Translation education and industry: bridging the gap. "{Panel discussion}"

Igor Afanasayev 00:00
What I have to say about the next topic is that it's very close to my heart, because, well I can can relate to many of us come to our language industry from different backgrounds without having any proper education. And we bring some interesting aspects to this to this profession. But at the same time, we don't have this coherent knowledge system. And at the same time, we have institutions that do prepare proper language specialists, we just want to make sure that those specialists know how to deal with the like real world out there with it with the tasks and with the industry. So with that, I'm handing over the mic to yoga.

Vova Zakharov 00:45
Thanks, super. Yeah, you just told my brother Julius, my whole intro speech, like went to ashes. But anyway, yeah, I must say that I must be the worst person to moderate this call. Because neither as a translator nor as a localization engineer, I have no education at all. But maybe well, I can ask some questions from them from the outside. So our today's panelists are Dr. Lucas here, you already know him today. And not only today, we see him a lot and do Crusader II, CEO and founder at Creative words. Right, and someone who has his opinion about translation education. Then we have Max Troyer, who is the professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, right. And we have Chris Brown, who is now a freelance project manager and localization engineer, as I understand, and also a graduate of, of the University of Maryland in translation and localization, project management. So with that said, Diego, I wanted to start with you, because we're talking about that talent gap. Perhaps it makes sense to start with, what kind of gap that buyer side sees. So maybe you can describe this?

Diego Cresceri 02:05
Yeah, sure. Let me start with something positive, actually, and I will talk about my experience. So we are in a single language vendor, basically focusing into only Italian as a source of target language. So I will refer to the Italian market and entire education system. What I see as a positive factor is the students when they graduate, they have a very good source language skills. So that's the positive one. But there are a few things that are actually missing, I would say, and starting with Astonishingly, like target language skills, which is quite strange. And, of course, all the matters related to technology, even cartoons, that they're not very prepared on those. They're not prepared on actual services that the market is needing. And I'm talking about localization, I'm talking about post editing, I'm talking about, they don't know what the translation management management system is, for instance, this is not taught at the university. And let's not talk about continuous localization or other specific needs of the market. However, there's something that is even more weird, in my opinion. It's a huge, huge lack of preparation on business stuff. I mean, they don't do any business training, like sales, marketing, financials, any fiscal stuff that that is really important for them to get into the market. And this is the desire the questions that I been asked mostly by my like, candidate freelancers, like how can I start working? How can I how can I send you an invoice and they don't know anything about this stuff. Another great lack is the networking. They don't have any possibility of networking. So basically, they're not really prepared to do it, they don't have any contacts. And this is really something that needs to be improved, I guess. Because when you get out of the school, you need to have contacts or radio to be able to make them at least I'm generalizing that there are schools that are really good at networking, all this business stuff, but this is the general situation.

Vova Zakharov 04:33
Okay, thanks, Diego. I wanna I want to go through to Max Max as someone who teaches localization and translation. Of course, you're from the other side of the pond. So probably the situation is different also, because of this, but what do you do see some similarities on the US side? And what do you think about this at all?

Max Troyer 04:54
Yeah, thanks for Yeah, so as we've mentioned, I teach localization in my Monterey, California. My program translation and localization management, the tail end program, we train localizers. My school teaches translation and interpretation. I'm more on the the localization side training project managers, localization engineers, desktop publishing specialists, software internationalization to some degree if someone comes into the program with a CS degree, and then also, you know subtitling and dubbing we have kind of a wide curriculum that covers a lot of aspects of the industry. And I think what what Diego says really resonates in the sense that we, our program is not super affordable to be quite frank about it. It's an investment that our students make. And I think cluster II will echo that the Maryland program is not cheap, it's an investment. And we can't train train the world, we send about 80 students out into the industry every spring, and they they get snapped up or snatched up very quickly. But there is some, some some aspect that we can't we can't train everyone. And so I'd also don't think that it's really you can you convey whether everyone needs a degree to be successful in the industry, there's a part of me that thinks that we get the best teams where we combine people who don't know anything about a given topic, they're completely naive and look at it from a totally new light. And then we have people who have gone through a program such as mine, and have all the best practices in mind. And maybe someone eventually says, you know, why don't we try this new way that we've never thought about? And, and so when it comes to when it comes to talent gap, I think it's up to the entire industry, to kind of make the industry industry more exciting things like loca at home is, is doing that, I hope there are new people that have joined this webinar and kind of are testing the waters to see if this is something they want to go into. And ultimately, we've got to attract people to the industry, if we're talking about a talent gap, we have to decide, is it because we're not training enough people or because we can't attract people to the industry in the first place. So in a survey of about 40, or 50, North American technology companies, in a meeting a couple of years ago, I asked of your engineers that you have at your company, your software internationalization engineers, like how many how many feel that they've come to software International, and internationalization engineering, and their career is now kind of died on the vine that you've left the feature development behind, and now you're doing internationalization. And you like it, but you realize you're not going to go much further in your career. And basically, it was divided 5050, there were about half of those leaders of those tech companies said, yeah, I really have to pay those internationalization engineers more, because they know they're giving up a lot. And others said, No, we know that localization revenue drives this company. And so we we put all our weight behind those internationalization engineers. And so I think I think you can take that, that survey that I, I there was an informal survey. But I think ultimately, if we're paying people what they deserve to do this, and that they're creating the revenue that people will naturally come into the industry. So I'll just, I'll just leave it at that.

