Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to Localization Today my name is Eddie Arrieta, CEO at Multilingual Magazine. Today I'm joined by Gokhan Dogru. Yes, from Turkey. He's been in the language industry for about 15 years. He's a lecturer and he'll tell us more about that. And also an entrepreneur. Gohan, thank you so much for doing this.
[00:00:30] Speaker B: Thanks a lot, Eddie, for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be with you.
[00:00:33] Speaker A: And I completely know that I'm destroying your name. Can you tell us the right pronunciation for your name, please?
[00:00:42] Speaker B: Sure. I am very accustomed to hear the international way of saying it, but a Turkish people would say Gokhan and the surname.
[00:00:51] Speaker A: Why don't you tell us more about Gokhan Dogru?
Tell us more about your background. How. How did you get in the industry? 15 years entrepreneur, lecturer, and we are here talking from Saudi Arabia. For those that are listening, we are in the International Translation Forum in riyadh. It is November 7th. No, it's November 9th.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: Ninth already.
[00:01:12] Speaker A: Yeah, November 9th already. 2024. Please tell us more about you.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: Yeah, sure.
Well, I was born in Turkey, in the south of Turkey.
I studied in Istanbul in a translation department.
Then I started a master degree in philosophy. I just digressed a bit and then I went to Spain to do a PhD in translation technologies. And I started to be interested in machine translation. Creating machine translation systems from scratch, evaluating quality, etc. So I worked on this.
But at the same time I was working as a freelancer doing localization jobs, interestingly for fashion brand from Spain, the biggest one, I will not give the name for many years. And then I finished my PhD.
I did a postdoc in Spain and in Ireland. So I had to travel between Ireland and Spain in Autonomous University of Barcelona and Dublin City University.
And at the same time I started an initiative called Localization School to teach online because it was during the COVID time and we want to continue teaching localization to people because there was a gap in the university and academia needed localization skills. So I wanted to create a platform that would bridge these both sides and help people learn about these skills from the comfort of their home.
And yeah, so to sum up, I teach, translate and try to learn about everything that is relevant to translation. That's why I know multilingual and I know Nimzi and all the initiatives.
[00:03:06] Speaker A: That's really great. And I'm really glad we were also talking yesterday that you had listened to the latest episodes with Marco Trombetti and Peter Reynolds.
[00:03:16] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like before on the plane. I downloaded the episodes on Spotify and I'm very podcast addict, junkie of podcasts, I can say. And I follow all the translation and localization related podcasts and luckily I downloaded them and listened to them. They were great episodes. Thanks. Thanks a lot for opening perspective to us.
[00:03:38] Speaker A: And now we're going to have you listen to yourself in localization today, which is going to be a very interesting experience.
[00:03:45] Speaker B: Yeah, in two days in my kitchen cooking, I will be listening to yourself.
[00:03:51] Speaker A: I hope you like the work that we do.
But for those that are listening, we are like we said in the International Translation Forum in Riyadh and you've come here as an expert. Can you tell us a little bit more about what you've been talking about, the panels that you've been part of and what your perspectives are so far?
[00:04:10] Speaker B: Sure. Well, I've been invited to this forum thanks to my previous students who are PhD students and also some colleagues with whom I interacted in different conferences.
So it's been a pleasure to be with them here.
And I come, I guess, I mean, I see that we all have the expert title here, which is kind of flattering and interesting at the same time.
I come here representing a point of view of, let's say, technological optimism. We are, I am very invested in technology and localization and people here they are, I've been interacting with them with the last four, five years, I guess through the localization school. And I see that there is a big willingness to learn the new technologies that are affecting translation and translation, all the language related services, let's say. And I brought here this, I'm, I'm here because I want to help them advance in technology use to advance their, I mean, I know that they are really, they want to advance their language, the Arabic language. They want to be the leader who is leading the efforts to make or keep Arabic as an international language. So I come for that.
My first panel was in fact more on translators and digital presence on LinkedIn and other platforms. So I gave tips about how to be digital present because there are people here, as far as I saw, they are not very accustomed to use, I mean, some of them, yes, some of them not accustomed to use LinkedIn and other platforms. I gave a talk about that. And my next session would be on bridging gaps between academia and industry to train future professionals who will be working in our industry. And we will be discussing today how we can bridge this gap with the help of a collaboration between industry and academia.
