Episode Transcript
[00:00:20] 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, and today we're diving into ntif, what's new, what's next? And how this year's program is being shaped behind the scenes. We're joined by the wonderful Annemarie Coliander, conference organizer and co founder of the Nordic Translation and interpretation forum.
Since 2011, NTIF has convened the Nordic and Baltic language industry to share experiences and spark new business. Anne Marie, welcome and thanks for being here.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: Well, thank you very much, Eddie, for having me.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: It's my pleasure and it's great. We've had many conversations in person, but we've never had any recorded conversations.
So I'm pissed at Fabiano because he got you on his sofa before I could get you into our podcast. And you definitely need no introduction. But Anne Marie, we're always having new people coming to our industry. Why don't you give us a little bit of the background on who Annmarie Coliandre is?
[00:01:35] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, I'll try to keep it very short. I mean, I've been 30 plus years in the industry by now, I'm embarrassed to say. I'm one of the dinosaurs and I basically have had a position on every side of the business. So I've started by chance as many others, as project manager for a translation company, went on to the client side trying to do copy paste to create international or multilingual content back in the early or somewhere in the 90s, which, you know, you don't remember that, but it was quite a hassle and then moved on to the technology side. So I did almost 10 years at Trados Scandinavia, a well known brand for the industry.
And I've also been on the vendor side as a sales manager and on the research side. So I've done pretty much everything that you can do apart from translation. I'm a building engineer by education and I don't know anything about translation and I admire translators and interpreters very much. I could not have done that job.
[00:02:46] Speaker A: Oh, thank you so much for giving us a little bit of the background. Sometimes, you know, when I have listeners or we have listeners from our wonderful podcast, some say, oh, sometimes I just know everything about them and sometimes I don't. So this is great for us to get some context. And for those of us that know you, we know that you are very involved in event organization, always trying to bring fresh ideas, innovative ideas, and you've attended A lot of events this year lately, international and I've seen those pictures. What have you seen out there that is helping you shape NTIF this year?
[00:03:25] Speaker B: Well, I think, I mean the most important part for me is to sort of position the different events that I'm involved in. So ntif, yes, that's my baby. I co founded that together with Cecilia Ian beck back in 2011 and it was meant to be actually only one off and look at us now, 15 years later.
But NTAF is a regional event and we are very keen on making sure that we cover what is interesting for the Nordic and the Baltic region.
I think it's. We have a lot of common with other regions of the world, but we also have a lot of specific challenges which has to do with cultural backgrounds, the language diversity and other aspects of our industry.
And if I compare that with, let's say then Lokworld, which is also an event that I'm very much involved with, that's an international business business. That's where enterprise clients from around the globe come to meet and learn and share ideas and, you know, interact with their vendors or their partners or with their clients.
So they serve different purposes and I always underline that when I'm asked about this topic.
So having said that, I have been to two regional events this year. One in Mexico, Vamos juntos, I believe we met there.
And the other one just recently in South Africa at the association of Language Companies in Africa, their second event, their first in person event. Both of these are regional events and I love those. I get so much inspiration, I learn so much because these are areas of the world that I'm not on a daily, daily basis, I'm not involved in those regions. So I learn a lot and I also find so many similarities. So one of the things that I picked up in South Africa was how they are struggling in Africa to create language models because there is so little data and the continent is so diverse when it comes to languages and, and believe it or not, it's very similar in the Nordics. We have minority languages, we have five different official languages in only this very small, small area. And we don't have the corpus. So therefore, of course, which is a pro and con for AI translations, we're not quite there yet. And the same goes for the African languages. So I learned so much.
I love that.
So I was truly inspired and I wish I could invite everyone who was on that panel discussing this into the ntf. But unfortunately it's a big, big world and I think it would be a Little bit on the costly side to bring them over.
[00:06:26] Speaker A: And yeah, you are right. And that's one of the biggest challenges with regional events, which is to add also perspective or outside perspectives to the regional players that are there. Something like that, that it's happening in terms of the attendees for those that are considering attending. And for me, I couldn't do it this year, but it is in my plans for next.