Vova Zakharov 08:11
Yeah. Thanks, Max. And let me tell you that you won the best picture quality award for today. Die NVu. I don't know what Anyway, please, three, what's your take on this as someone who has recently graduated from such a school,

Clysree Brown 08:30
I would like to say that I can understand that a lot of these things would definitely be very concerning. And I can't necessarily speak for every translation and localization program out there. But I know that personally, at the University of Maryland in DC, which stands for graduate studies of interpreting and translation, where I got my degree in translation and localization project management, we did talk a lot about CAT tools and translation management systems. So I really think that this program had emphasized something very important, which was the whole technology aspect, because I mean, a modern day translator, saying that they want to translate but not know anything about CAT tools is like a person saying they want to be a journalist, but don't know how to use a word processor. It's realistically not happening.

Vova Zakharov 09:22
Yeah, that's interesting, because even in our own chat here, we had a discussion during the day where people complained about CAT tools. These discussions like come and go. They are like a constant in our industry, but still, and it's interesting that you are now saying about the US education. And we see that here, at least from what Diego says, and I also see some comments in the chat that say that there is nothing like this in the schools here. So I wanted to talk a bit about those differences in approaches to translation education, here in Europe and in the US, so Diego, I don't know if you're well aware. Ralph how the education organization is organized sorry for the tautology, but maybe you can comment on that.

Diego Cresceri 10:10
You're muted. I did it. Yeah. I don't want to generalize it, I can talk of some universities without mentioning names. And what I feel is that they are like focusing more on the language, part of the studies then on the technology. So there are a lot of studies on literature. They're more language schools, like when I started university, like 21 years ago. And my, my course was more practical, it was you would do interpreting, you would do simultaneous interpreting translation, NACA tools, absolutely. But at least you will translate a lot. And you will learn the techniques. And now it's more about the language itself. And that's it, it's more theoretical. But again, it's not like that in all universities, there are many universities that are starting to lose more and more. And for instance, with cartoons, the excuse that they use is always they are expensive. And smartcard, of course, is a good example of free cartoons that could be used at university. But it's not. So we need to work on that. And so yes, they're not particularly more they're not, they're not something that is preparing you to do a job to have a job to have a profession. It's more the cultural side. And I think this is because of the probably aging of the teachers themselves, or the fact that they're not really into the industry. They're not actual professionals. There are more side,

Vova Zakharov 11:56
can you see that there may be a gap where that localizer guys are more from the younger generation, and the translation guys are more from the older generation. There is also some maybe a generation gap between them.

Diego Cresceri 12:07
But they're not even. They're not even translators. They probably started language. And they all they did not. I don't want to say it's not useful, but all they did there is teaching, they have never worked on the profession. I believe

Vova Zakharov 12:23
you've had some anecdotes, some story about, you're coming to teach about get to some university.

