Today's discussion
RWS has announced the return of Language Weaver, the brand that first pioneered automatic language translation. Language Weaver – which combines RWS’s linguistic expertise with SDL and Iconic’s technologies – will now represent RWS’s machine translation platform. Today we talk with two of the faces behind this initiative, Dr. John Tinsley, founder of Iconic Translation Machines, and Mihai Vlad, VP of Machine Learning and Machine Translation at SDL. Both Iconic and SDL are part of RWS Group and more information can be found at https://rws.com History of Language Weaver: Founded in 2002 Language Weaver was first to commercialize new approaches to automatic language translation based on machine learning. Its rich history and cutting-edge technology shaped the future of the language translation industry. Acquired by SDL in 2010, the Language Weaver brand was retired in 2015 and renamed SDL Machine Translation. The technology – through continual investment – evolved from statistical machine translation to neural machine translation, capable of instantly translating content across 2,700 language combinations. RWS acquired SDL in 2020, and is now bringing back the Language Weaver brand.
More about Language Weaver capabilities:
Building MT models has traditionally been exclusively reserved for specialists. Decades of collaboration between linguists, engineers and researchers has resulted in a simplified solution that opens up MT to everyday business users. The Language Weaver platform allows anyone to provide real-time feedback on translations and fine-tune generic language models. Behind the scenes the platform also constantly looks for ways to improve the quality of translations. RWS’s team of expert scientists and consultants are always on hand to advise on and develop bespoke solutions for customers with complex requirements. Language Weaver benefits any business or industry dealing with multilingual content. It is already being used by organizations to communicate and collaborate with customers in multiple languages, public sector organizations for content intelligence, and law firms for eDiscovery. As a critical application with unrivalled scalability and security, it can be integrated with any software or platform – from Microsoft Office, to Chatbots and eCommerce platforms – giving businesses the ability to understand any type of multilingual content. Even more info: https://multilingual.com/rws-revives-language-weaver-mt-platform/
Our first guest is John Tinsley
I'm fortunate to have worked at the cutting-edge of language technology throughout my career, firstly during my time as a researcher, then while building Iconic Translation Machines, and continuing that growth as part of the RWS Group. Throughout this time I've been driven by the idea of turning theory into practice, building enterprise software solutions, and scaling them commercially.
I co-founded Iconic at the end of 2012 when we started out adapting machine translation for complex content types, like patents. After that, things evolved rapidly, particularly following the advent of Neural MT. This resulted in the opportunity to work with and apply NMT across a wide variety of industries to solve some really interesting problems in sectors such as legal, IT, pharma, automotive, and multilingual customer support to name a few.
In 2020, we sold Iconic to RWS to help accelerate the adoption of Neural MT and AI solutions at a much bigger scale, and put the power of our technology at the core of more and more businesses.
Before all of that, I graduated from Dublin City University in 2009 with PhD in Computer Science, with a specialism in machine translation.
We are also joined by Mihai Vlad
I am the General Manager of Language Weaver®, where world-class scientists, engineers, and linguists are building the future of Linguistic AI. We are blending cutting-edge AI technologies with human linguistic expertise to empower organizations to communicate without language barriers and reduce the time to insight.
I am a technologist and a business strategist. I was instrumental in creating new ventures and bringing new products to market across industries including cybersecurity, advertising, and telecommunications.
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There is a shadow industry driving the growth of ALL global brands: Localization. Let’s talk globalization, localization, translation, interpretation, language, and culture, with an emphasis on how it affects your business, whether you have a scrappy start-up or are working in a top global brand. Topics are taken from the most recently published market research from Nimdzi Insights (and other sources) and will feature guest speakers from time to time. If you have suggestions for new topics or guests, or would like to be a guest yourself, please reach out to our producers at [email protected] to pitch your idea.
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