The Localization Institute is excited to offer several interactive seminars and round tables as part of the upcoming Global Toolbox Day at LocWorld54 in Monterey, California on Tuesday October 14, 2025. As a co-organizer of LocWorld Conference, the Localization Institute offers these seminars and round tables as separate, stand-alone events. You do not need to be registered for LocWorld54 Conference in order to sign up for these offerings. If you would like to register for the main conference of LocWorld54, please visit the LocWorld website.
Please Note: Global Toolbox sessions have size limits that cannot be exceeded – register now to reserve your seat!
Full Day Sessions – Lunch Included
Multilingual AI Round Table
October 14 from 9:00am – 5:00pm
Registration Fee: $750 – full day price (lunch included).
Your registration for this session includes lunch
10% discount for 3 or more students from the same company – please contact jill@
Event description: AI 2.0: From automated translation to end-to-end global content enablement
AI 2.0, the next generation of artificial intelligence, embodies a paradigm shift from traditional, narrow AI systems to more intelligent, adaptable, and human-centric AI technologies. This means greater autonomy in global content generalization, real-time reasoning, deeper integration with localization practices, in addition to a focus on safety, ethics, and alignment with human intentions. While experimenting with innovative ideas and methodologies, AI is a game-changer when it comes to productivity. It is important to note that this shift will also require collaboration and consideration from multiple angles.
The eighth edition of this roundtable will inspire a forward-thinking mindset around AI 2.0, focusing on its potential to transform multilingual content creation and beyond. The discussion will center on practical implementations of generative AI, advancements in human-computer interaction, as well as aligning business intent with automation and agentic AI technologies.
Topics to be discussed:
- AI enabled language services
- genAI driven multilingual content creation
- AI quality control and risk management
- Linguistic assets and RAG
- Human-AI interaction
- Types of language models in localization
- Applications of language models
- End-to-end global content enablement
By joining this round table, you will:
- Enable innovative localization workflows with AI technologies
- Understand what AI technologies can and cannot do
- Gather insights to apply and manage AI at the enterprise level
- Discuss industry best practices to manage people, AI technologies and data
- Consider future trends in the AI space
- Develop valuable connections with industry peers
This round table is for:
- Decision-makers who aim to leverage AI on both strategic and operational levels
- Buyers who want to implement Multilingual AI
- Project Managers tasked with implementing an MT/AI solution
- Vendors who want to leverage MT/AI to meet their clients’ needs
- IT professionals involved in MT/AI implementation
- Content Managers responsible for global content
Roundtable morning session
- Time: 9am-12pm, including one coffee break (30 minutes)
- Format: in-person discussions, use cases, and interactive business game
- Modules:
- Module 1: Human-AI Interaction
- Module 2: AI quality control and risk management
- Module 3: Linguistic assets (automated style guides, terminology, TM-extracted data and RAG)
Lunch break (TBC)
Roundtable afternoon session
- Time: 1:30 – 5 pm, including one coffee break (30 minutes)
- Format: in-person discussions, use cases, and interactive business game
- Modules:
- Module 4: Types of language models in localization and their applications
- Module 5: AI enabled language services
- Module 6: The future of global content in the age of AI 2.0
Roundtable moderator/organizer:
Peng Wang, The Localization Institute
Advisory board members (speakers):
- Olga Beregovaya, Smartling
- Alon Lavie, Phrase/CMU
- Marina Pantcheva, RWS
Speakers:
- Klaus Fleischmann, Kaleidoscope
- Sheriff Mohammed Issaka, African Languages Lab (All Lab)
- Erik Vogt, Argos Multilingual
- Matt Singer, LILT
Location:
Monterey, CA
minimum number of attendees: 12
maximum number: 24
Please note: The Round Table’s success depends on people being willing to share information and experiences freely. To encourage that, we ask the attendees not to record or republish the session. No formal minutes or records are kept, but attendees are free to keep their own notes
We invite you to download a copy of the Multilingual AI Working Glossary below.
