Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Hello. Welcome to Localization Today, where we explore how language, technology and policy converge to make communication truly inclusive. I'm Eddie Arrieta, CEO at Multilingual Media. And today we are joined by Karen Decker, president of the association of Language Companies, ALC and President of ICLS in Washington, D.C. we'll talk about the upcoming ALC Summit in New Orleans and how the ALC is driving a new narrative at the intersection of public policy, AI, and multilingual access. Karen, welcome and thank you for being here.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: Thank you, Eddie, for inviting me. How exciting. To talk about alc. I love to talk about that.
[00:00:53] Speaker A: Yes, yes, yes, yes. And we're, we're excited to learn more, of course, with partner for the past few years. And increasing our understanding of ALC is also a huge priority to us. So this is a great opportunity also to get in contact with that reality. Could you elaborate a little bit more on the summit this year in New Orleans?
How did it come about? How did you think about it? And how is the team getting ready for the event that's coming up soon?
[00:01:21] Speaker B: Sure. So for your listeners who may not know what ALC stands for, it stands for the association of Language Companies.
And we are a language association group of companies rather than individual interpreters and translators. We have almost 200 members. And every year we have two major events. One of them is the ALC Summit, which takes place in September. This year, it's September 10th through the 12th, and it's in New Orleans, as you said.
The other event we have is always in February, and it is called the unconference, and that is usually in a warm location.
Next year we're going to Puerto Rico. And so those are our two main events. So the summit came together years ago, and it's a place for all of us to gather and learn from each other, but also to learn the latest trends, the latest technologies, the latest issues. We cover the gamut from advocacy to AI to ASL interpreting.
We have speakers who talk about mergers and acquisitions, if you want to sell your company, sales, all of the things that business owners and CEOs in the C suite are concerned about. But it's not just for that. It's also for other folks in their companies that are providing support for the language services that they provide. And our members are translation companies, interpretation companies, localization companies, language. My company happens to be a language school in Washington, D.C. so ASL localization. I mentioned captioning. So we cover everything in the language industry, and we position ourselves, the alc, as the voice of the whole language Industry. So that's kind of my pitch for who we are.
[00:03:12] Speaker A: Thank you. Thank you for sharing it. And of course, the summit is the one that's coming up soon.
Coming up, how did it go about picking up the city?
What are you hoping the attendees will get out of it this time around?
[00:03:27] Speaker B: Well, you know what we do, we have a committee, of course, we have an events director and a committee, and we plan years in advance.
So we look at, we try to alternate for the summit between east coast, west coast so that we can, you know, have our members advantageous to whatever coast they're on. But we also have folks coming in from overseas, and a lot of companies from Latin America are also members of our association. We're not just, we're American based, but we're not only companies that reside in the United States.
[00:03:57] Speaker A: And it is great because the support that you were mentioning really takes us into the conversation about the things that you're gonna be talking about throughout the event, the perspective that you're gonna be giving your company. So let's get a little bit into that and language services itself, and it'd be great to get your perspective on. Why do you think is that the language services industry is still so invisible to the public and key decision makers, which I believe is probably the biggest problem language service companies and your associates probably go through. Right?
[00:04:32] Speaker B: Yeah, we're like the biggest industry that nobody knows about as an industry. I think that we have a branding crisis, actually. Despite being essential to everything from national security to health equity, we're still misunderstood and still too often undervalued.
So one of the reasons, I think, is because we've spent so much time being indispensable, quietly, you know, we're behind the scenes in the hospitals, the courtrooms, the embassies, the schools and the corporate boardrooms. And our success means nothing goes wrong, which makes it easy to overlook the impact that we have.
[00:05:10] Speaker C: Right.
[00:05:10] Speaker B: And the public, even the policymakers, they still see language services as transactional and not strategic.
So that's the core of the branding problem, I think. And we haven't been loud enough about what happens when we're not there. Misdiagnoses, failed diplomacy, lost revenue, compromised security.
And until people understand what's at stake, we will stay misunderstood.
[00:05:37] Speaker A: And I was making a note, because that's a really good point. What happens when we are not there, there? And it is probably the question that many would ask way, way before our time where they say, you know, robots are going to take over everything and they are going to be Making the cars, which they are making the cars, but there are humans overseeing all of the steps in the process.
So that is, that is, that is a little bit also of the crossroads that we're going through in our industry. No secret AI is probably going to be part of the conversations that you're going to have at the event, I presume.
What are the risks of thinking about it too much on this automation? AI will take care of it kind of, kind of way when it comes to language services. And where does the human expertise remain irreplaceable? And we can read between the lines from what you just said, but if you can give us some words about that.
[00:06:32] Speaker B: First of all, the ALC and the members of the association we embrace AI, all of us are curating it, so to speak, to fit into our business operations, whether it's the operations side of the business, the back of the office, the back of the house, so to speak, or whether it's actually the service itself that you provide. And we know it's been around a long time, you know, machine translation, Google, et cetera, but obviously today it's a lot more sophisticated and can do a lot more to enhance our services.
