Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to Localization. Today we have great conversations about the state of the industry, translation interpretation and many other topics along the way. Today we are joined by the amazing Marlene Julien Soubera.
Marlene, for those that don't know her, is the chief Executive officer at Creole Solutions is a translation company dedicated to providing language access, creating economic opportunities and promoting Haitian language and culture. She began her career at the Consulate General of Haiti in Chicago, where she gained insights into community needs, particularly in language access, following work with the United nations in Haiti, where she gained much more valuable.
Your experience is very valuable to us, very valuable to the industry. How are you you doing today?
[00:01:01] Speaker B: I'm doing great. Thank you so much for asking. Eddie, how are you?
[00:01:05] Speaker A: I'm doing great too, and I know it's an unfair question. It is said that these days asking someone how things are, it's just one of those, right, where you're almost forced to say everything. It's great and you cannot really be very honest. But I really hope everything is great. And that of course, your team is growing fantastically, which inspired this conversation. Creole Solutions, many, many years and going strong. Can you tell us about your anniversary and what that has meant for your team?
[00:01:35] Speaker B: Yes. So 2025 is our 10 year anniversary. Well, I've been interpreting for over 20 years, but I decided to create this company in 2025 because there was such a big need for language access in Haitian Creole and we haven't stopped working since. We've been growing and growing and creating more opportunities for linguists in Haiti, the US and the Dominican Republic.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: And of course, for those that are listening, they might think about Haiti and they might have mixed thoughts about it. And this was one of the conversations that happened for those that are listening when I first started talking to Marlene, which is how does Creole Solutions do it? How is the talent found? How is the talent trained in Haiti? What has been some of the challenges over the past 10 years? And of course, the ones that you've seen over the 20 years of experience that you have that inspire you to open up Creole Solutions?
[00:02:34] Speaker B: Yes. Well, Haitian Creole. For a long time, Haitian Creole was not recognized as a language. So most of the times when people needed to communicate with Haitians, they would turn to French. And this has changed over the years, but it hasn't always been like this. So one of the challenges was getting people to recognize Haitian Creole as the language of the Haitian people. Because while Haiti has two official languages, Haitian Creole is spoken by all Haitians, while French is spoken by only a small pocket of Haitians. So this is one challenge that we had to face where we had to educate our clients and let them know that if they want to touch Haitians, they have to touch speak with them in Haitian Creole. Another challenge that we have is because of the political climate and the infrastructure in Haiti, at first it was hard to find people, although they were willing to work. But because of the infrastructure, some people do not have electricity. 24, 7. Like we have that luxury here. They have to use a generator. So one of the things that we had to do was in addition to having electricity, we had to invest in a generator. And in addition to a generator, we have to have a solar panel. So we need to have a backup for the backup for the backup. And two years ago, when there was a lot of the president was assassinated, the country was locked. We even had trouble getting to work because there was a gas shortage and people just couldn't work.
So it's been very challenging because, as you can see, Haiti goes through one crisis after one crisis and after one crisis. And this affects us in many ways. Sometimes we have a lot of work because of the crisis, because we need to communicate with them, but it still affects us because this is our country, and it's very painful to see what's going on right now.
[00:04:37] Speaker A: And we did have a conversation about this, especially when we're looking about hidden gems in the language industry, and we were looking at those doing Haitian Creole and trying to figure out how is it that they do it, the impact that they have in the local communities, from what you've seen. And of course, there's a lot of humanitarian work that you've also been involved with. What is the impact that having languages like Haitian Creole available in terms of professional services? This is sophisticated translation services. What is the impact this has in community and economic development for those communities?
[00:05:15] Speaker B: It makes a huge difference in our community because first, people are getting information in their language. It could be medical information.
It could be, for example, teaching a mother how to care for her newborn. But it's very valuable information. But it also has an economic aspect to it because it creates job for translators. For example, we translated a social media platform in Haitian Creole, so that makes it easier for the people using that platform to do business. They can navigate the website, so it helps them succeed with selling online and promoting their businesses online. And it also creates jobs for our language professionals. And when you give a job to one translator, it's like giving a job to the whole community because they're going to support their family. They're going to support their neighbors. So it's like it has a trickle effect where it just really supports the whole community.