Diego Cresceri 12:29
Yeah. Well, I'm pretty sure that that person will not be here, because he's not interested. But yeah, I went to class, I asked the professor to give me one of his hours to teach is market. And what did he does he left the room. So he was not showing any kind of interest in topic. And these course, was the technology course. So it was his stuff. But he left the room. So and he shows how involved he was in the topic. So yeah, that's what it's like to summarize more language than technology. So yeah, actually, exclusively,

Vova Zakharov 13:12
it's obviously a bit different on your side. But I wanted to ask if translation education and localization education go like hand in hand, or or are they more of different parts of different curricula or whatever? How is it? And in another question inside the question, how many of schools like yours are there in the US at all? Okay, go ahead.

Clysree Brown 13:38
Um, I'll answer your first question. And I think that was about do translation and localization go hand in hand. So I would say that definitely translation and localization, they can go hand in hand. But they shouldn't be confused for one another. Because for me, like translation is about making sure that the message is clear going from language to language be. And localization is making sure that the product as a whole works for your new on target audience. And a lot of the times that does have to do with translation, but you can't just stop a translation, you have to make sure that even the color schemes and the field for answering I mean, the fields for answering data are appropriate and accurate for your target audience. It's just like so much. But yes, they do overlap at a lot of different points.

Max Troyer 14:33
I would like to maybe look at whether or not they need to overlap. I agree they do overlap. But do they need to overlap in the sense that if you're really good at language, does that mean that you're going to be a good project manager or that you're going to be a good business person? I don't necessarily think so. And back in 2017, in the the TLM program here in Monterey, we decided to vote to divide into two what we were calling specializations. So if you had the the language was to become a translator, you would take translation courses. But if you if you had a second language that you weren't quite ready to be a translator, you would take these language studies courses to get your, your non native language better. And that was us acknowledging that not everyone has to be a translator. In fact, we're not going to get people into our program that have computer science degrees or business degrees who want to become localization, project managers, if we're requiring them to have translator quality language skills. So at some point, in my program, we're acknowledging that we're kind of wrestling right now, at this moment, do you even need a second language to be a good translation project manager or localization product manager or localization engineer or in the C suite, making business decisions? Once you've acknowledged that growth is global, and that you need to have your company be globally ready, then you're acknowledging that translation and localization is important? And isn't that the important thing that we're getting the work that these these businesses are setting our way? So yes, we're definitely exploring the overlap between language and technology and business and trying to decide if Lang someone who is passionate about language, but doesn't want to be a translator has a place in localization? And we've decided most most definitely. But historically, if you look at who, who is running a trend, who or who is running most translation companies, there are people that have a background in translation, who are now managing and owning these companies. But as time goes on, I think that we'll see kind of a shift that people who are translators and are good at translating will simply charge more and become more senior translators. And then the people business people are starting to kind of take over the business space.

Vova Zakharov 16:44
Can you imagine a person that doesn't have interesting languages, have interest in language project management, like what kinds of thinking would bring them there?

Max Troyer 16:56
I think a simple act of going to another country and not speaking that language puts you in the, in the shoes of someone just not there. If you took some high school Spanish, and tried to go to Spain or Mexico and you're trying out this language, you really feel what you feel what it's like to not be understood and not get your message across. And then when you go work in an industry, you're like, wow, now I know what our international customers feel like when I call up and try to speak Spanish to our customers support, and they can't we only support English or whatever language. So I think it's for some reason, it's just to some degree, it's just experiencing not understanding that lead lights a fire under people's feet, we've got to get everything and every lung language basically.

Vova Zakharov 17:39
I think also, an important point you raised was, if we, you will want the person who wants to be a translator to be to learn project management. I think there in our industry, there is a lot of misunderstanding between the different roles. So there's a lot of time where translators will say that project managers do something wrong and project managers will complain translators. So if a person just learns just one line, the in doesn't see the big picture and his role in this big picture. They get like, they can get some wrong views about how all the things work together. So what are your thoughts on this? Maybe the aggregate glossary

Diego Cresceri 18:20
what they do this, one of the things, the gap, the gaps that is that that there's no education about worlds in the industry, of course, you're right, this. They don't know what a project manager is. And I was overlooking a comment from Renato Nikolov me I want to briefly comment on that. It's through this dedication that this training, but I'm not sure that the only teaching the concept of cartoons, for instance, would be enough. I think they need some practice as well, even during university, but I also believe that the industry needs to do something to keep teaching the people you cannot learn everything at university, of course. So yeah, this is what we do. We spend a lot of time teaching people like doing free courses, free meetups free open days, so wherever you want to call it. It's like probably 10% of our time and money that goes in there. Because of course University is not enough in tweening something else?

