#47 Lionbridge Mega Deal, Altagram CEO Marie Amigues talks Game Localization

Marie Amigues, Founder and CEO of Altagram, joins Slator Pod and talks to Esther and Florian about how she runs the fast-growing game localization providerMarie recounts her experience of launching Altagram and growing the business internationally, and discusses the ins and outs of game loc.In part 1, Florian unpacks the sale of Lionbridge’s AI division to Canada’s TELUS International nearly one billion US-Dollar. He talks about the success of Lionbridge’s private equity owners, HIG Capital, in selling just one part of the business they acquired in late 2016 (Lionbridge) for nearly triple the amount paid for the entire company. Lionbridge, meanwhile, is left with around USD 500m in core translation and localization revenues. Esther shares some recent financial highlights from LSPs Summa Linguae Technologies, Stratus Video and ZOO Digital, whose dubbing revenues soared in the company’s first half.  The two delve into machine dubbing and discuss a recent paper from DeepMind and Google, which used ASR, MT, speech synthesis and lip movement synthesis to (semi)automate dubbing for educational videos. The potential applications are considerable; so too are the concerns around deep fakes and consent issues.