So that's number one.
But the danger is that AI is being treated like a shortcut to fluency, often when it's really a tool. So we treat it as a tool. And the thing is that AI doesn't understand nuance. It doesn't understand sarcasm or trauma or trust. It can't stop in the middle of a conversation to clarify something or to reframe it, or to sense that someone doesn't understand what's going on.
[00:07:33] Speaker C: Right.
[00:07:34] Speaker B: So without human oversight, without partnership with human, the AI driven translation or interpretation could potentially cause harm. I mean, there could be a legal error or a medical mistake or a cultural blunder. And that's not fear mongering, that's just already happening.
[00:07:51] Speaker C: Right.
[00:07:52] Speaker B: So the future isn't AI instead of humans, it's AI guided by professionals who know how language actually works in a human context, if that makes sense.
[00:08:02] Speaker A: It does. And I think your answer is really interesting because it gives us also an idea of what it is that ALC does, what it is that ALC thinks about and how it helps its associates. So if you could, could you let us know how does alc, the association of Language Companies, support language service companies through these times? Times of technological disruption, a great political pressure and a policy landscape that is shifting, if that's the word on a stable, we could also say unstable policy landscape. How Does ALC help those companies?
[00:08:42] Speaker B: Well, one of our main efforts right now is with advocacy.
[00:08:45] Speaker C: Right.
[00:08:46] Speaker B: We are helping our members navigate these waters that are, you know, very choppy lately and strong headwinds, and sometimes we don't know what's happening from one month or one day to the next. So what we do is we amplify. We amplify the collective voice of our industry.
When legislation or executive orders threaten language access, ALC's in the room. When technology shifts the ground under our feet, we bring people together to respond strategically. We have an AI task force, for example. We try to be strategic and not reactive. We educate our companies how they can educate their clients, particularly in this day and age where executive orders are flying out the door and then there's guidance that's confusing, and it's confusing for the companies and it's confusing for their professionals who provide the services because there's some confusion now whether language access is required and, you know, all of that. So we help navigate that. We have. Dr. Bill Rivers is our.
Are lobbyists that we have hired as the association, and we are very proactive in creating a community for our companies to understand how they can promote the value of our work, especially for small language service companies.
It's also, we also are the place where you go not just to stay in business, but to stay informed and connected and to help us, we help them grow their business as well.
[00:10:19] Speaker A: All right, and the main thing that's very interesting here to us is language access.
This is the conversation that we've had with many professionals, many companies here. Multilingual is at the center of the conversation this year. Despite of artificial intelligence and agentic language access has also been at the very center of the conversation this year. You are in the position where you think language access is a fundamental right.
Why is that? Why do you think language access as a fundamental human right? Yes.
And what are the real world consequences when we fail to uphold it?
[00:11:00] Speaker B: Well, look, I mean, no one should be denied healthcare, justice, or essential services just because they don't speak the dominant language.
[00:11:09] Speaker C: Right.
[00:11:09] Speaker B: I mean, the United States is a multilingual country, and that's not going to go away just because there may be an executive order that. That says that there's one language for this country. People are still here. People still need to function. They have kids, you know, they have doctor's appointments. They need to fill out immigration papers. They need to understand what's going on when they walk into the school system to talk to their kids, teachers. So, I mean, a refugee Mother shouldn't have to rely on her own child to interpret at the doctor's office and a newly arrived immigrant should be able to apply for benefits. Or what if they're going to get a lease in an apartment and they can't read it? They don't understand what they're signing. I mean, these are things that if we don't provide them, it's become a luxury instead of a right. And that's not. That's not right.
[00:12:02] Speaker A: But yes, yes, yes, of course there is. There is then recomposition on, you know, the whole value equation that we have in our world.
How do you think we can reframe the value of professional language services so that it's understood as vital, non negotiable, like other human, fundamental human rights, right? Like clean water or broadband or anything else out there?
[00:12:28] Speaker B: Well, if our industry were visible and respected as healthcare, IT or education, language access would be built into every system, not tacked on.
[00:12:39] Speaker C: Right.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: So it would mean that decision makers would automatically budget for language services the way they do for cybersecurity or for legal compliance. It's non negotiable and it's a high value. It would mean that nobody's going to say we can't afford interpretation any more than they'd say we can't afford electricity. It would also mean more students will enter the field, more investment in professional development and a clear career pipeline. For linguists, it would be respect and resilience. But also we need to do a better job, right? We need to be telling better stories and telling them louder. We need to move from we translate things to we protect meaning.
[00:13:19] Speaker C: Right.
[00:13:19] Speaker B: You know, when somebody says, what do you do? Oh, I'm in the language industry. Oh, you translate stuff, right? Yeah, we translate stuff. But we protect meaning, right? I mean, from language access to language equity, from nice to have to critical infrastructure. This is where we need to shift the narrative to. I mean, the ALC is working to lead that effort, but we all need to take ownership of it. Whether we're a small or a large business, we have to brand and we have to take every moment to do that. We have to speak about our work with pride and clarity. Because if we don't shape it, somebody else will.