[00:06:22] Speaker A: Well, why don't we get A sneak peek of that. How do you bridge that gap?
[00:06:27] Speaker B: It's the million dollar question for us because you know, in academia we are notoriously slow in changing, changing.
But there are reasons for it, like not being resistant to change. Sometimes it's a good thing because it will help you, it will protect you from following trends. And when a trend dies, you just get lost in trend.
But in one way instead of, I mean we like the word change but we also like the word adapt. Adapting, adaptation.
The idea that we are after is to be able to adapt to the needs of the industry by collaboration. By what? How do we collaborate? We invite people like you to our universities to give talks, to inform our professors and the students. At the same time invite people from industry to be professors in our university, like part time, usually part time professors. And also by after getting informed about the needs of the industry, creating undergraduate or master level classes, like one semester classes or shorter or longer classes that will help students understand what's happening in industry, what are the needs and let them adapt themselves to these needs. That would be one way of putting it.
Of course there are PhD level collaborations, there are industrial PhDs where people do their PhD working in a company, which is an interesting way of doing a PhD by the way.
Yeah, these are like some, some of the strategies. But even with that the now with the artificial intelligence, everything is changing so, so fast that adapting and keeping up with what's happening is quite difficult.
Also hiring someone who with the enough skills, like the relevant skills is quite difficult. Like that would be translation professor with all the AI skills is difficult. But there are like we are trying, let's say we are trying to create midways, inviting people, getting information from them.
[00:08:40] Speaker A: And I think another thing that I've noticed in academia is there is an over simplified level of humility which in some cases makes it really difficult for academia to sit at the table whenever tough conversations are happening. Especially with industries. I mean usually those that make the money tend to take the decisions and it's hard sometimes to make those connections. So you're really humble in what you're doing. But I believe you know there is a huge power in the conversation we are having about how to bridge in that gap, how to apply the academic knowledge into industry.
And of course this is something that the Saudi government is looking into.
Very interesting because I don't see many governments doing this. We were talking off the mic about Saudi 2030 and you were telling me that this is something that you know really well.
It'd be really interesting to Gain your perspective on what it is that people might not know about Saudi 2030 or the vision Saudi 2030 and the role that academia and the language industry plays in that Vision 2030.
[00:09:57] Speaker B: Well, my knowledge comes from my conversations with my Saudi colleagues that are working here and also the things I read on the news, like leadership in the country. As far as I see, they are trying to align the goals, also fund them through large investments to advance the country, let's say, and bring as many industrial power as possible to Saudi Arabia. And one of the goals is based on the language, on the Arabic language. And they want to mobilize the universities, the industries, to first learn about what they have, all the books, all the assets that they have created to be able to digitalize them and make them available for them to be used with AI in the future. They're also investing a lot in startups that are developing games, which at the same time is helping the game localization industry here to develop in the Arabic language.
Yeah, so we are in 2024, there are six more years and I think many more investment, many more events like this one.
I heard that there are five big events similar to the one that we are in are happening now at the same time in, in the same ministry. So other ministries are also holding them. So it seems that under many verticals, let's say, they are very active, they are mobilized, and they really want to have the Saudis in the driving driver's seat, let's say. Yeah. And Arabic and translation is, is in an important place in this scenario, let's say.
[00:12:04] Speaker A: Yeah. And from your perspective, of course, you know, we've had many conversations here in localization today about the importance of translation and the importance of culturalization in the development of nations. From your perspective, why is it a good call to include translation into the Vision 2030?
[00:12:29] Speaker B: Well, development and innovation is happening in many locations at the same time in the world now. Right. Like in United States, in China, in Europe, in some other locations.
And it's happening in different languages.
And this. If you want to adopt and adapt to these innovations, you need to be able to somehow import this knowledge. And this knowledge can be imported through translation.
Imported and nationalized, let's say. And translation plays a very significant role in that. And like, the Arabic language has, I mean, maybe I'm not the perfect person to talk about that, but Arabic language, there are many variants of Arabic languages. And the one variant or dialect that will, the translation will be done into, it's a bit politically charged, I think, like. And the One who will decide like whose variant will be the DE variant is partly determined by who has more translations, who has more original text written in that, and that's like one of the fighting areas. I think that's why translation is important. I'm sorry for putting it in that way.
[00:13:58] Speaker A: I hope it is perfectly fine to put it in that way. And I think we should definitely go in this direction.