Vova Zakharov 19:29
Yeah. That was actually a sorry, this was actually a provocative question. I was going to ask, like, maybe it's, it's your business to educate people. Maybe it's not

Diego Cresceri 19:39
Wayne's, otherwise we're not I wouldn't like the word.

Vova Zakharov 19:44
Sorry, please. You're you're saying something.

Clysree Brown 19:47
I would like to add something. So at University of Maryland, we had a course called localization business fundamentals, where we were going through what goes on really in the trends collation and localization industry. And we sort of worked it out in a way that was a lot like playing the game. So we were seeing what it was like on client side, by your side, it was just like, you know, very eye opening, because, of course, like just being good at the language, you're not necessarily going to be a good business person. So that's why you need to have somebody write down the business fundamentals to you. So it was a very good course.

Vova Zakharov 20:30
How exactly is it? I wonder, Diego that you, you use, you mentioned that you trained your translators, but maybe you could go a little bit in depth about it, what kind of specific events you have, what kind of specific courses you use,

Diego Cresceri 20:45
we do a lot of stuff we have, of course, internships, I, the company's not big we are, I think 14 or 15. And only this year, even with COVID, we have 15 interns, that company, which is a huge number. And then we have a free platform for the Italian market, where we teach all these fundamentals like fiscal things and different services that you can offer cut tools, it's very basic, but it's what they need to start with. And then we have open days where we we show what we do in our company, we show the holes that we have with the organizational structure, and how they are intertwined and so on. And then we have newsletters, we have video interviews, we do a lot of stuff. We spend a lot of time on that. Because in the main reason was not because of I am very generous. It's because I was kind of tired of having to answer this very same questions every time from the people. So we thought why don't we record some short videos and put them there for free, so that so we can raise the bar? Or the starting point, let's say you have the people contacting us applying to work with us. So that mean, sorry?

Vova Zakharov 22:08
How does that work out financially? I mean, to start a language company, you do not do not need to do all this stuff. Yeah, there are lots of other language companies who do not do this stuff. And they probably charge the same money. So by doing all of this for free, you're spending your money. And you're probably educating people who will not necessarily stay just with you.

Diego Cresceri 22:27
So they're not they're mostly freelancers working for me and my competitors, probably. But I think it's something that you do for giving something back to the industry. And we probably saved money on window management. And, yeah, because we spent a lot of time on that. So yeah, there's no direct financial return at all. It's a big expense. But it's an investment for the industry, I would say.

Vova Zakharov 22:59
I also had a provocative question to max and maybe to clear three as well. So none nothing that is available in localization engineering, called Project management is actually like rocket science. So why can people just learn it all by themselves without resorting to an institution or a course or whatever. So maybe Mexican stock increase for candidate something,

Max Troyer 23:21
this is something that I think about from time to time, especially well, I'll start with internationalization engineering. If you've got a software engineer it you know, the software engineering is probably 90% of the skills, they need to be an internationalization engineer. And it's easier to add the 10% of internationalization engineering that they need. Maybe similar to a localization project manager, you take someone who's really good at project manager, project management, there are people person already they love working with people building teams, onboarding vendors, or talent, as we refer to the these people. Now, maybe it's easier to start with someone who's a seasoned project manager and add localization, maybe it's easier to take someone who's an expert at language, maybe a copywriter. As mentioned in a previous panel, maybe it's easier to take a copywriter who speaks two languages and say, you know, you could just shift a little bit and be a translator. And instead of, you know, starting with these pure language people and trying to take them to these kind of lofty locations. So that's, that's something I do think about. And it's an interesting idea, I think, in many cases, personally, I have a degree in computer science. I have a degree in French, with my undergrad, but at no point that I considered going into the localization industry and no one recommended that I go into the localization industry, I think klaserie is in a similar boat like we both love language and no one told us by the way, localization exists, you should look into it. So we got into the into the industry kind of by accident. And how many people is that happening through like Don't we need to do more outreach, outreach to to schools, especially universities and tell all these language for nerds, by the way, localization is out there. Go into it.

Vova Zakharov 25:08
Please, three, what do you think?

