Heidelberg Translation Technology Round Table 2019
The Translation Technology Round Table is a two-day event being held on September 19th and 20th, 2019 in Heidelberg Germany.
The objectives of the Round Table are to:
- Promote a better understanding of translation technology solutions for buyers, suppliers, and every-day hands-on users
- Create a channel of open communication for translation technology practitioners to discuss specific issues outside the confines of a single client-vendor relationship
- Discuss the dynamics of the technology-related activities on the client and vendor sides
- Exchange ideas with your peers
- Share experiences
- Debate issues confronting the industry frankly and freely
- Network with like-minded, knowledgeable peers
Focus, experience, learn!
The Translation Technology Round Table focuses on topics that are currently top-of-mind among industry practitioners. The moderators will facilitate open communication about real-world issues, problem resolutions, and wishes for technology improvement.
Ideal customer-side participants are active users of technology or interested buyers. Ideal vendor-side participants are solution specialists or technical support personnel.
An Advisory Board assisted in the creation of an agenda and to facilitate the topics and presentations that comprise the 2019 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. There is a lot to be learned from this group of experienced industry practitioners.
Who is there and what happens?
Most Round Table attendees have at least four years of experience in translation tools management. As a result, presentations and discussions deal with advanced topics. Newbies who wish to listen, ask questions, and learn are also welcome.
The format of the Round Table relies on short presentations, some of them impromptu, followed by extensive discussions involving as many attendees as possible.
To ensure that Round Table topics are as relevant and timely as possible for the participants, we leave the last session unplanned. The subject matter for this open session is determined onsite by the attendees. Open session topics can be proposed at any time during the event.
The Round Table’s success depends on attendees being willing to share information and experiences freely. To encourage spontaneity, no formal minutes or records are kept or published. Attendees are free to keep their own notes.
There is one session each day reserved for vendor representatives to give informal product demos if participants wish to see them.
Although the Round Table is primarily technically focussed, the Heidelberg event features an add-on session after the Round Table concludes to discuss technology marketing. Attendance is optional, and there is no extra cost.
Discussion of translation tool prices and details of vendor contracts is not permitted.
Agenda
DAY 1 September 19th, 2019 |
Moderators(TBA) | ||
Breakfast and registration | 07:30 – 08:00 | ||
Introduction | Round Table ground rules are explained, and participants briefly introduce themselves. | 08:00 – 08:30 | Richard Sikes |
Session 1
Tools & AI |
What is the minimum technology to survive in a start-up ecosystem?
How can you prove ROI for tools? When is it worthwhile to automate a process? What is the best methodology to evaluate tools? Are there real applications of AI in our industry right now? How can AI augment future tools? |
08:30 – 10:00 |
Erik Vogt |
Break | 10:00 – 10:15 | ||
Session 2
Standards & APIs |
Are standards too complex? Do they negatively impact application performance capabilities?
Standards are mostly based on file formats, but isn’t the current trend towards APIs? Why do we need TMX since we have XLIFF? Can APIs replace files? Do we really need file-based TM? |
10:15 – 11:45 |
Marie Blanke |
Lunch | 11:45 – 12:45 | ||
Session 3
Continuous Delivery |
What are the challenges and opportunities of continuous localization models?
How can tools help reduce internal costs of continuous delivery? How do modern TMS platform support continuous localization? What are best practices to work with agile marketing campaigns (social media, tweets, continuous delivery) How can we cope with challenges for language acceptance testing in continuous testing situations? How can we best integrate CAT tools in version control systems? |
12:45 – 14:15 |
Kerstin Bier
|
Break | 14:15 – 14:30 | ||
Session 4 Translation Memory |
How do we work with TM on a practical basis?
How do we keep it clean? Does TM retain value in today’s context of MT and NMT? How can tools validate content quality within TM? |
14:30 – 16:00 |
Kevin Schmidt |
Technology Demos | Participants representing technology vendors have an opportunity to demonstrate how their company’s solution addresses certain problems. Q&A session. | 16:00 – 17:30 | |
Dinner | 19:00 – 21:00 | ||
Day 2 September 20th, 2019 |
|||
Breakfast | 08:00 – 08:30 | ||
Session 5
Machine Translation |
Will deep learning impact workflow and methodologies?