In terms of the importance of culture throughout these translations, do you think there is, regardless of whether, you know, there are political elements to it, do you think there is a lot that gets missed in terms of culture whenever one of the variants kind of like takes over the others?
[00:14:26] Speaker B: Of course, yeah. I mean, if, I mean, depending. It's always a topic of discussion. What is a language, what is a dialect? Right.
But when you select one, of course, like every country, every region has its own intricacies, their own culture.
They focus on different part of content, right? Like they wouldn't necessarily focus on what you normally would focus. Someone in Egypt maybe will focus on something totally different in a movie while they are translating than a Saudi or than a Tunisian or Moroccan. So there are lots of things that are lost and ideally you would have a translation for each of them. In my localization brain, I would have a translation for all of them. But up until now I think one variant was chosen every time an American technology company want to enter into one of these markets. But now I think most of these countries are requesting more of their own version of the translation reality, let's say.
[00:15:33] Speaker A: Which makes a lot of sense, right?
Especially in gaming. It's very obvious when you get a game from like somewhere else localized to Latin America, usually, for example, I receive it because yeah, those that are listening don't know. I'm from Colombia and I consume games in Colombia, in a lot of cases in English. But whenever you see like Latin American, they would say latam Spanish. But it's very different. So I presume there is something similar. And I'm curious, of course, you've been in the industry for 15 years. What do you think technology, what do you think technology is going to do to help make sure that when we localize, we consider those cultural elements for each of one of these locales.
[00:16:17] Speaker B: Well, first of all, technology is helping about the awareness, right? Like helping to understand that every country has its own intricacies. Like people will, I mean, maybe a localization manager, maybe it's not advisable, but they will ask ChatGPT, like, should I translate to Moroccan dialect or Lebanese dialect or what? And the, the GPT will be able to tell them these are the differences, and if they see the differences, maybe they will want to apply these changes.
Another thing is that one possibility is like, raw translation can be now a bit cheaper. So this will also allow to be to use the budget to use this raw translation to be adapted to different locales, maybe, I don't know.
Or you'd be creating a one master translation and then ask your custom GPT to create variance depending on the country and highlight the important part of this translation depending on the locale or detect where this standard Arabic translation would not be enough. And the system will be able to detect that at least.
[00:17:34] Speaker A: Yeah, and I think that's also critical in the conversation, how each of these nuances are going to be taken.
I personally call it texture. Right. When you look at the way of putting it, yeah, it's it. Otherwise it's plain. Now, off the mic, I was discussing with some of the other experts here at the event, and we were talking about some policies that sometimes might seem protectionist, especially when you're trying to say, if you're going to translate in our country, we want to make sure that you take into consideration our culture. Right. So what do you think about the Saudi translators and the push that the Saudi government is making to, you know, give them the tools to be in the conversation, to be resources for the companies that want to translate. And how important is that for the future of localization in Saudi Arabia?
[00:18:31] Speaker B: It's hard for me to answer that because I don't have enough data from the locals. But as far as I talk with Amer, who is working on game localization, he says that the Saudi gamers who want to play the games, they want to see the games in their, their own locale. Like, they want to be able to play these games not with the official, like, standard Arabic. They want to play it with, you know, their local dialect. Because the games are, you know, they are not like informal that you don't want to play something that is informal in a formal tone. So in these kinds of things, they will now be able to like, using the tools, the, the trainings that they receive in order to be able to localize, do a deeper localization. We can call it maybe a deeper localization. I think Eritron technology is allowing us to go deeper in the localization and we can even, I mean, if technology gets even more powerful, maybe we can come to a point of hyperlocalization. Like everything is localized to you as a person, depending on your ideal, the Language that you speak.
[00:19:45] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean that would be the ideal world.
Of course, we are years away from that. And this is where I agree with a lot of people in the industry that say because many people are scared of technology. Oh no.
Translators are going to disappear, linguists are going to disappear. But these are the professionals that add the texture.
[00:20:06] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:20:06] Speaker A: That we are talking about. Right. Without, without the linguists from different areas of the world, we wouldn't be able to contextualize the models. Right. And the models need to be adaptive, but they are as good as the contextualization that they get. Right?
[00:20:21] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. I mean, at the end of the day, computers as, even though they keep advancing, they are limited by the fact that they are in computers. Right.
