Digital services (and digital access to information) are an increasingly important means of helping marginalized groups in emergencies. But, as you can imagine, there are many barriers preventing equal access to online information and apps. For instance, when international humanitarian organizations offer services in only international or official languages, many minority language speakers are excluded. Aimee Ansari, CEO, and Ellie Kemp, Head of Research, Evidence and Advocacy at CLEAR Global did us the honour of visiting our Globally Speaking studio to share with us the first results of a research project on language in digital inclusion. Listen to their fascinating insights – such as the intriguing phenomenon of certain minorities using fintech solutions, like mobile money, in languages they don't fully understand or can't read. They also explore how reliance on technology in a narrow range of languages can exacerbate the vulnerability of already marginalized populations.

“Companies are nowadays expected to seamlessly cater to client preferences and deliver relevant and personalized content on demand. Real-time and just-in-time localization is a key component of this hyper-personalized approach to communication”. Listen to Loïc Dufresne de Virel, 25-year industry veteran and head of localization at Intel, who couldn’t be more enthusiastic about recent AI developments and their impact on customer experience. Loïc explains, however, that the key to effectively capitalizing on this major transformation lies not only in the choice of AI but in the ability to integrate it into existing processes at multiple levels. Assigning a specific natural language processing task to an AI worker is relatively easy. The real challenge lies in the compatibility with other technologies, the ability to deploy AI capabilities at scale, and the requirement to support complex content formats - in parallel with the development of more flexible workflows based on AI-generated outcomes. Knowing how to strike the right balance between AI-enabled automation and the human touch, each complementing and augmenting the other, is undoubtedly the key to turning content localization into a significant driver of incremental revenue.

It's AI bingo at the moment! Everyone's talking about it - but did you know that the quality and quantity of training datasets are crucial to the accuracy and effectiveness of machine learning models? The more diverse and representative the data, the better the AI model can perform in terms of nuance. Did you ever wonder how to ensure that AI discerns what Americans would wear to a wedding? And what people would wear in Asia, Europe or Africa, taking into account the specificities of each country? In this enlightening AI dialogue episode of our Globally Speaking podcast, Melanie Peterson - Program Director for Train AI at RWS - joins Vasagi Kothandapani to discuss how she tackled one of her biggest AI challenges: a rating and labelling data project for western-style womenswear using resources in the APAC region only, where the raters were 80% male. Melanie unpacks the intricacies of her mission, shedding light on how she explains what she does to her family and friends, why a rocket scientist or a chef might have been involved in one of Train AI's latest data training projects, and what exactly we mean by data collection, data creation, data annotation and sentiment analysis. Get ready for a captivating exploration into the heart of AI.

In this second Globally Speaking Podcast, dedicated to the localization supply chain, follow Rosario de Zayas Rueda's fascinating journey as she explains how she started out as a translator and language specialist and ended up opening her own language services agency, completing a full cycle of professional development. As she explains, in her early days in the localization industry, the role of a language specialist was nebulous. Like many of her peers at the time, Rosario had to navigate, figure everything out as she went along and fill in the gaps left by other people's undefined job descriptions. Discover how her passion for technology led her to set up her own LSP, where she pioneered with post-editing processes and machine translation – long before these advances gained global recognition. And finally, discover why sometimes it’s not about the quality of the translation but more about the quality of the business outcome.

There are so many things you'd miss out on if someone hadn't taken the time to translate them... the best literature, the trendy Netflix shows or the instructions for your medicine. Plus, learning a language so you can have a conversation with someone from another country that you wouldn't otherwise be able to understand, or so you can understand music in another language, is so powerful. These are just some of the reasons why Melanie - who likes to think of herself as a cultural correspondent - decided to become a language specialist and unlock global understanding to ensure that every piece of content resonates appropriately with its audience. In the next series of our Globally Speaking podcast, we take a closer look at all the layers of the localization supply chain. In this first episode, discover the world of probably the most important player: the translator, who we now call the language specialist! Find out about her experience with Trados and other translation software, why she thinks AI won't replace humans and what pressure she's currently feeling in the market.