Dr. Peng Wang has taught, researched and practiced translation and localization on three continents. She is the convener for EDUinLOC, the chair of the automation/AI track for LocWorld conferences and a part-time professor at the University of Ottawa. Previously, she was the CAT Tools Coordinator at the University of Maryland.
Dr. Wang has rich research experience on NLP AI, having worked as a linguistic researcher at the Corpus Research Lab at Northern Arizona University, a domain expert for data mining projects at the University of Maryland and an honorary research fellow on automatic discourse analysis tools at the University of Liverpool. Her current research and practice focus on human learning vs. machine learning, machine translation, terminology and multilingual corpus analysis.
Dr. Wang has published about 30 articles and two books. She is an expert in approaching technology in the context of culture and humanities. She embraces linguistic and cultural diversity in her classrooms, with students aged from 18 to over 70, in over 10 language combinations, coming from UAE, China, Italy, Spain, Germany, Morocco, Colombia, Mexico, and Haiti, to name just a few.
Olga Beregovaya – Vice President of AI and Machine Translation – Smartling. Olga Beregovaya has over 20 years of experience in Language Technology, NLP, Machine Learning, Global Content Transformation and AI Data development and is passionate about growing businesses through driving change and innovation. Olga 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 Machine Learning to enterprise translation workflows. Olga has also served as President of AMTA, currently serves as a Board member of Women in Localization and as an Advisor for Engineering Leadership at California State University, Chico. Olga received her MA, Linguistics/Germanic Studies at UC- Berkeley and MA/BA in Linguistics from St. Petersburg State University.
Alon Lavie is the VP of AI Research at Phrase, where he leads the development of the company’s AI strategy and manages its AI research team in Pittsburgh and Prague. Concurrently, Alon is an adjunct Consulting Professor at the Language Technologies Institute at CMU, where he has been a member of the faculty for 26 years. Prior to joining Phrase, he was the VP of Language Technologies at Unbabel. Prior to Unbabel, Alon was a senior manager at Amazon, where he led and managed the Amazon Machine Translation R&D group in Pittsburgh. Prior to that, Alon was the co-founder, President and CTO of “Safaba Translation Solutions”, an enterprise MT solutions technology startup, acquired by Amazon. Alon is a well-known expert in MT and translation evaluation, and spearheaded the development of the METEOR and COMET metrics. Other research interests and activities include MT adaptation approaches with and without human feedback, translation Quality Estimation, and methods for multi-engine MT system combination.
Alon served as the President of the International Association for Machine Translation (IAMT) (2013-2015). Prior to that, he was president of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas (AMTA) (2008-2012), and was General Chair of the AMTA 2010 and 2012 conferences. He is also a member of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), where he was president of SIGParse – ACL’s special interest group on parsing (2008-2013). In August 2021, at the 18th biennial Machine Translation Summit conference, Alon was honored to be awarded with the 2021 Makoto Nagao IAMT Award of Honour for his contributions to the field of Machine Translation.
Connect with Alon on LinkedIn.
Georg Kirchner – Machine Translation Program Manager – Dell. Georg Kirchner oversees the Machine Translation program at Dell Technologies. In this capacity, he assists both end users and translators from within the Global Translation Team, a shared services organization. Before shifting his focus to Machine Translation and related machine learning technologies, Georg was responsible for Translation Management Systems. Georg started his localization career in production, spending 17 years in various roles, including staff translator, project & program manager, and PMO lead.
Marina Pantcheva – Director Linguistic AI Services – RWS. Marina is a linguist and polyglot with experience in academic pursuits as well as management, leadership and innovation. Marina holds a PhD degree in Theoretical Linguistics. Her academic work centered around the exploration of the elementary particles of language within the framework of Nanosyntax. In 2014, Marina transitioned to the world of Localization. For several years, she developed processes and solutions for crowd-based localization, covering technology, BI, linguistic quality, Community management and more. Currently, Marina is heading the Linguistic AI Services Center of Excellence at RWS, dedicating her efforts to the development and implementation of linguistic AI solutions.
