As Interest in India Grows, New Language Industry Group Elects First President

印度魅力太大!新语言行业协会选出首任会长

2020-07-16 17:00 slator

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“Nearly all parts of India’s language market are underserved,” Sandeep Nulkar told Slator. Nulkar is the first President of India’s newly formed language industry association, CITLoB, which crossed the 50-member mark a month after it started accepting members in June 2020. Members of CITLoB (or the Confederation of Interpreting, Translation and Localisation Businesses) represent companies such as Reverie (acquired by multinational conglomerate Reliance in 2019), Mayflower (acquired by Summa Linguae in 2017), and language learning startup Multibhashi, which Nulkar said recently raised USD 10m. According to Nulkar, the demand for language services in India is primarily driven by B2B with consumer demand also being a significant contributor. This demand can only accelerate with interest coming from the likes of Google. Case in point, in its July 13, 2020 live stream of Google for India 2020, the tech giant discussed its many initiatives in tandem with the Indian government and highlighted the fact that the country’s more than 500 million active Internet users can now do a Google search and write using Voice Assistant in nine Indian languages, and that one million teachers will be able to deliver blended learning by the end of 2020 using the same tools. Google’s ultimate goal is to give the next-billion Indians access to the Internet. Nulkar believes this rapidly growing language market is underserved because, if one were to go on popular portal ProZ, for instance, a search for any language pair would yield no more than a few hundred language professionals. “A terribly low number,” he pointed out, considering the diverse demand for language services: translation, localization, interpreting, teaching, voiceovers, subtitling, content development, and so on. The CITLoB President added, “Unfortunately, there is no credible research that suggests the size of the language services market in India. But I will bet my last penny on the fact that it would be significantly higher than the most liberal of projections made by language industry research firms. If I were to guess, I would say that the market size would be nothing short of a few billion dollars.” Asked how many language service providers (LSPs) there were in the country to serve all that demand, Nulkar replied, “I would imagine there are a few hundred of them, at least.” However, freelancers dominate India’s language services ecosystem: “About 90% of the market is made up of freelance translators directly engaged by clients. A small percentage of those are employed primarily by the IT, engineering, and automobile sectors.” As for interpreting services, Nulkar singled out New Delhi as generating “a chunk of the country’s demand,” as it is the consular, administrative, and business hub. He added that tourism, especially in North India, generated significant demand for interpreters pre-Covid. Today, that demand has vanished and no one knows if in-person interpreting will ever make a comeback, he said, adding that “telephone interpreting is surely not even a known term in India.” What is known, however, is language technology. No surprise in a country that has long branded itself as the world’s leading outsourcing destination for the technology sector. According to Nulkar, AI, natural language processing (NLP), and machine learning are “at the heart of every language and language technology startup. LSPs, too, are warming up to the use of MT (machine translation) in their workflow,” and PEMT (post-edited machine translation) opportunities have increased as well. The seeds for CITLoB were planted when Nulkar spoke at an EUATC Conference in Madrid on “India as the next frontier” back in 2018. “That is when Geoffrey Bowden, whom I have known for over 20 years now, suggested that we should take the Indian association idea that we had been toying with more seriously and get something started.” It was also about the time that Indian telco Jio (or Reliance Jio, the telco arm of the same conglomerate that bought Reverie) experienced huge uptake of their mobile and Internet services. Nulkar recalled, “Little did we know that something as