Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to Localization Today where we explore how language, technology and community converge to unlock ideas for everyone everywhere. I'm Eddie Arrieta, CEO here at Multilingual Media. Today we are talking about one of the most hands on, technically grounded events in our industry, Genai in Localization, which returns this December 12th to the 17th, 2025 for its next online conference and workshop series. To talk us through what's ahead, I'm joined by one of its key organizers, Konstantin Dranch, founder of Custom Antique. Constantin, welcome. Thank you for joining us today.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: Hello.
[00:00:47] Speaker A: Thank you. And of course we'll be talking backstage about the wonderful events that we're going to be joining together. We're going to see each other again in Saudi Arabia in about a week or so.
[00:00:58] Speaker B: Very much looking forward to that.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: That will be a great experience for those listening. I met Hani Amir and hamad at the ATA 66 event and it was amazing to get a physical copy of the SATA magazine. You'll be hearing more about that in the future. And Konstantin, to begin the conversation, if you can tell us a bit more about Jain AI in localization. How did the idea come about?
[00:01:24] Speaker B: Well, do you remember the panic that happened everywhere when ChatGPT came about? Was it December 2022?
[00:01:31] Speaker A: Yes, sir.
[00:01:32] Speaker B: Everybody was shocked and paralyzed and I thought hey, we need to talk about it right now. And custommt is a small company but also very fierce and we quickly react to what's going on in the market.
So immediately we put together an agenda. Invited I think it was Marco Trombetti back in the day. He was the first keynote to speak speak about the effect of this AI systems on everybody's jobs and everybody's workflows. And within weeks we had it going because there was such a strong pull, such a strong interest towards the topic. Thousands of people from around the world signed up and we realized there is a big demand, there is a big interest towards that topic and we kept going every year and this year is the first year where we want to take it to the next level.
We are organizing it with Kate Vostokova who also organized before Lock from Home an online conference with thousands of thousands of people attended. During COVID another moment of change and opportunity. So we had this experience from before we had the setup and then the moment came and we caught it by the tail. And this year we want to make this conference go around the world, reach thousands of people. The last edition in May, we had a big success with Jan Hendriks joining the crew and he is building a big profile in streaming.
So he got on his live cast of this conference 60,000 viewers, which is a big number for the world of localization. I think there's less than 1 million people in localization translation around the world. So 60,000 is a significant, significant number. And I'm sure in December we'll get 100,000 or even more.
[00:03:19] Speaker A: Congratulations. Those numbers are really impressive. And of course it is not easy to get them, especially when you have depth in the type of conversations that you're having.
[00:03:29] Speaker B: It's so nerdy, Eddie. It's. It's a lot of nerdy conversations. I'm sometimes surprised, but people are interested and this is what they want. Something hands on, something quirky, do it yourself, build yourself, realize what's going on. This kind of conversation, and that's great.
[00:03:45] Speaker A: That brings hope back to humanity.
It's not all slow.
[00:03:51] Speaker B: Do you lose hope when you go to a big conference full of marketing content?
[00:03:55] Speaker A: I go with hope. I look for light. I look for light in the darkness.
And sometimes I do find it, and sometimes I'd say more often than usually, my cynicism allows me to. And I'm always very surprised. And I call that personally optimizing for serendipity. Events like this are a great opportunity to give yourself the opportunity to be surprised by what the universe has out there.
[00:04:20] Speaker B: How very poetic, Eddie.
[00:04:22] Speaker A: Thank you very much. Very Latin American of me. Very, let's say, magical realism of me. But let's get back to the event. You know, you have tons of people.
[00:04:34] Speaker B: We try not to be magical. We only hit the realist part.
[00:04:38] Speaker A: The real. The realism. You just the realism. Good, good. We need both, I think.
[00:04:42] Speaker B: You know how there's so much hype about geni and so some people, they drink the kool aid, they believe it can solve everything.
And the amount of money the hype has generated, the amount of pull from all the large businesses, organizations, is incredible. So even if it cannot fulfill some of the human roles, like cannot replace the translator, yet it can definitely change careers, it can change perceptions of jobs. So whether you want it or not, you want to master the narrative, you want to master the tools, otherwise you're threatened.
[00:05:19] Speaker A: Yeah. Do you think this is why there is so much interest from the localization community? Do you think this is what drives this attention to this hands on event?
And what other things do you think are very attractive to the localization community that makes a decision to go to the Gen AI localization event?
[00:05:38] Speaker B: Well, first, being hands on is very attractive. If you go To a large conference, you hear lots of marketing pitches you don't get hands on.
