Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the weekend review, your source for the latest news in the language industry. I'm your host Eddie Arrieta, and I'll be leading the conversation today with Marco Trombetti. Before we do that, let's talk a little bit about some of the news that are out there in the language industry that you should consider to begin with. If you haven't noticed, log World Silicon Valley is coming this year and what we have to know or tell you about is that the call for papers is coming to a close on April 5. So you should get your proposals sent to them as they are looking for topics in many different areas like advanced localization management, content management, Edo in localization game, global, global business, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. For those of us that are going to be going to log World Dublin, we're already looking forward to the conversations over there. So if you have amazing conversations for lock World 52 in Monterrey, make sure that you send your proposals before April 5. I'm from multilingual magazine. You should also know that our issue has been out for a couple of weeks now. The March issue is out and we are right now focusing on Women History Month. You will find amazing profiles, including a profile from Marjolaine Groot, our CEO, and other amazing professionals like Martina Illatti and Natalia Korbachevs.
I think we have something like twelve different profiles in there that you can check and these are completely available. If anyone does not have the digital subscription of multilingual magazines and is looking at this video and you need it, please let us know. If you want the physical magazine to go to your doorsteps, to your company offices, also let us know and we will make sure that you get it. Now, without any further ado, today we're going to be talking to Marco Trombetti, CEO and co founder at Translated. He started his career very young at the age of 15, where he delivered innovative technology and algorithms for PCCD players to the Fidonet BBC community back when, and I'm reading this from his LinkedIn profile, when the web was just a nagging thought in the back of Tim Berners Lee's mind. He also studied physics. And in 1999 Marco created translated out of love. Not out of love to the industry, but out of love to his wife and co founder. And in this amazing conversation we might dig deeper into how this happened. But what you need to know is that he is not the linguist of the relationship, he is the computer scientist of the conversation and his wife is. Isabel is the linguist in that conversation. And in 1999, they decided to do something together and co founded translated.
We want to thank Marco for being here today. So everyone, please help me welcome Marco Trombetti, CEO at Translated.
[00:03:18] Speaker B: Hello, Eddie, and thank you so much for inviting me.
[00:03:21] Speaker A: Thank you, Marco. We are very excited to have you here. I've always heard about Marco, famous Marco Trombetti from all corners of the localization industry. So we are very excited to have you here today. And of course, we have many questions for you. But the most intriguing and interesting, interesting one from us is what happened to the boat? So we were following the story, first leg, first place, second leg, first place. And boom, the boat broke. Falcon Islands and a lot of different stories. And in my summary, after seeing the whole situation, a lot of humans coming together to get it fixed. So we want to hear from you. Welcome to the weekend review and tell us a little bit more about what happened.
[00:04:08] Speaker B: Yeah, so it was a true, true adventure, as you said.
So we started participating in this regatta and we started preparing it three years ago. And it was a long, long preparation. And you should know that me, Isabel, most of the people involved in this regatta has never been sailing before. Okay? So it was a true adventure for all of us. And I call it a friend in San Francisco, Theresa Marshall, VP of globalization salesforce, and said, look, I really want to go around the world. We need to spread the values of our industry, the beauty of translation, the power of translation, of connecting people and the centrality of humans in technology. And I think the best thing we could do is, is really go and do this project together. Would you like to help me? And, you know, we started this with Teresa. Teresa was managing all the activities in San Francisco to try to recruit people from doing this race. And among our friends, obviously. And so 700 people sailing with us.
And of those, we created a team that went until we won. And against all odds, we start the race. And day number three, we're still first. And that was unbelievable. You know, this is one of the most competitive races out there. Fifth anniversary of the whitbread around the world race. Call it the Volvo Ocean race lately. And for the 50th anniversary, you can do it without technology. So it was super tough. No GPS, no weather information. So it was really human against nature. And we were winning. Incredible. We do the leg two, we win leg one with two days and a half advantage. And from there on, from being considering the, you know, the people without any chance. Then people start looking at us, who are these people? From localization first, what is localization second, they discover is not GPS. First it's and say, these people are tough. These people are tough. Then we do leg number two and we win every prize in Legtown, the main prize, plus all the other secondary prizes. So again, with two, three days advantage, big, we start leg three, the mythical Cape Horn, the Everest of the sea. The most difficult seas ever. And we have to start without our main qualified person, Vittorio Malingri, our superhero. Vittorio was the guy that trained us, helped us grow, etcetera. But Vittorio, which we call him a tiger, you know, he made a mistake, something about sales, repair, etcetera. And he got us a penalty. And because he's a very honorable man. And he says, no, this, I made a big mistake, this, this should happen. No. And he said, and he did this independently, he said, I'm stepping out, so Vittorio out. And we have to go and do Cape Horn without support, okay? And obviously the team, everyone grew a lot. So everybody said, okay, we cannot go then. Yes, maybe we can. They decided to go. So with this mindset, we start the leg and we're first again, by far. We started winning. And at that point where we pass Cape Horn, after four days of bad weather, 10 meters wave, so about 30ft, 33ft waves and 100 km/hour winds, 60 knots. And we knocked down four times in this big, big storm. And our old beautiful lady, this 165, does not manage to survive that incredible storm. And we got a crack. At this point, we're five days ahead of everyone.