Klaus Fleischmann – Founder and CEO – Kaleidoscope. Klaus studied translation, conference interpretation and technical communication in Austria and California. In 1996, he founded Kaleidoscope, a language technology company, and is also CEO of Eurocom Translation Services, a translation company. Klaus served on the GALA Board of Directors for 4 year and is currently on the board of Termnet and ELIA. He also speaks regularly at conferences, universities and events about such exciting topics like terminology, the global process management or linguistic quality management. In is private life, Klaus is an outdoor enthusiast and prefers to hike or climb a rainy mountain to relaxing on a sunny beach. If there is time left, Klaus likes to play the electric guitar or Saxophone.
Sheriff Issaka – Founder & AI Research Lead – African Languages Lab (All Lab). Sheriff Issaka is a PhD student at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he conducts state-of-the-art research at the Misinformation, AI & Responsible Society (MARS) Lab. His work focuses on critical areas in Natural Language Processing (NLP), including bias and fairness, low-resource languages, and multimodal models for enhanced language understanding.
Also, as founder and lead researcher of the African Languages Lab (All Lab), Sheriff spearheads a global collaborative project that is revolutionizing NLP for African languages. This initiative creates comprehensive roadmaps, innovative methodologies, and open-source resources to democratize AI for underrepresented languages, addressing a critical gap in current language technologies.
Before embarking on his doctoral studies, Sheriff applied his expertise as a data scientist at the Zafar and ICU Data Science Labs. There, he developed cutting-edge predictive models for pancreatic cancer detection and pioneered NLP techniques for HIV phenotyping, demonstrating the powerful real-world applications of AI in healthcare.
Sheriff’s research is driven by a profound commitment to leveraging AI for social impact, with a particular focus on underserved communities. His work aims to enhance the cultural competence of AI systems, improve the accessibility of advanced technologies across diverse populations, and address ethical challenges in AI deployment to ensure that the benefits of AI and NLP are accessible to all, regardless of language or cultural background.
Erik Vogt – Solutions and Innovations Director– Argos Multilingual. Erik Vogt drives innovation at Argos Multilingual by nurturing strategic growth and fusing customer needs with robust technology solutions. By fostering scalability and seamless integrations, solutions meet customer demands and elevate team performance and company growth. He is passionate about crafting solutions, grounded in a comprehensive understanding of business realities and finding practical applications of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Translation. The mission is to develop business models that are viable and deeply embedded in a core value proposition that resonates with global markets.
Matt Singer – CMO – LILT. Matt Singer is the CMO of LILT, an AI-powered language translation company focused on enabling enterprises to communicate across languages. Prior to LILT, Matt held marketing leadership positions with OpenGov, Jobvite, SuccessFactors, and HumanConcepts. He holds an M.A. in Journalism/Media Studies from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a B.A. in Economics/Environmental Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Connect with Matt on LinkedIn.
Bigger, Better, Faster Round Table: AI in Localization: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly
October 14 from 9:00am – 5:00pm
Registration Fee: $650 – full day price (lunch included)
Your registration for this session includes lunch.
10% discount for 3 or more students from the same company – please contact jill@
Session Description: What localization teams know now: Lessons from AI deployments at the enterprise
What makes Localization at the enterprise truly complex, where AI helps and where it still fails, how human teams mitigate and manage those failure risks, how L10n teams build for the long term and filter through the AI hype.