How can a company set up a localization program from scratch? What are the important criteria to consider, and what are the challenges? Is there a translation policy in place? What needs to be translated, and into which languages? Who is responsible for reporting and the communication around it? Find out what Renée Lemley, former Global Copy Director at Under Armour, has to say about her experience of setting up a brand-new localization process at Under Armour and why she believes the secrets lie in the brand voice. In this episode of Globally Speaking, she explains to our host, Jordan Cockrell, that it is essential to have a language service provider who is fully engaged on the client’s side and who shares a strong agreement on the partnership. As Anthony Burgess, author of a Clockwork Orange, explains: “Translation is not just about words, but about making a whole culture intelligible.” It's about translating emotions and a part of the culture, and that's the magic of what LSPs do.

‘Hurt. Soap. Blows.’ In case you are wondering, we haven't gone crazy, these are just the three words what3words uses to describe our location today. But now we're wondering what those three words would be like in French. Well, if we switch languages, it becomes ‘Gîte. Lavande. Aviron.’ There are so many situations in life where you need to tell someone exactly where you are, but you don't have the tools to do so. what3words has divided the entire world into 3-meter squares and assigned each of those squares a unique 3-word address, which is a very human friendly way of describing it to someone you're talking to. Listen to Jamie Brown, Chief Language Office at what3words, describe how they help deliver post in favelas but also save lives in the context of their collaboration with emergency services around the world, thanks to the app being available offline. In this episode, you'll discover the unique localization process that what3words had to develop because words are literally their product and the tool for talking about their product, and because, among many other examples, one word in English can become 3 words in French.

It’s completely natural for humans to attribute human characteristics to generative AI systems that seem to behave like us. And since language is one of the most profoundly human characteristics on earth, it explains why we tend to compare LLMs like GPT or PaLM (Bard) to humans, and even attribute emotions to them. But in the same way that we don't expect an airplane to flap its wings like a bird, or a submarine to swim by using wave-like movements like a fish, it's important to remember that LLMs do not use language the way humans do. They are an immensely useful invention to generate language but are blind to experiences that aren't encoded in language and have no true emotional understanding. Listen to this fascinating discussion between Vasagi Kothandapani, Bart Maczynski and Marina Pantcheva in our latest Globally Speaking Podcast episode and learn all about the fundamental differences between language learning in LLMs and humans and how we can encode ethics in AI.

Have you ever heard of gas technology? And how it impacts our everyday life?\ Well, Linde's gas and technologies are used, among other things, in Coca Cola, for oxygen masks and... to cool and freeze pizzas! In this latest episode of the Globally Speaking podcast, Jordan Cockrell and Dora Jakopović sit with Lauren Wojtaszek and Manja Konschak-Steffes to talk about how they trained over 8,000 employees in a bit more than a year with their internal eLearning programme and why making it available in local languages played a key role in engaging learners and helping them feel seen and understood.

When it launched 25 years ago, coffee brand Tim Hortons did better than competitors in Quebec because it localized most of its content to make it more relevant to the market. On its coffee cups, the brand used to display the Toronto cityscape in anglophone Canada, which was replaced with Montreal for its Quebec launch. Similarly, a client in the US would like to see large streets in his advertising videos. A Parisian, on the other hand, would be more impacted by a landscape with narrow streets. In this latest episode of the Globally Speaking Podcast, Marine Esquenet is joined by Richard Cronin, Localization lead at Google, to discuss how a brand as famous and offering as many diverse services as Google can help its clients make the right decisions and navigate through the complexities of growing internationally. Also find out what Richard has to say about the impact of the transition to AI on Google, on the industry in general, and on the new media Google has to work with.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that brands with a physical presence will always be trusted more than companies that only offer an online store. Things are now changing. According to our latest research, 58% of global consumers now trust global brands with a localized online presence equally to those with a physical presence. That’s an incredible opportunity when you think about it – over half of consumers are willing to trust you, if you get your customer experience right. Globally Speaking is joined by the ‘CX Leader of the Year’, James Scutt -Principal XM Catalyst at Qualtrics XM Institute and recognized as one of Europe's leading Experience Management experts - who offers his unique perspective on how brands can open up global opportunities by simply getting their customer’s experience right, showing empathy and focusing on the human touch. He also highlights the common CX pitfalls of businesses, giving examples of where they’ve gone wrong and how they’ve won their customers’ trust back.