But we live in three dimensional world in which we are exposed to a culture, exposed to a context. Right. Like now we are talking with you in a room and we are aware of the context and we are talking according to computers.
I will dare to say that they are one dimensional, although I know that there are multimodal language models, but still they lack that understanding of real world. And this real world, their culture. This texture that you mentioned is still provided by the translator. And for some time, hopefully it will continue to be provided by translator.
[00:21:12] Speaker A: And this links perfectly with the episode that you were listening to with Marco Trombetti. Marco was mentioning that once you start looking into the models, then you start realizing where the gaps are and then where we can provide like knowledge. I was mentioning to Marco, you know, I come from a very small town in Colombia called a small city called Sin Celejo. And if I, if we were to do back translations from how people see speak, I don't think the models can understand what is being said. So. And that's only one example out of millions of towns around the world. Right. So that texture is going to take time to even compute, Right?
[00:21:50] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, Marco was saying that you need, in order to understand the limitations, you need to use the system slightly, use the ChatGPT, use Gemini, and you'll see how limited they are. Although they are amazing, it's fascinating to see all the things that they are able to do, but they are also amazingly limited.
Limited. Yeah, like we limited with the capabilities of the model. And as you said, I mean, we can count millions of examples like yours showing these limitations.
[00:22:20] Speaker A: Right, right, of course.
Before we go, because I know you, you have to jump onto another session.
That's, that's great. That's great that we have time because I want you to send A message to those translators, interpreters, lecturers, professors, but also business people that are looking into the industry not many governments are looking into. Okay, how do we include translation into our 2030 vision, let alone 2050? I think 2030 is just around the corner. It's five years away. So what's the message in terms of where research needs to go, in terms of how should we be looking at where the industry's at, even from an academic perspective? Because like you said, we are going to continue integrating it. And I think what technology is going to do is going to make it a lot easier to integrate. It's going to be a lot easier for me as a business person to understand you and for models to take this conversation, create a transcript, synchronize it with other thoughts, and then send it out to the world to see. So what are your perspectives for the future?
[00:23:33] Speaker B: A good question.
Well, again, referring back to Marco's podcast, we know that the technology will get better next year, the year after that, maybe until 2030.
That's a given. We need to accept that.
We need to have an open mindset, like a growth mindset, and also an adaptive mindset to keep adapting to the things that will change and also understand that some things, like the translation competence, language and culture expertise, competence will keep.
So, like the ability to differentiate the things that will change and not change. It would be important.
Translation will continue to be important.
Translating, the act of translating may be disrupted by industry, by technology, and it will.
We've been there since 2016. We know that it will continue.
But translation, the import, translation as a form of acquiring knowledge, transferring knowledge between cultures will continue to be important. And my message, I think, would be that, like the. I don't think there would be a change in the importance of translation, hopefully.
[00:25:03] Speaker A: And of course, the future, it looks bright to me.
You are going to continue growing as a professional and we were talking about wanting more people to hear this message. Where can people find you? Where can people find the Localization School?
And what other things can you share with us about that?
[00:25:26] Speaker B: Well, While I'm on LinkedIn, if you search for Goku, you can find me. Localization School has a website. It's very simple. Localization School, you can visit it. We have a school starting on 20th of January. It's. It will be two weeks online. Totally. So if anyone is interested, they can come and find us there. If you are interested in my scholarly work, you can go to Google Scholar. We do research on quality evaluation on machine translation and generative AI. So, yeah, these are the places that you can find me.
[00:26:01] Speaker A: Thank you so much. And of course, we'd like to have you write for Multilingual and get some of that knowledge shared with everyone.
In plain language, of course.
[00:26:10] Speaker B: Of course.
[00:26:11] Speaker A: And not scientific language.
[00:26:13] Speaker B: Yeah. By the way, I am a regular reader of Multilingual. You are doing a great job of bringing together so many bright minds in this journal.
[00:26:29] Speaker A: Your feedback and I appreciate the conversation we are having. So, without any more to say today, I want to say thank you for joining us today. My name is Eddie Arvieta, CEO of Multilingual Magazine, and Gokandoru, and I'm very.
[00:26:44] Speaker B: Happy to be here with you.
[00:26:46] Speaker A: All right, thanks for listening. Until the next time. Goodbye.
[00:26:49] Speaker B: Goodbye.