And we cried two days. But we represent values now. We believe in humans. You can read here about the centrality of humans. So we cannot put the race before the humans. We are getting a lot of water inside the boat because of the leakage. And so we basically decide to go to the Falkland Islands, the Malvina Islands, that are the closest they were to us. Closest means two days of navigation. So 24 hours a day, we were watching the crack, you know, and there was always someone, maybe sometimes two people, watching the crack while we go for two days. And then we arrived at the Falkland. And that is where the adventure, the true adventure begins.
[00:09:03] Speaker A: And in that adventure, what I looked and you shared, you share a video with the details.
It seemed like it was done. It seemed that it was not possible to get any of the materials that you needed, that you could not get the right personal, the right professionals to look into it. Meaning, even if you had the materials, it's not like you could do it yourselves. And of course, the most experienced professional that knew about sailing was gone from the team. Now, what was the vibe, like, what was the spirit like from the team members at that moment?
[00:09:48] Speaker B: Yeah. First I have to say that now it's true. Victoria was not there, but the entire crew.
The fact that Victoria was not there, the entire crew realized how much they learned in these three years of preparation. And so we were sailing like pros. Okay? And I think that Vittorio was very, very proud of how we were going. Incredibly, incredibly well. So at that point, we felt confident and we arrived at the Falkland and there was no infrastructure to repair the boat. There was not a crane to put the boat out of the water.
There was nothing. So this is the only time the crew really is an incredible crew. And we really wanted to shoot everyone. What we're made of, what the localization people are made of. We wanted to show that, you know, we never give up. And even if we have to abandon leg three, we want to honor the race, we want to be back on track, we want to try to get in leg four and win leg four. So we. But this was the only moment in all the race where I saw the crew that it was a little not ready to continue. It lasted about an hour. And when we arrived, there was no crane. There was no way to repair the boat. They started looking on their mobile phones, a way how to get out of the Malvina Islands, the Falklands, you know, how do I go home? In their mind they said, it's over. This dream is over. And then what happened at this time, we start talking with local people. That happened all in an hour. Started talking with local people. And all of us were divided in different tasks. And so we, after 15 minutes, we realized that there is a cargo ship not so far from the island.
We contact the cargo ship and we asked them if they have a crane.
And they said, yes, we have 40 tons, just enough for our boat. And can you come from where you are and come to the island so that you take out of the boat, out of the water our boat. And they said yes, because we were lucky in being a place that has been in a war with Argentina for now 50 years. And that thing made people to be extremely resilient and ready to help each other, ready to.
To solve problems. So what they did, they actually came immediately. I mean, it took two days to lift the boat because there was 50 knots was not possible. So we convinced them to do it. And with this cargo ship, we lift the boat and then you see the structure underneath. There is no way where you can put the boat. Okay? And so what we have done instead, we started welding and building a metal structure around the boat so that we could put the boat directly on something, otherwise it would not stand. And we did all this from 430 in the morning to eleven in the morning. At eleven, the guy from the boat says, I need to leave because I have to continue. I cannot stay longer here. So I put the boat in the water and we said, please try, we will see if it fits. He put it. It was unstable, but it was holding. And we finished the work and we started repairing the boat directly there. In the video before, you have seen that we even have built a wooden house around the boat. Why? Because we don't want to pollute the environment. And so we didn't want to have any fiberglass to go around while we were repairing. We did all this, but the materials was not there. The fiberglass was not there. There was no material, no epoxy, no fiberglass. It was taking us two weeks to go outside with an airplane and come back standard airplane. They have only one flight per week to get the material. So in Santiago de Chile, we find the material in the shop. Santiago is quite far, is in Chile.