Clysree Brown 25:11
So I would definitely say that it would be very helpful for the localization industry to go out to universities and let people know that this exists because I'm, as Mac said, this could be very helpful, because I remember going in as a Spanish major at Howard University, and people would ask me all the time, like, so what are you going to do with that, or they would think that all I could be what the Spanish degree would possibly be, like, maybe a Spanish teacher, maybe Elaine? Like, um, maybe I'm a translator. But there's just so much more that you can possibly do with like a language degree if you go and specialize, let's say with a master's degree, like I did with University of Maryland, where I learned about not only translation as an art, but also localization, project management, and like cad tools and TMS is and about how this industry works. So I'm just like, amazed that all of this was out here, and I just happened to stumble on it by mistake.

Vova Zakharov 26:11
But do you think it was like, a useful for you in then what was the most important thing that you took from there that you couldn't have taken like, by self education?

Clysree Brown 26:24
I think some of the most important things that I wouldn't have gotten from self education were the feedback from the instructors. Absolutely. And the opportunities to network because we had some professors that really made sure that we were getting ourselves out there, they told us like, we had to have a LinkedIn that we had to like, you know, pre COVID go to in person networking events, and like bring back some business cards and mentioned some things about the person that you met, just to prove that, you know, you really were there and paying attention and listening. And I think that those things you can't really get on your own. And then again, there's just like, this whole industry is about communication. So at the end of the day, communication takes other people, so you need other people to thrive.

Max Troyer 27:16
I also kind of want to comment on why education is important. So in my in my program, we have three or four courses on localization project management, we have a course dedicated to account management at LSPs. We have a course for vendor management at LSP is a course on sales and sales, how to be a cell localization, we have a course to become a solutions architect. Basically, there. We have courses on audio visual localization, if you want to go into the subtitling industry or dubbing industry, desktop publishing courses, website localization, continuous localization, Igor, I cover surge in my my software class, and students are definitely learning the latest and continuous localization. So I think I don't think there's any way to self to self curate the experience that we're giving here at MIS, and it's basically the person who was teaching the sales course, sales, sales, localization. So you know, you get access to these faculty who do these things. And that's what that's the magic touch that we offer, I think,

Vova Zakharov 28:23
what do you think Diego for you, someone with it, with such a degree that Max has now so low that would it would be like, a benefit or an advantage was for you to take

Diego Cresceri 28:38
somewhere or of course, my last hire, my future is she's she started in October. She comes from Dublin DCU. So, and you can really see the difference because she has some practical courses on project management, and very practical stuff. I saw the slides and they have the course and they are great. I mean, this is something that you need to learn somewhere. And also, you cannot like self get self training because I like the word curated. It's not easy to like to find something useful, something valuable in the old discontinuities out there. It's trainings everywhere. Lots of money to spend, it's really difficult. And it's it then it's not just a topic, it's a path. It's more than like a passage to it's not just something individual to need to learn. So yeah, it's, it's a great if I could go back and probably two I am studying Monterey,

Vova Zakharov 29:46
if we all could before we go through the q&a is because there are a lot of questions and let's see some good ones. I want to also discuss a question that Chris we raised while we were rehearsing. This panel. So please, do we want maybe to talk about this? Now they want me to talk about it.

Clysree Brown 30:05
And you can open up the question.

Vova Zakharov 30:07
Yeah. So the question is the diversity in our industry in general, in work from home in particular. Because as some of you may have noticed, glossary is the only black person that is presenting today on a panel today. And frankly, we did not have any requests. So how does it come like this? That's our industries. So whites, I understand that it may be more of a US topic, but still, we now in the US timezone, so perhaps lots of people listening also wondering about that. So Max, maybe you can comment on that. Your music?

Max Troyer 30:47
I was answering, I was typing an answer to a question. Could you? What were we just talking about the diversity in the industry? Yep. Yeah, I mean, this is something this is the elephant in the room. And in a lot that's going on in North America right now. And a lot of conversations we're having is how to how to increase the diversity in not just our industry, but shine a light and all the industries kind of across the board. If you go to localization conferences, it's international, international, but in North America, at least not very black. And so yeah, I mean, as a as a white person, I can only guess at at how to do this class, what do you want to talk about? Like, what it was like, you went to Howard, and yet you ended up in this industry? Like, what can we do?