So what are some of the things that I can expect seen in terms of the nationalities and the local players or regional players versus also the international players that join your regional event?
[00:07:05] Speaker B: So the idea of NTIF came about because we didn't see the Nordic companies, the language services companies attending many international events. So we were a little bit afraid that everyone was looking into the Nordics, but the Nordics were so busy doing business within the Nordics, so they didn't look out. So we were like, hey guys, if we're not joining forces here and start sharing knowledge, we might just be taken over by, by someone from the outside learning a lot.
So that was one of the reasons. Another one was that we wanted to form some kind of pan Nordic association. That part didn't happen. But we have a very international event. I would say maybe 60% of the attendees, which are typically around 150 people, are from the region.
You see brands, companies and attendees that you would not typically meet at other events around the world.
The other part are international guests or outside of the region. Guests coming from far, sometimes from very far.
And they go there hopefully because they like the event, but also because it's difficult to start doing business with people from my region unless you have shaken hands and looked into your, you know, the eyes and, and sit down to have a meal together.
So I believe that we have fostered a lot of relationships and business across borders because people get to know people and people, you know, buy from people and people that they like and they keep coming back, which is amazing.
[00:08:58] Speaker A: And thank you so much for mentioning that because out of curiosity, I was just thinking about this whole period during the pandemic when we thought events were going to disappear and that face to face was no longer going to be needed because we were just jump on a zoom call and that was going to be it. In your experience from the original events that you've seen and the experience after the pandemic with ntif, how have the face to face interactions shape up for you? And you've mentioned business have come out of these interactions. Can you give us a little more words on that?
[00:09:35] Speaker B: Well, we did an online event during the pandemic, as many other conference organizers.
It was fun, it was a lot of hard work and we decided that never again. And we don't like the hybrid versions. That's my personal opinion. But we do believe strongly in the in person meetings and we think it's very, very important. We were one of the first conference to actually do an in person event after Covid.
We did it as a one day we had posters telling people different ways of greeting each other because we didn't know the level, you know, how uncomfortable people would feel. So, so we had actually a color scheme that would tell that I'm okay with a hug, I'm okay with kisses, or I'm okay with only waving hands or fist bump or whatever. But back to your question.
The more digital we become, I do believe that the in person meeting becomes even more important when we get the chance.
Digital meetings are amazing. We can avoid unnecessary traveling. We can come to decisions much faster by collecting a team that is a global team, just by connecting to zoom. But the real business that happens when.
[00:11:00] Speaker A: People meet in person, and that's also my experience. The consolidation of concepts, of ideas come much easier, especially when you are in person and face to face.
The consolidation of partnerships to come much faster when you are face to face. So I love regional events of this nature. Of course, the thing that has happened in the past few years as well is the evolution of the topics.
Three, four years ago, nobody was talking about artificial intelligence. We were talking about machine translation and translation memories and those things.
Maybe a little bit of machine learning, but not, not to the extent that we are working on today. Of course you have a regional event and you have your own core themes. Can you tell us a little bit about the agenda? What is it looking like right now?
[00:11:55] Speaker B: So the MTIF is traveling around in the Nordics and the Baltics. So we are this year coming back to Helsinki, Finland. It's our second event that we are hosting in Finland and we are super excited about that. And we have picked up sisu.
And siso is a Finnish word that I don't think translates into any other language. But it's a. It's a core Finnish concept referring to extraordinary determination, resilience and courage and that we believe that that is what we need right now because the market is so uncertain. There are so many question marks, there's so much we don't know about what the world would look like in six months. And not even mentioning all the political reasons to be nervous right now. But so we believe that SISU is something that we should learn about and bring into our business so that we can strive even after, well, six months from now or a year from now. So that is the overall scene and we hope that this world, this word is going to be viral.
[00:13:07] Speaker A: So yeah, and I think I love how some of these regional events hang on to a word to work on the agenda from there. As a matter of fact, International Translation Forum this year in Saudi Arabia. The word that they are working with is handicraft.
