Translation Technology Round Table
This event is being held on January 29-30, 2024 on the campus of The Colorado Chautauqua in Boulder, Colorado. Your registration also includes access to an Opening Reception on Sunday, January 28th and the conference dinner on Monday, January 29th. Registration CLOSES this Friday, January 26th.
Round Table Details
Dates
SOLD OUT
Format
Multiday
Moderator:
Richard Sikes
Fee
$1300
Language
English
This Round Table is sold out!
Join our Waitlist.
Has Curiosity Killed the CAT? – The Rise of LLMs
The Translation Technology Round Table is a two-day event being held on January 29th and 30th, 2024 in Boulder, Colorado on the campus of the historic Colorado Chautauqua. It is the best opportunity this year to get up-to-date information about how translation technologies integrate with one another.
PLEASE NOTE: REGISTRATION CLOSES this FRIDAY, January 26th at 10am MT.
Registration also includes access to an Opening Reception at Avanti F&B – Boulder on the night of Sunday, January 28th and the conference dinner at The Chautauqua Dining Hall on Monday evening, January 29th.
An Advisory Board assisted in the creation of an agenda and to facilitate the topics and presentations that comprise the 2024 event. Most Board members plan to attend the Round Table. To assess the sophistication of information that will be available to attendees at the Round Table, read the bios of the Advisory Board members, included at the bottom of this webpage. There is a lot to be learned from this group of experienced industry practitioners.
10% discount for 3 or more customers from the same company – please contact jill@
What is the Round Table agenda?
Session 1: Reality Check
We cut through the Large Language Models (LLMs) hype by posing challenging, real-world questions. What have you really done using AI? How did you do it? What was the composition of the team who worked on it or with it? How did it help? Moderator: Erik Vogt
Session 2: Prompt Solutions
We ask where LLMs should reside in the overall translation process. Is there such a thing as a human-driven, LLM-powered global content creation and curation process? Where does prompt engineering belong in the localization ecosystem? Will today’s linguistic personnel become tomorrow’s prompt engineers? What other roles will LLM adoption generate? Moderator: Olga Beregovaya
Session 3: One for You, and You, and You
Do LLMs portend a shift toward original geo specific content creation? What kind of tooling and workflow would be necessary to manage non-equivalent localization projects? Is there a way to legally manage the risks of decentralized regional content creation? Can cross-lingual communication function in the context of user forums? Moderators: Oleksandr Pysaryuk and Richard Sikes
Session 4: Migratory Malaise
What impacts are felt by humans when migrating from one system to another? What causes system migrations to fail? What technical and human obstacles must be overcome for a successful migration? Will standards such as XLIFF, TBX, TMX and their brethren continue to serve us in the new era? What can get lost in migration? What can be found? Can we envision a future without translation memory? Moderator: John Weisgerber
Session 5: Grab Bag 1
Prior session redux or new ideas? You decide! Moderator: Richard Sikes
Session 6: Manual Transmission
How can we use automation to perform higher quality work with less manual effort? What is blocking your automation efforts? What tasks that do not add value to end output can be removed? Who should be responsible for fixing broken automation. How does GenAI influence the established automation problem space? Moderator: Paula Hunter
Session 7: The Beat Goes On
Is continuous localization an excuse to by-pass every good practice in localization? Are there new tech stacks and methodologies to support this way of working? What can LangOps learn from DevOps? What is Doc as Code? How about implementing Loc as Code? Can continuous localization function in MarketingOps? Moderators: Oleksandr Pysaryuk and John Weisgerber
Session 8: Grab Bag 2
Prior session redux or new ideas? You decide! Moderator: Richard Sikes
Round Table Location
The Round Table will take place at The Colorado Chautauqua in Boulder, Colorado.
The Round Table will meet in the beautiful and historic Rocky Mountain Climber’s Club room, founded in 1912.
The registration fee includes continental breakfast service with continuous coffee/tea service throughout the event, lunches on both days and an evening dinner on the evening of Monday, January 29th in the Chautauqua Dining Hall.
Lodging is available and can be booked directly through the Colorado Chautauqua website. More details on the venue and link to the accommodations webpage will be published here soon. Chautauqua has a number of 1- and 2-bedroom guest cottages available as well as individual rooms in the Columbine Lodge available for attendees.
ATTENTION: If you are interested in booking a 1-bedroom cabin at Chautauqua for the nights of Sunday, January 28 and Monday, January 29, please contact Round Table Manager Alex Bernet at alex@localizationinstitute.com before booking through the Chautauqua website. The Localization Institute currently has a 1-bedroom cabin still available as part of our event contract with Chautauqua at a discounted rate. This cabin and the special rate will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis. Contact Alex for more information.