Clysree Brown 31:32
Um, I would definitely say that, that adding more diversity to this industry would be very helpful, because the whole point of localization and internationalization is getting a product or concept from one culture to the next. And that quite naturally means that you have to have a broader group of people on your localization team in order to make that, you know, an actual successful process. So I think that, you know, a lot of organizations and schools like Miss or like GE said, A UMD, should actually go out to probably even historically black colleges or universities or HBCUs, and start recruiting people from their world language departments, or even their interpretation programs, because how our university does have an interpretation program, but not too many people either know about it, or they don't really know all the possibilities that they could like, have, would they just sort of take interpretation as an elective, and then like, you know, mark it off and forget about it. So I say that, you know, just like, outreach and recruitment is absolutely critical.

Vova Zakharov 32:49
It's interesting that I see a comment now in the chat assembler, and it says, in Australia, it's just the opposite. Almost everyone in the translation course, is from a non English background. And I think it's the only industry that that says this. And then because we are truly globally, we bring companies global, but we also have very global so it's so hard to make some one conclusion for the whole industry. Yeah, because so many cultures are intertwined here. Just my thoughts. Anyway, I think we have some 15 minutes left. I'll I also have a comment here from Renato pinata. He says he disagrees with the comment about lack of diversity. In my classes, there are students from over 50 nationalities, nationalities and different cultural backgrounds. Yeah, so that's more or less what I also said. But yeah, maybe we can go to the questions. There are lots of them. And we have like 15 minutes, I hope we will spend quite a lot of time answering and I will go from the most voted downwards. So the most important question is Mariana asks for people like me looking for a postgraduate course or searching decades in translation localization after 10 years in the industry, what should we look for? I'm not quite sure what Miranda means by what to look for. But maybe we can interpret and give our own answers, maybe max.

Max Troyer 34:21
I think enderun generalizing gets taking a look at what skills you have and how far you want to go in the industry. And in some cases, if you're, if you're a translator, and you want to go into localization we have, we have a I don't want to sell the program too much. But we have a one year intensive master's degree. So you can basically go from translator to localizer in a year. But if you're already kind of if you're like a junior project manager and you want to go into management, like what do you need to do that? Or if you if you're a localization project manager and you want to get more technical, like I think closerie You're We're going to be doing the University of Washington Program, which kind of adds a technical component to your what you currently have from Maryland. So I think it's looking at your own skills and seeing how far you want to go into settings if you need a full blown Master's, or if some Coursera or edX courses can get you to the next level. So yeah.

Clysree Brown 35:26
Oh, was were you passing the mic to me?

Max Troyer 35:30
Yeah, I think so just what is your next step?

Clysree Brown 35:33
Oh, so when I was said to look for in a program would be like a horse like, cost effectiveness, because you do have to consider this to be an investment and make sure that it's something that you really want to do. And I would say that you should lean towards a program that has professors that are actually active in the industry. And that's one of the great things about the GC program at University of Maryland. Because like all the professors were active in the industry, when they were teaching, so we knew that we were learning things that were pertinent and like all the texts that they would have us like translate would be something that was very current and then like the technology was always up to date. Okay,

Diego Cresceri 36:24
there's nothing to add.

Vova Zakharov 36:29
I saw one question here. Okay. There's a question from Renata Bernardo. I think there is a confusion between education and training. I don't believe there all of the universities to train people on specific kettles, but on the concept, education is permanent to any situation. What do you think, Max? I think all of us can I speak up? Well,

Max Troyer 36:53
I think generally, first of all, our program is CAD and TMS tool agnostic. For the most part, we do cover specific cad tools and specific TMS systems as well. But at the same time, we want students to be able to generalize and apply what they've learned to other things. For example, I teach subtitling in my audio visual class. And if I could use the tools that Netflix uses, I would love to except guess what they're proprietary. And so I have to use other tools when it comes to subtitling. So that's a good example of a time when I have to use different tools and hope and pray that students can transfer those skills to other tools. And I think for the most part, that's, that's successful. I mean, you you learn one cat tool, and when they're easy to use as SmartCAT, maybe you use another cat when you're like, oh my gosh, why is this? Why does this have to be so hard? But I already you're making comparisons, and you've you've learned one cat to one, I don't know.