And I do know that Creole Nation is also going to be working on a regional event with a specific work which I cannot yet release, but the audience will soon know what that is. So November 23rd to November 25th, tell us a little bit about how this word is going to trickle down in the different activities, keynotes, panels, workshops. What can we expect when we attend?
[00:13:57] Speaker B: So yes, we start on a Sunday evening with a little welcome reception and then we have two Monday and Tuesday, two full days of conference program. We have a wonderful venue which is very different from any other venue I've seen in the past. So anyone curious should go in and look at our website to see how the setting of the room is.
So since I'm not finished, I don't know how I personally would incorporate CISO in my own presentation. But we are going to kick off the conference with a keynote. Julia Salorenko, she is not new to mtif. She was also our moderator before the pandemic. And speaking of ciso, she is originally from Kazakhstan and she moved to Finland and she's been a resident there since 2012 I believe and she's now the mother of three. She do Ted talks around and she is, you know, she works with young people startups and is a true inspiration to many. And of course she's also very good at AI as young the younger generation tend to be and I'm not going to disclose 8. But she's very young and I'm very inspired by her and she brings a lot of positive energy and SISU into her talks.
[00:15:31] Speaker A: And of course the formats that are there are what's really attractive to people. Julia is probably gonna be one of the main anchors for people to attend the event. Are there any other prominent speakers must see sessions that you believe if I were you I would pay attention to those sessions as well.
[00:15:54] Speaker B: Well, we have speaking of South Africa, we actually have an expat from South Africa. He now lives in France, Johan Lawrence, some might have heard his name before.
He's going to give a presentation he used to be on the enterprise side but is now on the vendor side. So why communication is very important and why some vendors go wrong in their attempts to sell to, to the enterprises. So he's going to share a lot of experience on that.
And then we have actually not disclosed more, many more speakers than that but we have a few more coming up on our website shortly. But I want to highlight that even though Julia is not an insider of the industry, we always have an external keynote because we believe that we must listen to what other industries are doing. And we also going to have a second day keynote which is Joel Williams and he's an author of, well, He's a podcaster, YouTuber, everything you want in that sense. And he has written several books under the theme of very Finnish problems.
And he's going to teach us a lot about how to do a correct saa, how to incorporate Siso and yeah, and I had to double check with the Finns because he's, he's from the UK if he's funny in Finland too or only for us Swedes, but he is a true comedian and I think that is also something that we pull. The local people will certainly appreciate his very finished problems.
[00:17:35] Speaker A: I've told you this in person, but I have to confess that the sauna is the main attraction to me. That is, that is the main reason why I, why, why, why I would make it.
[00:17:46] Speaker B: And you know what? This is the perfect time of the year to do sauna because November in Finland and I don't want to discourage anyone planning to go, but it's going to be dark, it's going to be cold and the sauna is where real, real business happen.
[00:18:02] Speaker A: That is where real business happens. And of course I love the regional approach to the conversation in that every nation and every culture have very specific elements that you need to consider to just start a conversation and just close business.
Now we're not even talking about localization yet. We're only talking about having human interactions.
Could you tell us to our audience and we have great listeners from all around the world.
Africa, Asia, Latin America, America, of course, all throughout Europe as well. What are some of the things that you think we missed the outside world misses about the Nordics and the Baltics? What do you think about what do you think are those misconceptions that we have?
[00:18:55] Speaker B: First of all, I think a lot of people think that it's one region and it works in exactly the same way in all of those in total eight different countries. But that's not true. You don't do business the same way with a Finn as you do with a Dane or with an Icelandic.
We have totally different cultures. Only three out of the languages are related, the Scandinavian languages. Finnish is not part of the same language family.
And I could go on. So there are lots of differences and cultural diversity.
Another one is that many think because the English proficiency is quite high in the region, that for an enterprise wanting to establish a business in this region can just use English and they're, you know, that's okay.
But we also have to remember that this is a traditionally very immigrant friendly region. So In Sweden alone, 25% of our population is either first or second generation immigrants.
Which means that in addition to Swedish, maybe you should use Arabic on your website if you want to reach that community and sell to that community.
So English is not enough.
You have to localize to the local language, at least of the main language of the country and probably also a couple of others if you want to really penetrate those markets.
