#82 LanguageLoop CEO, TikTok’s Dutch Translation Penalty, SME Website Localization

Elizabeth Compton, CEO of LanguageLoop, and Claire Mullins, National Translations Manager at the Australian language service provider (LSP), join SlatorPod to talk about the company’s digital and organizational transformation.Elizabeth recalls the LSP’s early days from 1978, and the decision to rebrand to LanguageLoop. She touches on the role of the Victorian State Government as shareholder.She shares the impact of the pandemic as they saw an immediate shift from on-site to remote interpreting, as well as accelerating the digital delivery of language services. Claire talks about how Covid drove the conversation around multilingual engagement.Claire also weighs in on the impact of immigration and the resulting increase in demand for rare and emerging languages, as well as multilingual consumer behaviors in Australia. The pod ends with their collective outlook, as the LSP plans to leverage tech and build deeper customer engagement with the launch of multilingual SMS campaigns.Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, with TikTok being issued a USD 0.88m fine by the Dutch Data Protection Authority. Florian shares results from the European SME survey, which gathered the opinions of over 1,000 SMEs on website localization and machine translation use. Esther talks about the recent launch of an estimated USD 47m interpreting framework agreement by Norway’s Labor and Welfare Authority (NAV).The duo share news from outside Europe as social distancing requirements in Los Angeles County end and court interpreters are recalled to on-site work.