And I started contacting all the acrobatic pilots of Chile, and I found one, Sebastian Diaz. And the guy said, yeah, okay, I can come. There was no authorizations, really, that could be done. And so he came back to me and said, the flight plan cannot be approved. It takes 14 days to get the approval. They said, please apply anyway, I'll find a way. So he applies for the flight plan. I drive directly to the military airport. There I get the military approval, I get them to accept to allow the fireplace as an urgency thing. And then, unfortunately, Argentina closed the airspace for us. They didn't want us to go because there's this commercial war between the Falkland, Malvina and Argentina. And so they really don't want to have any plane to go back and forth in this space. So we're stuck, said, we have to give up. We cannot go back in the race. And then I called this guy Sebastian, and said, look, Sebastian, is there any way you can put more fuel in the plane so that we fly around Argentina to get to the Falkland?
And the guy said, yes, I got a fuel tank that we can install inside the cabin that I've never tried, but we can try if you want, and it will be with you all the time. And so we fill the plane with 500 liters, 160 gallons of fuel inside a tank, then inside the cabin that we connect it to the. To the other tanks in the wings, and we went around Argentina. Richard Santiago got the material, go back, repaired the boats. We arrived in Punta del Este, repaired the final things, including the engine that had a problem. 06:00 p.m. We finished. 10:00 a.m. The morning after we start for the race and we started in position nine. Was not tired more than this. We were dead.
Couldn't really think, couldn't work anymore.
And we started race in 9th position. Three days ago, we were in fifth position. Right now we're in third position. And so we're coming back. We want to show that not only we never give up, localization people never give up. We want to show also that we will also win the leg number four and ensure that you can do great things if you focus on great human values.
[00:16:44] Speaker A: That is a fantastic quote. I'm not going to have to ask you to repeat it. But Mila, actually, you were right. Mila, could you share the images of how the race started? For those that haven't seen, you can either go to. To the multilingual YouTube channel LinkedIn or the translated website, and you can see Paul Kayard's report on the start of the fourth leg.
And so I don't think, is this one, Mila, the one you were showing just right before? Or is it this one?
[00:17:14] Speaker B: Maybe this is from Southampton. Yeah. And these are the videos that Paul Kayard. Paul Kayard, seven times world champion, many times skipper at the Americas cup. He's producing this content every week to summarize the regatta. And I tell you one thing. So we started this project with Paul. Paul was a hero. He's a legend in sailing. And he accepted this because he's connected to language, if you want, in one way. When he won the round the world race in 1997, his sponsor was Ef language. So language learning.
[00:17:56] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:17:57] Speaker B: And so when we came back and talking to him about the project, said, this is incredible, Mark, you know that my biggest achievement in my career, the thing that I loved more in terms of human experience, is, in fact, this around the world with EF. So we're taking language again around the world. That's incredible. And he didn't expect us to win leg one, so we're very happy to see him in case town welcoming us. And he was very proud of all the crew. And for us, I mean, it's an incredible achievement. Now we really have to work. We get all the support from all the people in localization so that we win leg four. And if we win leg four, I think we made history of the race because we will be one of the boats that has won more in the history of the race.
[00:18:48] Speaker A: And I would have to say safely that I think translated nine has already made history, and it's gotten so much attention, not only from the industry, but from outside of the industry. And it's a great story of resilience and great and perseverance. So congratulations. I think we should get the crew sometime at an in person event and then try to get their thoughts and see how they did this. I assume you're ready from the translated team are already working on what the documentary is going to look like, but I'll be the first one to watch it. Marco, thank you so much for giving us that update. And we're going to continue tracking the race and see if you win. So the best of luck. I have two more questions, of course, which are not as exciting. I would happily continue talking about the boat, and we will definitely bring some of the crew members to talk about it. So last year you gave us, in our latest interview with you, you gave us an update. 200 languages finally achieved in that kind of road to the singularity. So what is going on around that? And translated, where are you in the.
[00:20:02] Speaker B: Empty conversation that's exciting as the race? Believe me, eti, just to connect the dots about the race, I want to tell the localization people that if they want to enjoy and try to raise around the world. We're preparing a small new regatta from San Francisco to Hawaii in July, and selections are starting now. So Teresa Marshall will train more people. And then basically six people, we're recruiting six people, non professional, that never sailed before, to go with us in that regatta in July. So, you know, watch and apply for the training from now to July. If you want to join the race, or if you simply want to see how it is, you come. Maybe the first time you scare it, you stop, or maybe you like it so much and you continue. So this was just a technical for our friends there about singularity.
You know, saving for me was a great opportunity to disconnect from the daily thing and look at things in a more broader way. I've been 100 days at sea. That gives you a lot of time for strategic thinking. And what I was shocked about is that our prediction in the time to singularity are wrong and are not wrong, because this is happening later. This is happening faster than we expected. And I could not understand that. I say, how is it possible? So if you draw that line of the time to edit that we presented in many conferences, it looked like that we were eating singularity, language singularity in 2028 or something like this, by projecting what happened in the past, improvement. Now, the problem is that what I didn't consider is that the world now has got an incredible hype on artificial intelligence. And so we're not simply following the more law and the data generation low. Now everybody is putting a thousand times more resources on artificial intelligence.