[00:20:29] Speaker A: And that makes a lot of sense. It really highlights to me that this is something that should be happening all around the world. And your expertise, it's very needed in events like Vamos Juntos and also alca, and that's probably why they took you to these places. And there is also a growing conversation among regional event organizers, but also business event organizers that I think is related to the speakers and to the sessions that you are building and its representation and speaker diversity.
This conversation became more prevalent in the past few weeks. But what's your take? What's ntif doing around speaker diversity? And I was really happy to hear that you're bringing two outside perspectives into the conference. I think that's very, very needed.
[00:21:19] Speaker B: Yeah. So I think we need to learn from other industries. We tend to look too much inbound. We need to start looking at what are they doing on, I don't know, types, let's say what you call it, I lost the word for it. But let's say photographer or marketeers or content creators or whoever they are, what are they doing? And how is AI actually impacting those industries? Because it's not just within the language industry that we see a lot of change. But in terms of diversity on speakers, I believe that we should have a representation of how the world looks like today.
Right. Would we mandate more female or male representation? You know, like tokenism, getting them in because they are a woman or a man? No, probably not.
The best man or woman on the job should do the job. That's our main philosophy.
But even Though I claim, and I think many of me with me agrees that this is an industry dominated by women. But if you look at conference programs, especially maybe panels, there is a tendency that there are more men than women on stage.
I don't know why, but I don't think it's intentionally. But I think we could actually do more to make sure that we have an equal and diverse speaker stage.
In the Nordics, which happens to be one of the most gender equal regions in the world, we have not had a problem to make sure that we have almost a 5050 split. And then also the nature of the industry. We have a lot of people coming from other parts of the world who have been establishing their businesses in our region.
So they have a different background. And of course that adds to diversity as well.
[00:23:19] Speaker A: Excellent. And Marie, we are almost coming to an end of our conversation but November 23 to November 25, what are the timelines that you have right now? Those that want to attend? Are there possibilities for those that want to be speakers or presenters?
What do you have there in terms of your schedule?
[00:23:42] Speaker B: So this, the coffer paper is closed. So we are just now confirming the last speakers and we might reach out to a few that we would like to see in the program who didn't submit the paper. That's how we are forming our program.
We are accepting of course more sponsors. That's always a welcome and that is maybe one of the biggest challenge as a conference organizer that many of us, we compete over the same marketing budgets from our sponsors.
We accept registrations until well, very late the same day if necessary. So there is no need to rush. We are planning to publish the first draft program on Monday and speakers are being uploaded to our website as we speak. So I think that's yeah, pretty much it.
[00:24:35] Speaker A: That is fantastic. It seems like everything is aligned for November this year. I wish I could make it. I will not make it it unless something amazing happens, which I'm always open to.
But Ann Marie, thank you so much for joining us today. Any final messages for attendees, for regional event organizers and for the community as a whole.
[00:24:58] Speaker B: Take the opportunity to meet in person. Whether it's over a luck lunch or you invest to travel to a conference somewhere. Don't be a stranger.
I think we are and TAFR and many other conferences are very inclusive.
So even if you didn't have friends when you signed up for the event, we are pretty sure that you will walk out of there with many new friends and maybe business partners as well.
And yeah, be curious, we can learn from other regions of the world and we can also learn from our next door neighbor. So, yeah, come join us.
[00:25:34] Speaker A: Wow. Thank you so much. That's a wrap. Amari, thank you so much for the preview on ntif.
[00:25:40] Speaker B: Well, thank you for having me on the show.
[00:25:42] Speaker A: Fantastic. All right, everyone, thank you so much for listening to our conversation on the Nordic Translation and Interpretation Forum 2025. It will take place November 23 to November 25 in Helsinking, Finland.
My name is Eddie Arrieta. I'm the CEO here at Multilingual Media. If you've enjoyed this episode, follow, subscribe on Spotify, Apple podcast or YouTube and leave us a rating so that others can find the show as well. If you have a question, ask it on stage. If you have a topic to cover, please just leave a comment, send us a note, and keep the conversation going until next time. Goodbye.