[00:06:20] Speaker A: And I've been involved in the conversation and we were talking off the recording about this. We are at a partially crossroads in the global conversation. President Donald J. Trump has just started issuing different decrees and putting in place different holds on funding. We know that USDA being one one of the main organizations around the world that supports a lot of the funding for social investments. It's now passing all of those investments in many different countries. This probably is going to include a lot of conversations on language access.
What is your take on the conversation so far and how does this affect a company like Creo Solutions, if at all?
[00:07:17] Speaker B: I believe it's going to have a huge impact on our company. We are already seeing an effect because Creosolutions is a woman owned and minority owned company. So in terms of the dei, we see that we may lose some contracts because that has been eliminated. And when you're talking about the usaid, it's going to have a big impact on Haiti because there's a lot of programs, especially educational programs where they have the materials in Haitian Creole. So this may not be available to the community. For example, there's a youth program for young people with HIV where they educate them on how to care for themselves and the precautions for them to make. And it has a huge impact on the country. So to remove a program like that, I believe Haiti is already in a dire situation where aid from the international community is what's keeping it standing.
So it's really going to hurt the country and our company. I believe it's going to have a big impact on our company.
[00:08:28] Speaker A: In terms of course of let's say the training, but also the experiences that you've had going through different hardships.
How have those prepared you for these type of scenarios where you have to, you have to look for different ways to make ends meet and also talk to those that are in Haiti working day in and day out on these activities. How have your experiences helped you to this point?
[00:09:00] Speaker B: Well, my experience, one of the great things about our company is we collaborate with a lot of other bigger agency or multilingual agencies. So we don't have our eggs in one basket. We work with several organizations and they are in different industries. So they could be in medical, health care. Some of them do localization. So we have a nice, a huge clientele that allows us to have projects coming on a regular basis.
[00:09:35] Speaker A: This is really good. And of course I can't avoid but to move forward in the conversation about the evolution of language service providers and copy companies such as Creole Solutions. And I did say sophisticated translation earlier on purpose because this might be the type of work that artificial intelligence will need a long time before it can actually catch up to the work that humans do. Can you speak to us a little bit about how Haitian Creole is doing in regards to its relationship with artificial intelligence, with memory translations and that sort of technologies around languages and how is it dealing with that AI search or wave these days?
[00:10:26] Speaker B: Well, 10 years ago, if you asked me this question, I would have laughed and I would have said there's no way that AI is going to replace me. But I believe that AI has made a lot of progress and we don't use machine translation. But when I review, when I get a client that sends me documents for post editing, it still has a long way to go for a language like Haitian Creole. But it has gotten better. And it's scary because if you are, for example, if you have a simple letter or simple directions that you want to give to someone, machine translation, it's fine. I would say it's 90% good. It's not as authentic as a Haitian would say it, but it's good enough.
But in terms of sophisticated translation, our company, we are a completely remote company. We use cat tools.
Some Katos do not yet have Haitian Creole as their language pair. But we have a workaround it. So we do work just. We work just like any company. Whether it's like Spanish or French, we use the same technology as any other languages, except that we don't use the AI that they have because it's not as advanced as French or Spanish because they have more data. But in terms of memory, we have large data. Queer Solutions has been doing this for over a decade. So we have a lot of data in Haitian queer.
[00:11:59] Speaker A: And I assume, of course this helps with the preservation of the language. It also helps with language technology evolution. What is your take on the use of technologies in the conversation of language access? And we've always talked about this idea where some are thinking translators and linguists will disappear. I am on the camp where I think, of course there are some specific tasks that will disappear, but the knowledge of the culture and the language, it's core to the evolution of these technologies. What do you think having a company like Creo Solutions does to language access, especially when it interacts with technology in the way that you're suggesting?
[00:12:48] Speaker B: I believe technology can be a partner. I mean, we could make technology can make us More efficient as language professionals. But of course, you have to understand the culture. For example, if I want to translate a Haitian proverb in English, AI would not be able to do that because it's not just the words. There's a history behind it. There's a weight to the word.
We have a proverb called, which means the tiger's child is a tiger. If you say that in English, it doesn't make any sense. But the translation would be, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, so you could never.