Clysree Brown 37:55
I will say that the whole purpose of education is to make it so that you can always continuously learn. Because a training is more like you know, a brief little tutorial in a sense on how to do a new skill. But if you have a strong educational background in this industry, then you should just be able to like sort of intuitively pick up any new training that you do. And you should expect to do more trainings throughout your career because it's simply needed in order to make sure that you evolve because nothing is going to stay the same.

Vova Zakharov 38:29
What's your take on this Diego?

Diego Cresceri 38:31
Yeah. About the fact that university should give you input to sort of like the mindset, then you need to keep learning. With training in the US they were Napoles words. Theory, I think that some practice is still useful. As Mark said, you can like practicing a tool and being able to do comparisons and if you know how to use the complete cattles, I guess you can use other ones. With ease, it's it's not gonna be difficult, you don't need to learn them all at school. But if you are trained on one, maybe you can apply all the well the features are the same. So you can learn easily other ones as well. Just to give you an example.

Vova Zakharov 39:22
A question popped up actually in my own mind. So I will ask about some generalizations. If we talk about patterns and anti patterns in localization, because for example, we have our eager avant Asif who thinks that for example, limiting character strings by a certain number of characters is an anti pattern in the industry. And not to speak about this specific anti pattern but do you teach some kind of mindset that is not related to specific tools but to such things like like this, like veterans and untied persons next?

Max Troyer 39:58
Yeah, I think if we look at At any any theme that we're exploring in the program, like I'm teaching my multilingual desktop publishing course right now. And so I'm thinking about, like giving plenty of whitespace, to your layouts. And I'm using non inclusive language there I go again, you know, having lots of extra space so the text can expand, and thinking about embedding words in graphics. And so yeah, I mean, there, there are definitely patterns that we can get designers to follow engineers to follow when they're developing applications. I think I refer to these mostly my brain is like best practices, or whatever. But I kind of liked the idea of how like patterns where we see good things happening, and what was the anti patterns like, I kind of liked that idea of, of things that go against

Vova Zakharov 40:48
the grain. I'm not sure I pronounced it the right way. But I think that's actually worked.

Max Troyer 40:53
But there are some contexts where you know, absolutely, you have to eliminate characters like I think subtitling, if we're going to produce if we're going to create Netflix compliant subtitles, we absolutely have to tell our translators that they have to keep the character limit under control. And and we all know that. When you translate subtitles, you lose meaning to comply with that character count. So yeah, I think I think knowing when, when we when we're cutting, I guess it's corner cutting, isn't it? Ultimately, I feel like Igor should be added to the panel. So yeah. corner cutting,

Vova Zakharov 41:26
I think when it talks about this with him, his point was that we should make an environment in which translators can see the result of their work, like in real time, so they put the wrong number of letters, they see that it doesn't fit the screen, so they modify it. So if we do anything else, then it's an anti pattern equal just corrected me, you know, private chat.

Max Troyer 41:48
One development I love seeing in the industry is QA built into the translator workflow. And so some CAT tools are implementing QA as the translator translates, you know, I'm thinking of the the memo cue video preview tool, where as the translator translates, the translator has the video playing and every time they translate a subtitle, it literally tells them if the reading speed is too fast or too slow. And so you don't have to do QA that is your QA. And so if you can roll in a website context, like if your translate if your translators trick either. I actually don't I think translating directly on our website is a gimmick at this point. And then what we should really be focused on is having two screens where the translator has the actual website as their translating being updated on another screen, but they're still in a more traditional CAT tools environment, you might disagree with that. And think that live translating on a website is totally cool. But I think it's mostly a distraction at this point. That said, the QA side of that letting the translators see their translation in context is worth its weight in gold. So yeah, I'm a fan of, of providing context, I think is what we would say.

Vova Zakharov 42:53
Yeah, perhaps the next big thing in the industry will be when someone comes up with a way to provide context, like, much better than it is available right now. I mean, the whole system doesn't work working federal lis. But I think we digress also. So let me read some questions. And psaltis I'm not sure what the first name is, but anyway, asks, What role does continuous education play in the localization engineer role? Technology is moving so fast? How do you recommend keeping up with new developments? Perhaps, I can ask this first a police will be like someone who might be considering continued education.

Clysree Brown 43:34
Just to be clear, the question was

Vova Zakharov 43:37
about continuous education. So technology is moving fast. How do you keep up with the developments?