How can I determine which solution works for me? What is the current state of NMT development? Who owns NMT IP? Should CAT tools have functionality to regulate IP ownership? |
08:30 – 10:00 |
Olga Beregovaya |
Break | 10:00 – 10:15 | ||
Session 6
Open Session Topics Determined Onsite by Participants |
Ad hoc session in which participants can readdress prior topics that received insufficient coverage or suggest additional topics. | 10:15 – 11:45 |
Richard Sikes |
Lunch | 11:45 – 12:45 | ||
Technology Demos | Same as Day 1.
Different technology solutions. |
12:45 – 14:00 | |
Closing | Wrap-up session | 14:00 – 14:15 |
Richard Sikes |
Optional Session
Technology Marketing
|
This is an optional add-on session for participants who are interested in discussing aspects of technology marketing.
Some discussion points include: What kind of positioning resonates with potential technology buyers? What tools do technology marketers need? What can you learn about a market by what prospects are searching for? What tools do multinationals need to support global brands while still empowering local marketing teams? Can call center or market research data be harvested for locale-specific content development? Do we need locale-specific content to market technology? |
14:30 – 16:30 |
Sabina Jasinska
|

To Request Additional Information Please contact:
Richard Sikes
The Localization Institute
Round Table Organizer
richard.sikes@locflowtech.com
Advisory Board
Richard SikesRound Table Organizer
Richard Sikes has been immersed in technical translation and localization for over 30 years. During his long career, he has gained extensive experience on the client side, the vendor side, and the technology side of the translation industry. He is passionate about linguistic technologies of all kinds. He is closely associated with Content Rules as a senior linguistic consultant specializing in Acrolinx deployments and global content quality. Richard contributes frequently to MultiLingual magazine, and he is well-known as a speaker at translation industry events. He holds a BA in fine arts from the University of California, Diplom Betriebswirt (FH) from the Fachhochschule Heidelberg and an MBA from the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.
Sabina JasinskaSenior Director - Global Marketing at Welocalize
Sabina Jasinska is the Senior Director – Global Marketing at Welocalize, responsible for the marketing activities for the company and its 18 brands. She is also a Member of the Board of Directors for Translation Commons since 2019 and was a Member of the Gala Board of Directors for 2017-2018. Her focus is on capitalizing on new trends and regulations to develop high impact growth strategies, building diverse global teams and supporting mergers and acquisitions. Educated in Poland, France, the UK and the US, Sabina holds an MBA and master’s degrees in French and Polish law, romance philology and history.
Henk BoxmaPrincipal Internationalization and Localization Consultant at Boxma IT/Rigi
As principal internationalization and localization consultant, Henk Boxma provides solutions to his clientele to solve problems that are related to documentation and localization of their products. Henk is hands-on and works together with people in various roles within an organization. One of his specialties is (visual) software localization. Many blue chip companies use his Rigi localization management platform to streamline overall localization processes.
Angelika ZerfassIndependent Trainer at ZAAC
Angelika has been an independent trainer and consultant for translation tools since the year 2000. She earned her degree in translation (Chinese/Japanese, Computational Linguistics) in 1995 at the University of Bonn, Germany. After that she worked for the Japanese Embassy in Germany before she joined Trados, where she relocated to Japan and the US, supporting Microsoft’s localization projects using Trados tools. She has been a frequent speaker at industry-related events like LocWorld, tekom, DTT and Translation Technology Summer School.
Sufian ReiterHead of Operations at Plunet
Sufian Reiter is Head of Operations at Plunet in Berlin. His main responsibilities are the creation and optimization of internal processes. He also supports the Product Management team with his industry and IT expertise regarding the API and workflow automization. With his focus on internal operations, Sufian sets the course for the future development of the company – because a company needs to work well internally in order to play a leading role in the market. Sufian knows this market and its needs like the back of his hand. He started at Plunet in 2008 and contributed significantly to the establishment of the Plunet business overseas as Head of Sales for the American market. In this role, Sufian advised hundreds of LSPs, corporates, and institutions on process optimization. Prior to this, the business graduate and father of two gained experience in Marketing and Sales at various international companies.