Agenda:
1. Lost in Localization? AI Might Help (or Hurt)
2. Smart Moves & Faceplants: AI in Localization
3. The AI Reckoning: Localization Gets Real
4. AI Unfiltered: Wins, Fails, and WTF Moments
5. Localization Meets AI: Cutting Through the Noise
Key Takeaways:
Target Audience: Everyone
Attendee Experience Level: Beginner to advanced
Round Table Organizers:
- Daniel Goldschmidt
Advisory Board Members:
- Antoine Rey, Argos Multilingual
- Oleksandr Pysaryuk, GitLab
- Christiane Bark, Localization Consultant
Speakers:
- Julia Cassidy, SurveyMonkey
- Oleksander Pysaryuk, GitLab
- Cecilia Piaggio, Meta
Location:
Monterey, CA
Maximum number: 25
Minimum number: 10
Please note:
The Round Table’s success depends on people being willing to share information and experiences freely. To encourage that, we ask the attendees not to record or republish the session. No formal minutes or records are kept, but attendees are free to keep their own notes.
Daniel Goldschmidt – Collaborator – LocWorld. Daniel is a consultant in software internalization and localization. Prior to that, he served as a senior internationalization project manager at Microsoft in the Cloud and Enterprise Division and led the internationalization team. Before joining Microsoft, Daniel cofounded RIGI Localization Solutions, a venture in the domain of visual localization, and he served as a senior software engineer for the Google internationalization team. He serves as vice-chair of the LocWorld program committee and as a member of the Internationalization and Unicode Conference review committee. Daniel presents frequently at international events. He holds a BS in computer science and mathematics (cum laude) and an MS in computer science, both from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
Antoine Rey – SVP, Customer Development – Argos Multilingual. Antoine Rey started his career in localization in 1997 and has held various technical, sales, and management roles in the industry. His main area of focus is to consult, develop, and implement mature operational and business globalization models with clients across various industries. Antoine is a French native and holds a MS in information technology and a BA in international business and communications. He lives in Dublin, Ireland.
Oleksandr Pysaryuk – Senior Manager, Globalization Technology – GitLab. 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, ecommerce and engineering organizations.
Christiane Bark –Localization Consultant. Christiane Bark discovered her passion for localization as a volunteer translator for Plan International and decided to make a career of it. She holds a diploma in translation and has worked in both freelance and in-house roles. Formerly a lead localization manager at Busuu, Christiane took over the content team and implemented a new localization process, bringing the quality of both the source content and translated copy to a whole new level.
Julia Cassidy – Director of Global Experience & Localization – SurveyMonkey. Julia Cassidy has been in the localization industry for over 18 years and has held various roles at tech companies ranging from technical translator, machine translation specialist, language and process engineer to language quality and localization manager. She is passionate about building scalable localization programs that help companies connect and resonate with a global audience. Julia has been the Head of Global Experience & Localization at SurveyMonkey since 2021.
Oleksandr Pysaryuk – Senior Manager, Globalization Technology – GitLab. 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, ecommerce and engineering organizations.
Half-Day Sessions – Refreshments Included
TermClub: Terminology Round Table
October 14 from 9:00am – 1:00pm
Registration Fee: $350 (Refreshments Included – No Lunch)
Event description: Discover the full potential of your terminology
For you as a localization professional, the need for terminology has always been clear. However, it is also clear that in order to truly work in a corporate setting, terminology is not an afterthought but has to be visible and managed company-wide. Fortunately, the advent of Generative AI and LLMs have made the challenges to operate without terminology much more apparent, even to non-linguists.
In this year´s TermClub Round Table we want to discuss the business model of terminology. How can we shift the notion of terminology away from single-purpose glossary management in localization to repurposable (“FAIR”) terminology data management which can serve many areas in a company? How can we make terminology attractive to other stakeholders and departments, particularly the AI team? And how can we stay relevant or even elevate our position as the “language experts”?
The format of a Round Table allows us to get different inputs from different people at different phases in the journey towards terminology. The goal is to establish some best practices, business cases guidelines, but also insights into how to “rethink” terminology on a corporate level.
Topics to be discussed:
- What are the benefits of terminology beyond glossaries for localization?
- Who in a company can we address as possible sponsors?
- How do we create a terminology business model?
- What do we need to consider in our terminology approach?
