.
But if you are looking for conversations with decision makers and buyers, then you have to scratch the surface of what is called buyer. And you have to start engaging with people who are indeed leading operations, leading marketing, leading communications, leading it. Because these people have a role to play.
Even they are making decisions about multilingual content management.
And as a result, you cannot just say, oh, these people are not interesting for me because they are not in my field. My field is language management, translation, localization, content creation. No, there are many more people who are interesting and I would say even inspiring when it comes to, you know, language intelligence to talk to. And these people are going to be there. A number of these people are going to be there more than last year. I can see that already now with the list of attendees that we have, the diversity is going to be. Even the bar, the bar of diversity is going to be raised even higher this year than last year.
[00:30:47] Speaker A: Yeah, Bruno, congratulations and of course, good luck. I know this event is going to be a great success.
Why don't we end the conversation a little bit with the upcoming deadlines?
Any ideas on those that are excited about the event? What should we do?
What other things are there to be done?
[00:31:09] Speaker B: Okay, well, of course, we are not fully booked yet. So that's good that obviously, you know, people can still check the program on the website. So language-intelligence.com which is our website, they can find all the details. Not about the programs, not just about the programs, but also about the speakers. Well, everything that you can expect to know about the conference. And obviously, you know, there are different, there are different ways to attend. So some, I know some people, for instance, they don't have the time to attend the whole conference. So they can of course choose to attend just one day and the dinner or one day without the dinner. So there are quite a number of options on the website in terms of rates, you know, for people, just for people to pay for what they are going to. What they are going to get as value. So if they are paid for two days, they are going to give value for two days and so on. So. So I just think that people should go to the website as often as possible to check not just the pricing model, but also to check the updates that we are making to the program because we are still adding a few people now, very excited about that too.
And we are going to publish some videos as well.
We already published a video for the panel that I will have the pleasure to moderate.
This is a video with Esther Coryell from Zoetis.
And in the coming weeks, we are going to publish more videos from speakers who will actually share some sort of sneak preview of what they are going to say in the conference. So people should watch out for those videos which will be published on social media and also on the YouTube channel of the LT Innovate Association.
So, yeah, that's the best I can. I'm not going to replace the website. So the website does the job much better than I do.
[00:33:07] Speaker A: I believe the website is much better than you at explaining all of this.
Bruno, thank you so much for your time today.
[00:33:13] Speaker B: You're welcome, Mehdi, it was a pleasure. Thank you.
[00:33:18] Speaker A: All right, all right. And thank you for listening to Localization today. Once again, a big thank you to Bruno Herman for joining us and offering a preview of the Language Intelligence 2025 event and for showing how Language Intelligence is becoming the cornerstone of value creation in multilingual content and product management. Language Intelligence 2025 will take place from November 12th to the 17th, 2025, hosted by LT Innovate. My name is Eddie Arrieta and this was Localization Today.
Until the next time, goodbye.