Clysree Brown 43:44
So I would say that some ways of keeping up with new developments would be following, you know, popular blogs for localization, you know, such as smartcast, ball, or maybe even Z. You know, just make sure that you are actually active in the industry, am I able to see incense trends so that you can, you know, be ahead of the curve?

Vova Zakharov 44:11
Do you have any thoughts on that? Are you considering maybe continuous education? For myself? Yep. Why not?

Diego Cresceri 44:18
I what I'm doing is business stuff, because now I own a company. It's getting bigger, and this is where I need to improve. But yeah, I agree with the fact that you need to be on top of the curve. And attending events. For instance, I, I founded the company in 2016. And there was at Lockwood in Barcelona, 2017. And this is where I met you guys. And you saved my life. It's marketed on different in different situations. And I learned a lot we will not because of that, and just because I tend to awkward, otherwise, who knows. So that's another source of education and continuing education. Yeah,

Vova Zakharov 44:59
and source for another panel. I have a question here from Katherine Boozman, actually, I'm sorry if I pronounced the surname not correctly. But I exactly as we something we discussed earlier today. Now that we are doing things more virtually, and that we're getting more used to learning online in general, is there an opportunity for institutions like mis to go virtual and offer fully online localization programs? Especially given the gap between Europe and the US?

Max Troyer 45:31
Yeah, I mean, already. Last, this fall is the inaugural year of our online advanced entry TLM program. So we now have a fully online, fully asynchronous program, in which from anywhere in the world, you can, you can sign up and consume content at your own schedule, we're intending this for full time professionals who are busy, don't want to relocate moved to Monterey. It's not a cheap town to move to, to be quite honest. And anyway, I think that yes, I think beyond what we're doing in my program, I think as COVID-19 has forced all programs, essentially, to convert to an online format. So I think you're gonna see a lot more training programs offering online options, especially in localizations. But I also think across the board, and all in all sectors.

Vova Zakharov 46:18
Great. So we have some free means to go. And I wanted maybe each of you to wrap up with some kind of one minute speech and advice to anyone who considers educating themselves in translation and localization. So let's go one by one, maybe Diego.

Diego Cresceri 46:39
Wow, easy one and keep learning. And there's a lot of online stuff now. And even university courses, I'm not sure, we'll see if it's really the same value that they can offer. That is a question for Max. A comment for him? Maybe. But yeah, there are a lot of opportunities. I wish I had the same opportunities when I started, honestly.

Vova Zakharov 47:01
Yeah, we all do, please free anything from you.

Clysree Brown 47:06
I would say, especially to anyone who may be watching now that is currently in undergrad and it's a language major, definitely look into localization. Absolutely. Consider getting a master's in localization or translation. And, you know, have a better sense of what this industry is about, because there are lots of opportunities. And no, you don't have to be locked in as just a translator, or an interpreter. And if you want to be like, that's fine, too. But just know that there are several options.

Vova Zakharov 47:38
Create, like,

Max Troyer 47:40
your hybrids, I think I want to use my my one minute to conclude and just ask people to help people join this industry in the sense that I think we're, like one big, I was gonna say happy family. We're like one big family, and we need to convince people to join us. Our conferences are fun. And once you get into localization, you're a part of this community. And there, there there do seem to be a lack of walls between sharing best practices among businesses, I was at a conference that will remain unnamed talking to a person from a company that will remain unnamed. And I asked what he what his challenges were right now. And he said, Oh, I can't talk about my challenges. And I looked at the badge, and I was like, Okay, fine. That's really boring. Why are you here at this conference in case but normally, there's there's a lot of knowledge sharing, and I think that's, that's really a great thing. So I'll just leave it at that.

Vova Zakharov 48:36
Yeah, thanks for for great. Last words, Max. And thanks, Diego. Thanks. Please do Thanks, Max for being here. I eager we have just in time, ahead of time, but yeah, I enjoyed it very much. And hopefully, this will bring more interesting discussions in our community. Please follow us. Not follow us. I go to smart kid.ai/community and speak up. We need you.

Igor Afanasayev 49:01
Yeah, I'm a living link here. So please, please read my screen and follow this link. So thank you so much, everybody. This was really insightful. This was like dynamic