So you're not enriching your technical skills, maybe your network, but not a technical skill. So one aspect is that it's very, very demonstrative and you can participate sometimes interactive exercises. So this is useful. And the second aspect is that people want to be together, they want to discuss these things.
You're only feeling like a member of the community, a member of the industry, when you are connected with fellow professionals who have the same problems, the same ideas you exchange.
And in that moment you feel the calling, you feel the purpose, that you're not just working on workflows or words or code or something like that. You belong to a larger body of people who are solving a global problem, a global need of translation, localization, intercultural, international exchange. In the moment, when you're in a conference, in an event, you are a part of the community. And that's really cool.
[00:06:45] Speaker A: It's very fulfilling and I agree with that. Konstantin, of course you are mentioning or you mentioned something really interesting about those drinking the Kool Aid and believing then AI or even just Gen AI can do so much more than it can actually do today. In fact, we've had conversations where we're recognizing that the year of Agentic is no longer the year of Agentic, but the year where Agentic really failed to deliver.
And you know that now there is an evolution on the conversation. You were the first ones then to jump into that discussion or at least open up the forum to get it done.
What has changed, what has evolved in that conversation since 2023 to what you will see in the 2025 edition?
[00:07:34] Speaker B: Well, this year's edition is somewhat different.
We do have a very strong program put together with speakers from the big tech. We'll have Google, Amazon, cohere, probably some other big tech companies will have many representatives of the buy side, the localization teams. So there buy side panels with localization leaders, there's a few workshops.
What has changed, I think is that we are getting to understand the audience needs better. In the beginning it was oh my God, this happened. Let's understand where it's going, let's decide our place in it Today we already know what kind of skills are needed, what kind of narratives required, where you can go.
Many minds think in the same direction. For example, from 2022 to 2025, the end of the year, everybody have been building systems based on Genai. And so at this event we'll have the opportunity to present 12 different systems built by translation companies in house departments. How all of them took the models and built something on top of them. The wrappers, the workflows, everything is ready, everything's operationalized, everything's to a certain level of efficienc efficiency in there in production. So these days it's no longer the bright eyed wonder at the new technology which is going to change our lives.
It's okay.
So you integrated ChatGPT. How did you do it? Does it really work? What is the efficiency? So what's under the hood in that car? So the vibe that we have now and the content we have now is tailored more on. We already heard that before.
Show us the real stuff.
[00:09:27] Speaker A: This is great. These sort of technical use cases, more practical use cases are probably going to show the attendees that it's also of course up to them how big their architectural capabilities are to be able to not only imagine but device technically the solutions that could make that sort of value impact in the companies. Right.
[00:09:52] Speaker B: And the main approach for us is the how long, how deep down the rabbit hole we should go. A lot of the content of integrating AI and localization is technically nerdy. So there's the two parts, right? One is for the engineer, where they are really going into the details, into the rag systems, into the agents, into the builder part. And the second is for the diplomat, the person who has to act as the sponsor of the project or the head of localization who becomes the head of AI and localization. How do they build a narrative around that? What do they actually do to convince everybody about the usefulness of their project?
[00:10:36] Speaker A: I can't wait to see how the Gen AI and localization event is going to unfold. I want to be there and I want to participate very humbly. Of course I will be observing as just a journalist, but we can maybe.
[00:10:49] Speaker B: Give you a moderator role of one of the.
[00:10:50] Speaker A: Oh my goodness, I would love it.
[00:10:52] Speaker B: You can get involved. Absolutely.
[00:10:54] Speaker A: Thank you so much for the invitation. I will take on that. You'll see me at the Gen AI in Localization event as a moderator.
[00:11:01] Speaker B: Right?
That's how I have clear approach. Right. If somebody wants to participate in the event, there is absolutely no barrier. We always need moderators. We always want to see people who help the audience or organize workshops.
The floor is open.
[00:11:19] Speaker A: This is fantastic. This is how I will get involved. For those that are considering participating with a paper and I know the call for papers is open right now, how does it work? What should they think about and do?
[00:11:32] Speaker B: Well, actually it's officially closed by now. And we received too many papers, so we'll have to refuse half of the people who submitted, unfortunately.
But we have an overwhelming number of proposals and we're trying to work them in a program which will not exceed four hours per day.
Even if you're super duper interested in Gen localization, you can only probably consume 4 hours of content per day, otherwise it becomes too much. So we're keeping every day to four hours and then we need to find the right presentations, the right speakers that would make the experience of the viewers the most useful with the takeaways, the practical stuff, and not just the Kuwait.
