"The Hill We Climb", the future of the localization industry, and why VRI is an essential tool

Information remains a powerful weapon, even more, in the circumstances around the world these days.

AP | Portugal Tech Language Solutions' content curation not only aims to disseminate knowledge, by embracing this important role, we also take the selection of the best and most valid content in multiple areas very seriously.

First up, "The Hill We Climb"

Not long after reading her poem "The Hill We Climb" at Joe Biden's inauguration on Wednesday, January 20, 2021, 22-year-old Amanda Gorman became a bestseller ... and her books aren't even out yet.

Following the swearing-in ceremony, three upcoming books by Gorman —  "The Hill We Climb: Poems" and "Change Sings: A Children's Anthem," both scheduled for September, and a special hardcover version of "The Hill We Climb" slated for April — shot to the top of Amazon's bestseller list, claiming the top three slots.

Gorman, the national youth poet laureate, is the youngest poet in memory to read at an inaugural ceremony.

Last week, she delivered her poem — which touched on themes of unity and hope — to commemorate the president and Vice President Kamala Harris taking their oaths of office.

"We've braved the belly of the beast," she read. "We've learned that quiet isn't always peace, and the norms and notions of what just is, isn't always justice. And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it, somehow we do it. Somehow we've weathered and witnessed a nation that isn't broken, but simply unfinished."

How much translation, localization volumes go into Call of Duty?

The game localization market has outperformed most other language industry segments since the start of the pandemic. With people confined indoors, “many publishers and developers are making more money than they were before Covid.”

One such beneficiary of the Covid effect is the shooter game Call of Duty (CoD). Within 24 hours of the release of CoD Warzone back in March 2020 as the world was starting to shut down, the game posted six million downloads, a record for the franchise. By August 2020, Warzone downloads had ballooned to 75 million. 

Call of Duty supports English, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Polish, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and Korean. Aside from audio, other parts of the game such as menus and subtitles also require translation/localization.

In the debut episode of The Audiophile Gamer Podcast in December, David Natale, Dialogue Lead at Infinity Ward said: “For dialogue, it’s over a hundred thousand files - and that’s just one language. And then we have 10 languages that we localize into. So we get into about a million dialogue files.”

The future of the localization industry

What is the future of the localization industry? To understand where we’re headed, it is helpful to consider how we got here. Success was measured by how “good” the translation was, as defined by its linguistic quality and technical compliance. Localization was totally divorced from business outcomes. It was like the old medical joke, “the operation was successful, but the patient died.”

Language service providers (LSPs) were treated as an extension of internal localization departments — a factory where the content was “processed.” Many business functions that are now critical started this way. For example, the early days of digital marketing were quite similar. Relegated to the sidelines, digital marketing teams were separate from the main marketing department. These “non-critical” functions tended to be underfunded and understaffed. They were not viewed as core or strategic to the business. Time, of course, proved the old-line marketers were wrong.

VRI is an essential tool in modern healthcare

Effective communication is a cornerstone of quality healthcare. When providers encounter patients who do not speak English or with limited English proficiency (LEP), a qualified medical interpreter must be used to ensure effective communication is taking place. In recent years, acute care organizations in the U.S. have seen a significant increase in LEP encounters as well as a rise in the number of languages requested. 

The historic method of staffing onsite interpreters for top languages is no longer sufficient to ensure meaningful access for all patients. To ensure access to language services at all hours of operation for a multitude of language requests, acute care providers are turning to video remote interpretation (VRI), an on-demand service that connects providers to a large pool of qualified interpreters in a wide variety of language pairs. 

Make Wordbee an even more powerful tool

Wordbee’s new CEO, Andre Hemker,  is described as a big-picture thinker. Towards the end of 2020,Wordbee’s blog sit down with him to take stock of the situation within the translation industry. 

“We at Wordbee are going to focus on is enabling really holistic workflows with direct integration of our TMS in many different applications. For example, integration with a game engine or Adobe InDesign. This way, we are going to make Wordbee an even more powerful tool to be used not just for translation or localization, but for every single step of content creation”. Read the full article.

Last but not the least

An article recommended by Mário Júnior, CEO of AP | PORTUGAL Tech Language Solutions: "Our team of experts from the Revenue Enablement Institute studies show leading organizations are transforming their commercial models to accelerate revenue growth. We profile growth leaders – CXOs - who are at the forefront of defining, enabling and leading the execution of the 21st Century Commercial Model. Jaime Punishill, the CMO of Lionbridge, has been at the forefront of digital transformation his entire career." Read full article

ABOUT US

AP | PORTUGAL Tech Language Solutions is a Portuguese translation company certified by the ISO 17100 International Quality Standard. The company offers a wide range of language services, which include translation (TEP), post-editing machine translation (PEMT), transcription, desktop publishing and subtitling, voice talent, software, and website localization technology, SEO, and consulting. It invests enthusiastically in the development of partnerships and cooperation anywhere in the world where your organization may need a partner for the African, Brazilian, and European Portuguese language.