- In particular, how can we address our corporate AI team?
By joining this round table, you will:
- Get practical input into corporate terminology management
- Benefit from the experience of others in the same situation
- Start working on a first business model for your terminology
- Develop ideas how to make a real impact in your business
- Make sure you stay relevant as a corporate language expert
This round table is for:
- Language divisions who want to elevate their standing and drive business excellence through language
- Localization team members who see the potential of terminology but cannot get buy-in
- Terminology enthusiasts who want to have more impact in their company
- AI enthusiasts who have discovered the importance of terminology in their applications
- Language technology
Round table organizer:
Klaus Fleischmann, Kaleidoscope
Round table speakers and moderators:
- Barbara Karsch, BIK Terminology
- Gregor Kneitz, Kaleidoscope
- Rainbow Liao, Zoetis Diagnostics
Location:
Middlebury Institute of International Studies
460 Pierce Street
Monterey, CA
minimum number of attendees: 6
maximum number: 12
Please note: The Round Table’s success depends on people being willing to share information and experiences freely. To encourage that, we ask the attendees not to record or republish the session. No formal minutes or records are kept, but attendees are free to keep their own notes
Klaus Fleischmann – Founder and CEO – Kaleidoscope. Klaus studied translation, conference interpretation and technical communication in Austria and California. In 1996, he founded Kaleidoscope, a language technology company, and is also CEO of Eurocom Translation Services, a translation company. Klaus served on the GALA Board of Directors for 4 year and is currently on the board of Termnet and ELIA. He also speaks regularly at conferences, universities and events about such exciting topics like terminology, the global process management or linguistic quality management. In is private life, Klaus is an outdoor enthusiast and prefers to hike or climb a rainy mountain to relaxing on a sunny beach. If there is time left, Klaus likes to play the electric guitar or Saxophone.
Connect with Klaus on LinkedIn.
Barbara Inge Karsch – Owner – BIK Terminology. Barbara Inge Karsch is the owner of BIK Terminology, a terminology consultancy and training company based on Washington State. Since 2010, she has focused on terminology training, terminology development and the implementation of terminology management systems as a consultant, but draws on her many years in house at J.D. Edwards and Microsoft. As Adjunct Associate Professor in the Master’s program at NYU, Barbara teaches terminology management as well as translation of scientific material. Barbara has recently been appointed convenor to ISO 12616-2, Terminology Workflows for Large Organizations. In her spare time, she is a puppy raiser for Summit Assistance Dogs.
Connect with Barbara on LinkedIn.
Gregor Kneitz – Vice President of Sales – Kaleidoscope. Gregor represents Kaleidoscope Terminology Management Platforms in North America and Australia. Over the last 25 years, Gregor worked as a Localization and Internationalization Leader for Microsoft, Facebook (META), Amazon and SNAP in the Pacific Northwest. His passion is to bring people and technology together to create amazing customer experiences in the most efficient ways. When not augmenting AI generation of content with Terminology, Gregor is a city guide in Bavaria, rides his motorcycle, boats in the Puget Sound or plays board games.
Rainbow Liao – Localization Project Manager – Zoetis. Rainbow is a localization expert at Zoetis, where she launched and leads the company’s terminology program. Passionate about all things terminology, she focuses on harnessing AI to unlock the value of structured language resources for multilingual content in animal healthcare. Rainbow’s work bridges technology and linguistics, helping Zoetis deliver clear, consistent communication across global markets.
Special Half-Day Session
Discount for LocWorld Attendees – Refreshments Included
Global Strategy Playbook Workshop
October 14 from 1:30pm – 5:00pm
Registration Fee: $125 if you are registered for both days of LocWorld54, $250 if you are not.
Please contact jill@localizationinstitute.com for your discount if you are registered for both days.
This session includes light refreshments.
-
Integrate AI effectively into localization workflows.
-
Build internal alliances and cross-team engagement.
-
Influence perception and delivery at the executive level.