[00:12:19] Speaker A: Tell us a little bit about what you've seen in those papers that were selected. You don't have to be specific, but what sort of things are you seeing there?
[00:12:26] Speaker B: Well, maybe two trends. One I already described that everybody have built a system.
It's no longer a potential or a promise. In the future, it's something operational. So we'll be able to see those and how they build them and to what extent they work.
Jurek Sisilski is going to lead that track and he's going to roast those systems. So there'll be presentations, but a little bit with sarcasm, a little bit with a grain of salt to see under the code. Jurek has built his own system called TMS Bridge, which connects gen with the traditional tms. So she has the builder experience and he's going to lead it and moderate.
Then the second part is of course, narratives.
To give an example, I think Jose Palomares recently rebranded his team from localization to global experiences.
So today in a large company, everybody wants to say, hey, why don't we implement Gen AI and we get rid of localization? They will not be needed because the model can do that. So one of the big important roles of a person leading localization in the product company these days is to implement your own systems and then search and destroy the rogue initiatives. So we're going to talk a little bit about how they deal with different technical teams starting this unauthorized projects, implementing models here and there without supervision or customization or checking that they adhere to the company voice or policies, et cetera. So there's going to be that vibe. I can see there's a big trend that LSPs and the human localization is under pressure. At the same time, the automated translation is exploding like never before. So we'll see how this is getting into the products and programs, how to run this, and of course acquire some skills in prompts, in data management, in model operations. So this will be the main kind of topics to discuss at the event. Finally, we want to start looking into the multilingual accessibility. So there will be a couple speeches on that topic. It's becoming a new kind of growing language service with the use of Gen AI, so we can maybe have a small expose in that area. That's a long but probably quite detailed explanation of what the program will look like this year.
[00:14:51] Speaker A: Constantine, before we go, I love to learn more about what what can we do if we want to register? Where do people go?
[00:15:00] Speaker B: And there is an event page which you probably can link.
The conference is split into three days. So the first day is open which we stream.
You'll be able to see it on YouTube, on Jan Henry's channel, probably on LinkedIn.
You can pre register, get your email into the system to receive notifications and the other two days are additional kind of workshoppy hands on content that is on a paid basis.
[00:15:30] Speaker A: All right?
[00:15:31] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:15:32] Speaker A: All right. Unless you have any final thoughts. Konstantin, thank you so much for joining us.
[00:15:36] Speaker B: Well, I did want to discuss. There's a lot of conferences. Eddie, what do you think? What makes this one different? What do you think?
[00:15:42] Speaker A: It seems the hand. First of all, it seems the hands on approach is interesting. I just came back from Taos and I thought it was different. Right. More niche. And secondly, I'd say that the specificity of the topic makes a huge difference. It also seems to me and I'll need to experience it, Konstantin, because I haven't been to one of the events, I have to experience it. But I'm getting the sense that this could be a great place for innovation to be ignited. Meaning I could see why entrepreneurs would like to be there. I could see why, you know, growth and innovation teams should be there. Like if I were part of one of these teams, I would want to be there to see what the use cases are, where the value is at, where, you know, at the end of the day the bottom line is at right. Which is the money and the revenue that can be made. And I think there is ton.
[00:16:34] Speaker B: We're not a lot about the translation business anymore. We're mostly focusing on one or two Personas. It's the localization manager and the localization engineer who work in house. So we're not speaking to the LSPs that much anymore.
[00:16:48] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's a great place to diverge. It opens up many opportunities. I definitely see the community growing. So those are some of the things that I find interesting to this. Thank you for the question.
[00:17:04] Speaker B: Thank you. And let's see what you moderate inside the program.
[00:17:10] Speaker A: Let's see what happens. I'm looking forward to it. Thank you everyone for listening to Localization today. Once again, a big thank you to Mr. Konstantin Dranch. It's been a pleasure to get to know you, man.
[00:17:23] Speaker B: Thank you Adi.
[00:17:28] Speaker A: For those listening. Thank you for joining us. And of course, listening to the perspective on Gen AI in localization which is going to happen December 2nd to the 5th 3rd December, which is happening on December 3rd to the 5th, 2025. A space where pragmatism meets innovation, where the future of AI in multilingual communications is being built and beyond, of course, collaboratively. The call for papers is close. You will learn more about the program soon. Remember to catch new episodes of Localization today. You can do it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube. Subscribe, rate and share so that others can find this amazing show. I'm Eddie Arrieta with Multilingual Media. Thanks you so much for joining us. We'll see you next time. Goodbye.