Incredible amount of new research. So the algorithms are increasing faster than expected. The data is invented many ways to use monolingual data in a way that was completely unexpected. And so now we can train our model, if we train the model with 1 billion words per language pair, now we're training the model with 10 trillion words.
10 trillion words.
And the models are so clever that they're learning how to translate even just from more lingual information.
And that was completely unexpected. And so, before we were training with a few GPU, the model, now you get 4000 GPU's. So before it was four gpu, maybe for a week. Now it's 4000 GPU for. For a month. So the amount of resources is incredibly bigger than expected. And so singularities coming sooner. The latest release of our machine translation, the one that's. I mean, the one that we haven't shipped yet, the next one is scaring to me how good it is.
And when I say scare, obviously, I'm honest. I mean, professional translation, okay? And the quality of new models that combine the translation architecture together with monolingual data. So the large language model architectures, the new architectures combine it to give the fluency and accuracy that we need. So the fluency of a language model and the accuracy of translation model is creating something incredible. And I'm kind of worried about when should we release this?
Is the industry ready, or will everybody switch from human translation to machine translation because of the hype? And then we know that it's delicate, there is a lot of hype, and people are making choices, sometimes too quickly. So we want to be conservative also in the way that we give access to these technologies, in the way that people can benefit, understand how to use it, and take the maximum advantage of it. But Eddie aspect, a big, big change soon.
[00:24:42] Speaker A: You are completely right. This is very exciting, and I'm really happy that you have presented us with all these very, very valuable insights. I know those that use translated, and competitors are going to be very excited to hear what you have to say about it. And I know we have just a couple of minutes, but I do have a question about your investment. Translated investment into fostering innovation in the language technology industry. So your research center, imminent, will fund five original research projects, €100,000.
Thinking behind it.
[00:25:23] Speaker B: The idea is very simple, and there is 10,000 great researchers in the world and that are working on AI applied to language. And, you know, translator is growing very well. But even if we create an internal research centers with 100 researchers, we're tapping all in 1% of the brains and the planets.
And that's not the way we want to work. We want to work in an open way, where we make friends in this community, by sponsoring their research in their own countries, in their own university, by supporting these people to grow, you know, in the place where they feel that's all in their community, close to their community. And the centralization of research, I think, is. Is wrong, because it does not create a good future for humanity and also doesn't give really translated a much greater opportunity, because we will only be working with 1% of the brain. So we want to help these researchers improving language technology and AI applied to language as much as we can. And so that's the small step, the grants, with the grants, at least one way we connect to people, but when we connect to people, then we can fund even bigger research projects.
[00:26:56] Speaker A: Marco, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. It's been a pleasure to hear you and to hear your insights. Of course, I would love to get 1 minute of your time for you to send a message to the industry. And I know there are a lot of entrepreneurs, innovators, others like me that just joined the industry, and they hear a lot of the pains and of course, the fears around what technology is going to do to the industry. What would be your message to some of those and some of us?
[00:27:25] Speaker B: Oh, yes, and with pleasure. So, first thing I would like to say that the translation problem, allowing everyone to understand and be understood, is the most important problem for humanity right now. And so we, the localization industry, we are in charge of attacking a problem which I consider the most relevant problem in the world. And this is more important than going to Mars or potentially more important than climate change, not because these are not important, because we are building the tool that allows to solve this problem. If people can cooperate at global level, we can attack as humanity bigger problems. So we're building the tool to allow the next evolution of humanity. And so I want to thank all my colleagues, and I want to tell them, you're doing a great work and you're working on the greatest, most important problem. The second thing I want to say is that I started this race around the world because I want people, among, people from outside our industry to know what, translation, what localization is. And I think we are succeeding because what we do is incredible. And more people should be aware of the incredible value that we bring from the world outside, but also to the executive of the companies that you work in. And so it's a message that needs to be spread, because every time someone translates, we're improving the world.
[00:28:57] Speaker A: Marco, thank you so much for joining us today and everyone who has watched this interview live.
Thank you for joining us. Marco, it's been a complete pleasure. And from multilingual, we're going to continue keeping track of what's going on with the race and, of course, bringing in more insights from industry experts. And. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Fingers crossed. Translated nine will win the ocean global race, and we will invite others in the industry to join your boat from San Francisco to Hawaii. Marco, thank you so much. Have a great day, you and everyone. It's been a pleasure. Bye.
