Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] My journey from fear to faith in the AI era by Shirley Yang in November 2022, OpenAI released chat, GPT, and the publics reaction was immediate. Clearly, this revolutionary technology was taking the world by storm, and people across industries were asking themselves what it would mean for their careers. I can still vividly remember waking up in the middle of the night worrying about the relevance of my localization business in this new era of AIH. All day I was tormented as I read opinion pieces and online comments that conveyed a great deal of fear from various stakeholders in the language industry.
[00:00:37] Eventually, though, I snapped out of it. As the co founder and chief strategy officer of Successglow, an asian language service provider with a staff of over 120 people, I couldnt afford to spiral down into the fear zone. I was responsible for peoples livelihoods, after all. There was no time to feel victimized. I needed to rise to the occasion. That was when I started to calm down and discipline my mind. For starters, I forced myself to focus on only reliable sources of information, such as professional associations like the Globalization and Localization association gala, industry news outlets like multilingual media, and prominent research groups like Nimsi Insights. My next step was to meet with my successglow co founders who shared the same concerns as me. Together, we decided to focus on how AI could help boost our quality and productivity to gain a competitive edge in providing localization services to our clients. And sure enough, we began to see positive impacts after implementing AI. Yes, our usual revenue model was affected as AI took over some tasks in service to our clients, but AI also enabled us to do more languages in a shorter time with the client's existing budget.
[00:01:53] Sometimes the client even allocated more budget based on the increased languages and volume of work. AI support has helped us to engage with linguists who are willing to come on board and grow alongside the technology. In this new co creation time with AI, we even have existing linguists who are willing to be upskilled. Furthermore, for our linguists who prefer to do translation from scratch, the good news is that not all enterprise clients are keen to jump onto the AI bandwagon. Yet the world is so big with so many niche markets geographically and vertically, that there is still a mix of enterprise growth stages.
[00:02:29] Therefore, we will need both traditional linguists and AI enabled linguists to help our clients, be it enterprise clients or other LSP partners. As I started to have clarity on what the future of an AI empowered localization industry could look like, I realized that by obsessing about the future of my own job, I had not thought enough about the clients needs and my company's mission. What's more, I began to see how broader developments in AI were bringing attention to our industry.
[00:02:58] When I was visiting my in law family in Malaysia, I happened to sit next to my husband's nephew, who was studying industrial engineering at university.
[00:03:07] He was excited to show me the English to Bahasa Indonesia translation app he created using large language models, LLMs and AI enabled software apps. He talked about wanting to ensure the translations reflected cultural subtleties and nuances.
[00:03:22] It was wonderful to see someone outside of our industry understand the importance of localization services, and it was thanks to his interest in AI. The language industry is now at the forefront of AI technology, not an afterthought anymore. Whenever a tech company demonstrates its new AI product, language is always a part of its show and tele application.
[00:03:43] And that's because AI cannot live without language. Now people know about our industry because we enable AI to be used globally with local language and culture. There is no well defined formula to tackle what is before us. Everyone has their own journey and comes with a different background. But whether it is at the personal or company level, each of us needs to move away from fear in order to put faith into action.
[00:04:08] As the Bible states in James 217, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. By taking action, I mean that we need to be willing to move out of our comfort zone. To be comfortable being uncomfortable. We must ask ourselves the brutal what if there is no AI invasion? Is my organization still in a sustainable growth stage for the future?
[00:04:30] If the answer is a clear no, we need to step up to face the reality of things in the economy and the world. Then we can ask the next now that AI is here to stay, how can I empower my staff or myself to begin learning and adopting tools that are helpful for cost cutting, revenue generation, and efficiency? My wish for all my industry peers, as well as the newcomers who aspired to join us, is to recognize that now is not the end of the road. Rather, it's the beginning of a new faith in action. This article was written by Shirley Yang, co founder and chief strategy officer of Successglow, a Singapore based LSP with offices in Tokyo, Hanoi, Beijing, Yantai and Jinan. She is a board member of Gala 2023 to 2024 term and an active member of women in localizations, Singapore chapter originally published in multilingual magazine, issue 230 24.