[00:13:57] Speaker A: That's correct. Karen, thank you so much for sharing your insights.
[00:14:00] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:14:01] Speaker A: Talking a little bit about ALC as well. Karim, before we go, for those that are listening, that some already know about alc, some do not know about alc, but the summit is coming. Some of your members might be on the fence about going or thinking about it. Of course, your answers tell us a little bit of what the essence of the conversations is going to be like. So this is very exciting.
Those that are on the fence, why do you think they should go to the summit this year?
[00:14:30] Speaker B: Well, first of all, the association of Language Companies is like a big family. If it's your first time, if you've never been, which I'm assuming that that would be the audience you're talking about right now, somebody's like, I think I've heard about it. Once you get there, you're going to be welcomed right away. You're going to be taken.
We'll take you under our wings. The leadership, the board, and you're going to meet all kinds of people from small companies to large companies from that are very, very generous with their time, with their advice. We are here to help each other grow. We support each other. Okay, technically, maybe we're competitors, but not in reality. We're collaborators and we believe in. There's enough work for everybody. And some of us partner together for various contracts for various clients. You know, maybe there's a contract that comes out that provides interpreting services, but they also tack on translation. So you're an interpreting company. I don't do translation. Let me call so and so, whom I know through the ALC and say, can you, you know, help me out here? We have a very active WhatsApp group. You can't believe every single day it's like, hello, I need a Haitian Creole interpreter tomorrow at 10 o'. Clock. Can anybody provide me that? Two seconds, you've got DM me, DM me, DM me, DM Me. So we help each other out because we know that everybody can't do everything. So I don't know if that answers the question, but just come and you'll fall in love and we'll adopt you. And that's it.
[00:15:59] Speaker A: That sounds, that sounds, that sounds like, like a lot of fun. Of course.
[00:16:03] Speaker B: Plus, we have a lot of fun, by the way. We have a lot of fun.
[00:16:06] Speaker A: All right, all right, I will. I will be asking those that, that attend. Let's see, let's see if we can attend as well. And we might be able to see you there.
[00:16:15] Speaker B: Oh, wait, I want to. I got to tell you something else we're going to do this year, something different. So we're going to the last day. We have a dinner. We have a closing dinner on Friday. So Wednesday night we have a reception and then we have the sessions throughout the day. And Friday night, the Last day, we have a big dinner and we're going to go from the hotel where the conference is and we're going to have a parade. We're going to walk through the streets of New Orleans with a band and we're gonna walk to the restaurant from there. So that's one reason you need to come.
[00:16:49] Speaker A: That is. That sounds like a fantastic idea. I would totally do that. I will get dressed and I will be playing some music and doing some of the dancing.
[00:16:56] Speaker B: And guess what? My company sponsored that parade.
[00:16:59] Speaker A: Oh, great.
Now we know the type of sponsor.
[00:17:03] Speaker B: So we're gonna have the big banner and we're gonna have ALC towels and be silly.
[00:17:08] Speaker A: Karen, thank you so much. I think use insights. We've talked about alc. I don't know if there is anything else you'd like to tell our audience or just say goodbye.
[00:17:18] Speaker B: Well, I would like to say goodbye and thank you for listening, everybody. And please come to New Orleans. We'll have a wonderful time.
[00:17:25] Speaker A: All right. And with that invitation, we wrap up.
[00:17:28] Speaker B: September 10th to the 12th.
[00:17:29] Speaker A: September 10th through the 12th through the 12th.
[00:17:34] Speaker B: Yes. Wednesday through Friday night.
[00:17:36] Speaker A: Yeah, that is. That sounds like a great plan for.
[00:17:40] Speaker B: Www.Alcus.
[00:17:45] Speaker A: And we'll put it in the comments of these or the description of this podcast recording on YouTube or whatever it is that you are taking it. But, Karen, thank you so much.
[00:17:55] Speaker B: Thank you, Eddie, for inviting me. Thank you so much.
[00:18:01] Speaker A: This wraps up our conversation.
The wonderful Karen Decker, president of the association of Language Companies and president of icls.
[00:18:11] Speaker B: I like the way you said my last name.
Thanks, Eddie.
[00:18:17] Speaker A: Of course, we have tackled in this conversation the language services industry's branding Crisis and highlighted ALC's leadership at the nexus of policy, AI and multilingual access. Mark your calendar September 10th through the 12th. The ALC Summit in New Orleans. This September. Visit their website, Register. Join us in the future for another great opportunity to shape the future of language services. Thanks for listening to Localization today. Be sure to subscribe and rate us on Spotify or Apple podcasts and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter for updates. We'll be back soon with more insights from the people shaping our industry.
Until the next time, goodbye.