Kerstin BierSAP
In her role as service owner for the onboarding service (mergers and acquisitions) at SAP, one of the world’s leading business software enterprises, Kerstin Bier is responsible for supporting SAP’s mergers and acquisitions in setting up and managing efficient localization processes and projects in the post-merger integration phase and beyond. Coming from an acquisition herself to SAP in 2012, Kerstin leads a team of account and delivery managers, project managers and a localization engineer, and puts a strong focus on establishing strong working relationships with the goal to set up efficient and scalable processes that help all sides. In her previous role at Sybase, acquired by SAP in 2010, Kerstin was responsible for managing European localization projects. She initiated and drove the introduction of statistical machine translation for one of their product areas and presented challenges and lessons learned at various conferences.
Marie BlankeKothes GmbH
Marie has found her way into the world of translation in 2009 and soon discovered the power of CAT tools. Originally being a mathematician, she has a thing for algorithms – so in the past years, one of her responsibilities was setting up complex workflows, link tools and find ways to automate steps.
After joining kothes GmbH in 2015, Marie has become the key figure when it comes to setting up translation processes maximising the productivity and the quality of clients’ translation output.
Aida MartirosyanHaymillian
Aida Martirosyan is Managing Director of Haymillian, a media localization company with operation teams in 20 countries, working in 64 languages. She has a major in Hotel Services and International Tourism Management, and minor in English Linguistics. She commenced her career as a translator and Quality Assurance specialist before moving to business development roles.
In 2007, she established Haymillian (formerly XLence), a company specializing in hospitality and audiovisual translation. She has spearheaded the company’s journey for the last 12 years, growing it from a small translation agency to a global company with two distinct specialized units of technical & hospitality translation and media localization. The media localization department which was added in 2010 specializes in subtitling, closed captioning and dubbing services.
It is headquartered in London, UK, and has an 800-strong growing team of translators and subtitlers, while other offices include Athens, Greece for Eastern Europe and Middle East, Montevideo, Uruguay and Cuernavaca, Mexico for Latin America and Johannesburg, South Africa for Africa
Maria RamosLocalization Institute
María Ramos Merino is a freelance localization manager and consultant, offering expertise in translation tools, process, and workflows. She currently acts as Localization Manager at Beabloo and supports LocWorld and the Localization Institute on various projects, including the Game Global events. Previously, María worked as Production Manager at Version internationale, a French translation provider. She has performed several positions on the vendor side and has extensive knowledge of the industry. Technology savvy, María holds a Master’s degree in Translation Technologies from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Florian SachseProduction Manager at memoQ
Florian Sachse is the production manager for Kilgray, where he controls product planning, development, quality assurance, release and documentation. He has been working for Kilgray since 2013 and previously managed its software development team. One of his first development projects dating more than 30 years back was to get the German umlaut into an English word processor application. In 1998, Florian started working with language technology when PASS Engineering introduced the leading software localization solution PASSOLO to the market. As managing director of PASS Engineering, the initial focus was the development of mission-critical software for clinical analyzers.
Erik Vogt RWS Moravia
Erik Vogt heads-up technology partnerships and custom solution development at RWS Moravia. Erik has worked with some of the world’s most ambitious and innovative technology customers in the world since 1998. His focus is on management and in developing data-driven solutions that solve real business problems in language services. With a passion for metrics, people and lateral thinking, Erik enjoys helping frame problems and quantitatively evaluate and implement unique win-win solutions.
Kevin SchmidBiomed Translations
Kevin Schmid is a hands-on user of translation technology. He serves as Head of Operations for MPÜ Translations, an LSP specializing in medical and pharmacological translation. In his day-to-day role, Kevin frequently interacts with customers who submit problematic file formats or who have drunk the NMP Kool-Aid and think that it is the only solution for them. Kevin believes that frequently less is more, and he struggles with explaining that concept to customers. Kevin attended the Translation Technology Round Table in Boulder, Colorado, in January, and was specially recruited to participate on the Advisory Board to help plan the Heidelberg event.
Cancellation Policy:
You will receive a refund if you cancel up to 3 weeks prior to the workshop. After that, there is no refund
The Localization Institute, Inc. reserves the right to cancel the event if there are less than 15 registrants by one month prior to the workshop.
If the program is canceled, you will receive a full refund.