I don't think ChatGPT or Google Translate would be able to capture that, because you have to know it. It's something that I grew up listening to, and I know it as soon as I hear it. I know that it seems that the apple doesn't fall from far from the tree, But I know that, like I said, I use CAT tools, and we have memory, we manage our memories. It's a lot of data that can be used in the future. And I've even thought of using, you know, there's a lot of information that we could use to work with AI to improve education in Haiti. Because in Haiti, one of the biggest challenges is education. And, you know, when there's poor education, there's poverty, and then there's violence. So all of that is. Is intertwined. But we could use AI to create. To create learning materials for the Haitian people. At this time, the materials that we study in school, they're outdated. And if we were to use AI, it would be instant modern information. Of course, we would need linguists to work it, to make it more authentic. But if we were to use artificial intelligence, I think it would help in terms of education in Haiti with the translation and making it authentic translations.
[00:15:06] Speaker A: And it's great to hear. I think one of the conversations that we had this week in one of the webinars about the future of growing globally was this massive adoption. And I believe there is a trend in terms of adoption, in terms of collaborating across different cultures to kind of understand each other better, real solutions. It's in that path. It's opened opportunities to a lot of people. It's opened itself to many projects. What does the future look like for you, for the team?
What do you envision should happen in the future for all of you?
[00:15:46] Speaker B: Well, I'm a very positive person. You asked me how I was doing earlier, and I told you I'm doing great because I'm very positive. I never imagined that our company would be where we are today when I was just a freelancer doing translation on the side. So a lot of opportunities came with the changes in our society that allowed the company to grow. And I believe that our company is going to continue to grow also. We've been translating mainly on translation services. This year we created a new interpretation division. So I believe that's another way we're going to grow because there's a lot of demand for interpreters.
Over the past two years, with the Biden administration, thousands and thousands of Haitians migrated to the United States. I'm not sure if they're going to remain, but a lot of these people are working. They're working at Walmart, Disney, at different companies, and they need interpreters. So I believe that there is still going to be a need for Haitian Creole translation. We will continue to serve our clients and maybe in the next five years. My dream is to open a building in Haiti where I could have a call center and I could offer training on language and linguistics because we also work on the development of the language. So that's my dream. Hopefully things will get better in Haiti and then I could have that building and I can invite you over.
[00:17:19] Speaker A: Thank you. I would love an invitation to visit Haiti.
It'd be great. And of course, I cannot let you go before you speak to the entrepreneurs out there. And you were saying you're very positive and entrepreneurs tend to be optimistic, sometimes overly optimistic. Otherwise we wouldn't do anything. Right. We would be paralyzed and not have any initiative on anything. But I'm sure we are going to see more entrepreneurs, we're going to see more innovation, especially language solutions that close the language access gap. From your experience, what would be your recommendation to those entrepreneurs focusing on language service solutions, language technologies, looking to close that gap in language access, what are some of the things that you would recommend they look into or think about as they are building their initiatives?
[00:18:14] Speaker B: From my personal experience, I believe that just quality, like when you are offering services, make sure quality is your number one priority, not only for the client, but also for the lep. Make sure that you give the best service to the people so that your business can continue to grow and also look for other opportunities.
You may be doing only translation right now, but with the new age of AI and technology, there are so many other things that we could do. So just be open and look for opportunities. And of course, try like the best thing you can do is try and see where it takes you.
[00:18:55] Speaker A: And that's a great advice from you. Marlene, before we leave today, is there anything else you'd like to mention to your team who works remotely to those that know you and anyone else who is listening to this conversation today.
[00:19:08] Speaker B: Yeah. I just want to say I know that times are very difficult right now, but it's history repeating itself. And we are, especially people in the language industry, we are resilient people. And I know that things will get better. And I wish everyone success with their endeavors and don't give up and just stay optimistic. And I believe things will get better.
[00:19:31] Speaker A: And I believe so, too. Marley Julian Sovereign, the sovereign of this conversation today, CEO, founder of Creole Solutions. Thank you so much for joining us today. Marlene.
[00:19:47] Speaker B: Thank you, Eddie.
[00:19:52] Speaker A: All right, everyone. And my name is Eddie Abrieta. I'm the CEO here at Multilingual Media, and this was localization today. Thank you so much for listening. And until our next time, goodbye.