We do not provide shuttle service to the venue but the Chautauqua campus is 40 miles from Denver International Airport. There are several public shuttle services that are available between DIA and Boulder and Uber, Lyft and local taxi services are also available.
RTD Route AB1 serves Denver International Airport and Boulder with trips running east and west every hour during the day (RTD’s name for this route is SkyRide Bus.) This link goes to the westbound schedule of Route AB1 and you can plan your trip date and time using the timetable. We recommend that you exit the bus at the US36 & Table Mesa Station, which is less than a mile from Chautauqua. A standard Uber or a cab ride from that station to the venue will cost about $10.
Round Table Organizer and Moderator
Richard Sikes – Senior Consultant, Business Services – memoQ. Richard has been immersed in technical translation and localization for nearly 35 years. He is passionate about linguistic technologies of all kinds and spends much of his time facilitating deployment of technology solutions. He began his career interpreting for touring theatre companies in Europe, then transitioned to management of localization teams at software companies. He has focussed on technology since 2005. His articles have been published 17 times in MultiLingual magazine. He has written a variety of blog posts and he contributed a chapter to the textbook “The Art of the Possible: Translation and Localization Project Management.” Richard is well known as an organizer, speaker, and moderator at translation industry events.
Advisory Board Members
Olga Beregovaya – Vice President of AI and Machine Translation – Smartling. Olga has over twenty years of experience in language technology, natural language processing (NLP), machine learning (ML), global content transformation, and AI data development and is passionate about growing businesses through driving change and innovation. She started her career in language technology building lexicons and rules for rule-based machine translation, gradually expanding her expertise into other broader applications of NLP and ML to enterprise translation workflows. Olga has served as president of AMTA, currently serves as a vice president and technology program sponsor for Women in Localization, and as an advisor for Engineering Leadership at California State University, Chico. She received her MA in linguistics/Germanic studies at UC- Berkeley and MA/BA in linguistics from St. Petersburg State University.
Paula Hunter, Globalization Leader – Paula is a high-energy globalization leader fuelled by connecting, developing & empowering people; aligning vision; and optimizing ways of working through curiosity and leading by influence. Over the last ten years Paula has built from the ground up a high-performing, enterprise-wide localization team, globalization strategy and a localization operations program that focuses on quality, scalability and cost effectiveness by integrating localization into multi-disciplinary mindsets and processes. Her passion for connecting people, aligning vision across departments, and driving positive change afforded her the opportunity to transition into a Director of Business Operations and Chief of Staff role for a product development team of 600 people distributed across ten offices spanning three continents. Paula is always keen to “talk Loc” and is an active speaker and mentor in both the localization & tech communities.
Loïc Dufresne de Virel – Manager, Localization – Intel Corporation. A globalist by choice, Loïc has spent most of the past 35 years helping companies and organizations reach their worldwide audiences in their preferred languages. In his relentless pursuit for efficiency, he has refined his operating model over time using CAT tools, TMS, and MT, first statistical then neural, and he continues today looking for ways to further leverage AI to augment his team of project managers, translators, editors, and localization engineers.
John Weisgerber – Solutions “Xpert” – XTM International. John is a battle-scarred veteran of countless localization campaigns. For over 20 years he has earned first-hand experience in every corner of the industry: freelance translator, project manager for both translation service providers and global enterprises such as HP, independent consultant, operations manager, and machine translation developer. In recent years John has leveraged the breadth and depth of his experience to build world-class translation management technology as a solutions architect with leading translation management systems like XTM Cloud.
Oleksandr Pysaryuk – Localization Leader. Oleksandr is a localization leader with experience in building and growing successful teams and disciplines focused on internationalization software development, localization and internationalization technical program management, and global product management in sports technology, telecommunications, consumer technology, human capital management and commerce organizations.
Erik Vogt – Founder, Vogt Strategy. Erik’s holistic perspective of the localization industry starts with fundamental business objectives through scoping, solutions, technology, operationalization, the definition and measurement of quality. With 25 years of experience in the language services industry in support operations, solutions, and sales, from entry level to senior leadership team, Erik has a comprehensive understanding of the challenges and opportunities of globalizing and localizing content, products, and services across multiple domains and markets, as well as the nuances of running large international, and interdisciplinary teams. Erik’s current focus is on developing a framework for defining and deploying solutions and in helping companies build solutions that at aligned with the core value propositions of their customers.
Round Table Decorum
The Round Table’s success depends on people being willing to share information and experiences freely. To encourage that, the sessions are not recorded or republished and no formal minutes or records are kept. Attendees are free to keep their own notes.
Discussion of translation tool prices and details of vendor contracts is not permitted. The round table is being limited to a maximum of 30 participants in order to keep the event intimate and allow everyone the chance to be heard in the discussions. The round table event also requires a minimum number of 15 participants in order to take place.