seemingly disconnected as the launch of a mobile telephony service would have an impact on the language industry in India. But it did — and it was, by far, the most significant impact. Now, nearly every Indian owns a mobile phone and has dirt-cheap access to the Internet.” All of a sudden, localizing into the vernacular became the thing and language services experienced an unprecedented demand because of it, Nulkar said. This, in turn, led the founders of the oldest LSPs in India — who “had always enjoyed an amazing relationship; one that was built on trust, mutual respect, and camaraderie” — to band together to form CITLoB. Aside from Nulkar, who is also Founder and Managing Director of BITS Private Limited, the founding team comprises the following: Biraj Rath, CEO of Braahman Net Solutions; M. L. Sudheen, Founder and CEO of Crystal Hues; Sunil Kulkarni, Founder and CEO of Fidel SoftTech, and Rushikesh Atre, Co-founder and CFO of Vernac Language Technologies. Nulkar also serves as Senior Member at another language industry group, FICCI-ILIA. FICCI is the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, while ILIA stands for Indian Language Internet Alliance. He said, “While CITLoB is purely a trade association, FICCI-ILIA is the voice of the entire industry and works relentlessly for policy change.” He described the relationship between the two groups as “working towards a common goal” and said that CITLoB “even put off accepting members just so there would be no clash of interest between CITLoB and FICCI-ILIA.” CITLoB has extended this collaborative spirit overseas, inking a partnership with the European Union Association of Translation Companies (EUATC) in June 2020. Nulkar said this entails supporting each other’s events, offering discounted pricing, and, given the growing interest of European LSPs in the Indian market, CITLoB helping EUATC members in all issues pertaining to the local language market. Image: Sandeep Nulkar
桑迪普·努卡尔(Sandeep Nulkar)告诉Slator:“印度语言市场几乎全都处于服务水平低下的情况。” 努卡尔是印度新成立的语言行业协会CITLoB的首任会长,该协会自2020年6月起接收会员,一个月就拥有超过50名会员。 CITLoB全称为口笔译和本地化企业联合会,代表的是Reverie公司(2019年被跨国企业集团Reliance收购),Mayflower公司(2017年被Summa Linguae收购)以及语言学习初创公司Multibhashi等。努卡尔称,Multibhashi最近融资1000万美元。 印度对语言服务的需求主要是由B2B驱动的,努卡尔说到,消费者需求也是一个重要因素。由于谷歌等公司对印度很感兴趣,这种需求将只增不减。 例如,在2020年7月13号的“Google for India 2020”直播节目中,科技巨头谷歌讨论了其与印度政府合作的许多举措,并强调印度的5亿多活跃互联网用户现在可以使用9种印度语言的语音助手在谷歌进行搜索和写作,到2020年底,100万名印度教师将能够使用同样的工具提供混合式教学。谷歌的最终目标是让其余的10亿印度人能够上网。 努卡尔认为这个快速发展的语言市场服务水平低下,因为如果你去热门的门户网站ProZ上搜索任何一种语言,检索到的语言专业人员不会超过几百人。考虑到对语言服务的多样化需求,诸如翻译、本地化、口译、教学、旁白、字幕、内容开发等,他指出:“几百人实在太少了。” CITLoB会长补充说:“可惜,还没有可信的研究给出印度语言服务市场的规模。但我敢打赌,这个市场的规模将大大超过语言产业研究公司所做的最高预测。 如果让我猜的话,我觉得不亚于几十亿美元。” 当被问及印度有多少语言服务提供商能够满足所有需求时,努卡尔回答说:“我想至少有几百家。” 然而,自由职业者在印度的语言服务生态系统中占据主导地位,“大约90%的市场是由直接受聘于客户的自由翻译人员所构成。其中小部分主要受雇于IT(互联网技术),工程和汽车行业。” 至于口译服务,努卡尔特别提到新德里,因为新德里是领事、行政和商业中心,它产生了“全国大部分的需求”。 他还说,旅游业,尤其是北印度的旅游业,在新冠疫情之前对口译员的需求量特别大。 如今,这种需求已经消失,没有人知道现场口译是否会再次兴旺,他说,“电话口译在印度肯定还是一个陌生的词汇。” 人们不陌生的是语言技术。 对于一个长期以来将自己标榜为全球领先的科技业外包目的地的国家来说,这并不令人感到意外。据努卡尔所说,人工智能、自然语言处理(NLP)和机器学习是“每一个语言技术初创公司的核心。 服务提供商也开始在工作流程中使用机器翻译(MT,machine translation),PEMT(post-edited machine translation——译后编辑的服务也增加了。 早在2018年,努卡尔在马德里举行的一次关于“印度是下一个前沿”的EUATC会议上发表讲话时,创立CITLoB的种子就种下了。 “就在那时,我认识了20多年的杰弗里·鲍登(Geoffrey Bowden)建议我们应该更认真地对待要创立印度协会的想法,并着手去做。” 也正是在这个时候,印度电信运营商Jio(或Reliance Jio——收购了Reverie的企业集团旗下的电信部门)的移动和互联网服务获得了巨大的市场份额。 努卡尔回忆说:“我们当时根本不知道推出移动电话服务这样看似脱节的事情会对印度的语言行业产生影响,但它确实产生了影响,而且是迄今为止最重要的影响。 现在,几乎所有的印度人都有手机,上网也非常便宜。” 努拉尔说,突然之间有了本地化,语言服务的需求量也因此变得前所未有的大。这反过来导致印度历史最悠久的服务供应商的创始人们联合起来成立CITLoB。这些创始人“一直享受着一种令人赞叹的关系;一种建立在信任,相互尊重和友爱的基础上的关系。” 努卡尔也是BITS私人有限公司的创始人和常务董事。除了努卡尔之外,CITLoB的创始人还包括以下人员: 比拉杰·拉斯(Biraj Rath)——Braahman网络解决方案公司的首席执行官(CEO); Crystal Hues的创始人兼CEO——沙得恒(M. L. Sudheen);Fidel软件技术公司的创始人兼CEO苏尼尔·库尔卡尼(Sunil Kulkarni)和Vernac语言技术公司的联合创始人兼首席财务官(CFO)拉什凯什·阿特雷(Rushikesh Atre)。 努卡尔也是另一个语言行业组织FICCI-ILIA的高级成员。FICCI是印度工商会联合会(Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry)的缩写,而ILIA代表印度语互联网联盟(Indian Language Internet Alliance)。 他说,“CITLoB纯粹是一个行业协会,而FICCI-ILIA则为整个行业发声,并为政策调整不断努力。” 他将两个组织之间的关系描述为“朝着一个共同目标努力”,并表示CITLoB“甚至推迟接收成员,只为了避免和FICCI-ILIA发生利益冲突。” CITLoB将这种合作精神推广到海外,并于2020年6月与欧盟翻译公司协会(EUATC)建立了合作伙伴关系。 努卡尔说,双方需要互相支持对方的活动,提供优惠价格,并且,考虑到欧洲服务提供商对印度市场越来越感兴趣,CITLoB将在所有与当地语言市场有关的问题上帮助EUATC的成员。 图片:桑迪普·努卡尔(Sandeep Nulkar)

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