Janus Worldwide at LocWorld37: Digital Marketing Services, Artificial Intelligence, and the Digital Future

Janus Worldwide participated in the 37th Localization World Conference held on June 6–8, 2018, in Warsaw, with a new booth and a presentation on a current topic in the LSP section as part of the conference’s main program.

Janus Worldwide has a long history of participating in LocWorld, a leading conference in the translation and localization industry. This year, all of the LocWorld conferences were held under the motto “Digital Transformation,” reflecting the new reality of a modern world that impacts global business with technologies such as the Internet of Things, blockchain, artificial intelligence, big data, and so on. The challenges these phenomena represent for the translation and localization industry and how the industry can turn them to its advantage were among the issues discussed at this year’s conference.

Janus Worldwide Technical Director Dmitrii Ulanov delivered a presentation entitled “AI-Augmented Project Management” on the use of artificial intelligence in project management in the MicroTalks subsection of the LSP section devoted to effective LSP management and increased profitability. Project management permits many stages of the translation process to be automated, especially those that do not require decisions, or those where decisions can be made based on statistical analysis. In these cases, even a primitive artificial intelligence could be used. On its own, advanced AI appears to be magical when operating independently or providing assistance to a project manager. In his presentation, Dmitrii provided facts on the use of AI to automate project management, and shared his thoughts about the future of this technology. Audience members were made aware of specific automation scenarios that can save both time and money.

“As always, the conference attracted a wide array of industry professionals, both translation companies and IT solutions providers, as well as buyers of translation services. IT system integration and work process automation received the most attention.

However, when automation was being discussed, most of the time only machine translation was meant by the term, though a few speakers touched on other areas. For example, determining the text-type, selecting the best translator for a specific document, making statistics-driven decisions, etc., all of this we may actively automate. Moreover, if previously automation algorithms were rather simple, now machine learning technologies such as convolutional neural networks are being used full-scale.

A company must have sufficient technical resources to make use of such technologies. This means it’s likely the gap between technology adopters and those using older methods will only widen,” Dmitrii commented.

The company also had its own booth which was designed to match the conference’s motto this year. Janus Worldwide experts talked to visitors about the wide array of digital marketing services the company provides to its clients, such as transcreation, copywriting, design services, complex email marketing solutions, and video content development, among others.

Steve Higgins, Sales Director at Janus Worldwide spend two days speaking with both existing and prospective clients and partners at the event.  There seemed particular interest in the digital marketing services and technology solutions that Janus have developed, offering services that are a little different to the norm is certainly a way to engage in conversation.  Whilst number of participants seemed lower than in previous years, we have had some positive meetings and consider the event as a success.