Authors:
- Karen Combe, Former Vice President of Localization at PTC
- Melissa Biggs, Partner/Co-Founder at Locale Solutions
- Lyena Solomon, Director of Globalization and Accessibility at ServiceNow
- Michael Stevens, Vice President of Enterprise Growth at Translated
To download A Globalization Strategy Playbook: go to Github – https://github.com/GILT-Forum/Globalization-Strategy-Playbook/releases/tag/1.0
Format: Workshop
Location:
Middlebury Institute of International Studies
460 Pierce Street
Monterey, CA
Maximum number of attendees: 25
Karen Combe. Karen recently retired from her position as Vice President of Localization at PTC, where she was responsible for product localization as well as for localization support for PTCU, Technical Support, and Marketing. She has been a member of the GILT Leaders Forum, a community of peers in the localization industry, since its inception. In 2022, Karen contributed as an expert from the GILT Leaders Forum and as a co-author of “The Globalization Strategy Playbook”.
Previously, Karen was Senior Vice President at International Language Engineering, where she managed Client Services, Sales and Marketing. Karen holds a B.A in Linguistics from the University of California at Berkeley and a post-graduate degree in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge. She served in the Peace Corps in Senegal and in International Voluntary Services in Algeria.
In addition, Karen worked for 8 years on a ranch in northwestern Colorado training horses and looking after a large herd of cattle.
Melissa Biggs – Founding Partner – Locale Solutions LLC. Melissa Biggs is a localization veteran with over 25 years of experience in management roles targeting localized products for enterprises. Her career focuses on technical content and localization leadership. Her enthusiasm for localization started at Olivetti Corporation in Italy. Melissa then led a technical publications group at Xerox for artificial intelligence products. She switched fields to focus on globalization strategy at Sun Microsystems, managing localization groups, as well as leading corporate initiatives for global products, and international technology strategies. At Oracle, she contributed to Oracle’s translation products and processes. Melissa also managed marketing localization at Informatica, a data integration company.
In addition to deep corporate localization engagements, Melissa is active in industry and non-profit groups. She has served on localization industry-wide groups, including as charter member of GILT Leaders Forum, TAUS (Translation Automation User Society) and Localization World. In 2022, Melissa contributed as an expert from the GILT Leaders Forum and as a co-author of “The Globalization Strategy Playbook”. She is on the board of the non-profit Global Lives Project, which teaches global empathy through global film and curriculums, and is a mentor for the international TechWomen program.
Her passion is promoting best practices to connect global users with localized product experiences and information.
Currently, as a founding partner with Locale Solutions LLC, she provides localization strategy consulting services for companies in technology. Melissa graduated from Bucknell University and completed communications graduate studies at San Jose State University. In her copious free time, she loves travel (virtual for now), a good read, anything film (film festivals, streaming, etc.), and swimming.
Lyena Solomon – Director – Globalization and Accessibility – ServiceNow. Lyena Solomon is director of globalization and accessibility at ServiceNow where she is an internationalization product owner responsible for product roadmap and globalization go-to-market strategy. She converts customer challenges into localization capabilities to make ServiceNow products easier to use and available to all. Lyena works with multiple business groups to align globalization with strategic, operational, and local market priorities. She practices a data-driven approach to shaping smart digital experiences in languages other than English and defines measurement framework for globalization impact on company and customer success. She has a strong background in analytics, usability and user experience, web development, digital technologies, and strategy.
Michael Stevens – Vice President – Enterprise Growth – Translated. At Translated, Michael Stevens is responsible for growth: finding interesting companies to work with and building a team that values the humans in the ever-growing world of automation. As cohost of The Global Podcast, he explores areas of the localization industry that spark his own curiosity and he then shares it with the industry at large. Over the years, Michael has studied languages, marketing, and searched deeply to understand the mind of God. He has worked successfully with two major language service providers and also consulted in software development. Michael lives in Seattle, Washington with his family.
