Adam Torres and Alex Leschinsky discuss interpreting.
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Show Notes:
In this episode, Adam Torres and Alex Leschinsky, Founder and CEO at Effectiff, explore the translation and interpretation market.
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About effectiff
They specialize in over-the-phone (OPI), video remote (VRI) and onsite interpreting for organizations of any size and industry: healthcare, education, municipal and local government, legal, etc. They are also one of the leading language service provider to offer document translation services including machine translation (MT) and localization.
They endeavor to find the best talents and do not employ all-purpose translators and interpreters. For example, all their medical interpreters are HiPAA compliant, their translators are carefully selected in accordance with their specialization and all have over 10-year working experience to draw on.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres and I am proud to say I am in Santa Monica, California, and I am at the AI Vibes event hosted by Tal Navarro and her team. And I am having a ball. I’ve learned so much, so many panels, so many speakers. It’s been a great time.
And I was able to snag Alex Lesinski on the line and and snag him out of the conference and have him on here. I was told that, Hey, he needs to be on the show. So Alex, first off. Welcome to the show. Thank you, Adam. Thank you for having me here. All right. So AI vibes Santa Monica, how are you feeling?
Feeling great. I like the weather. I like the wipe, especially it’s a AI wipe, right? Yeah, I’m in, I’m in for the vibe. For sure. The vibes have been good. So what have been some of your favorite things out of here? Whether it’s panels, speakers things you learn, but what do you like the audience? Yeah. I like the people who is attending this cool event.
I like organizers speakers, panelists. I like you. I like to be here. Very kind. So, so what brought you to the event in the first place? Like why, why’d you come up for it? Yeah. Yeah. So. First of all, the content, of course, right? And the LA is a good place to be, right? So I, I drove like a six hours yesterday from San Francisco to be here to see how AI is changing the Southern California and the world.
So your company Effective, like, like, tell me a little bit more about that. So I’m in a language and AI for 18 years already. Wow. So before, so before it was like the everything’s AI, you were already working on it. Okay. Okay. So we, like everybody. For 18 years already, you know, asking me like you guys do a translations interpretations, you have a lot of interpreters, translators, they do this translation jobs and you guys going to be replaced soon.
People you know, was asking me this question for 18 years already before AI, you know, before, you know, Neural and language models. It’s used to be statistical rule based model models, then neural machine translation and people for 18 years, you know, asking me the same question. And especially now, you know, after GPT, after language, large language models, and this improvement, huge improvement in AI and in machine translation.
They’re like guys, you’re going to be replaced soon. But we, we are growing year after year and we use humans still talented you know, linguists and engineers who build AI in in our organization. So we use AI and we use humans and we use human in loops. So we build in different language solutions for government, for enterprise.
So you’ve been in the space longer than many people have been thinking about it. So let’s just say it that way. So that being said, or for the mass, the mass populations, right? I don’t want any emails like, Oh, I’ve been working on it. Okay. You’ve been working on a great 18 years is a long time. I haven’t been talking about AI for 18 years.
So anyway so that wasn’t the day. So, so what is, you have a unique vantage point. Cause you’ve been the guy, whether you want it to be or not. And people are bugging you about the topic for a long time. Like what excites you right now? Like what is like impressive to you? It could be technology software.
It could be anything like what impresses you, right? Yeah. So the technology is developing much faster than 10 years ago. Right. And 15 years ago. Right. And so what I’m. I’m excited about this visual models, right? Visually. I and different models like, like, like Sora. Yeah. Example. I mean, I don’t know.
How does it work? It’s different, isn’t it? It’s amazing. It’s I know we’re for many of these things. We’re still in the like shiny toy phase. I get it. But man, we love our toys and they’re so shiny. Yeah, I. The self driving cars, right? We have a bunch of them in San Francisco and yeah, I love it. So I’m like, I’m more focusing on one part of AI, which is NLP, natural language processing.
I know a little bit about it, but you know. Other parts you know, I’m so excited to see, you know, fast is growing. So how do you think it’s gonna affect your industry long term? Like obviously we’re still humans. Humans we’re still up pair. I’m not saying is it gonna replace, so when I ask that question, I don’t mean it, like, just basic, is it gonna replace, I mean like, just how do you think overall you know, it’s gonna affect your industry, like, or improvements or otherwise?
So I think that, that crystal ball, come on, right, right. I think that a lot of jobs and translate, you know, translation jobs, interpretation jobs will change. A lot, but we’ll still, we will need more and more humans, but they’re going to do different things that they did before. Like we have, we, we see that amount of content is growing, you know, like so, and the content, you know, became more personal.
Right. And not only on your language, but for, you know, many languages, many, and that the brands, government you know, enterprise businesses would like to send you messages and communicate with you on your language, you know, and they would like to provide you different content and this amount of content is growing and this content, not equally valuable.
Yeah. So there is a part of content we could use machine translation or AI to translate. And there is a part content we need humans, right? Like, like healthcare or courts or marketing or and we still need a humans cannot replace them. Well, and, and when I’ve looked at, well, I’ll say in some ways we can.
So some fields I would argue in years, and this is my opinion. I have no. Yeah. Professional background in your field, by the way. But when I look at industries like yours, I always think about like the market’s going to get bigger, like the market’s going to, so even some of those same, and I’m going to pull, I’m pulling rabbits out of a hat when I give any numbers, but say there was 10 translators doing X amount.
100 projects. Now they’re still going to need those 10 translators. It might be something different, but now they may be using AI and they’re doing 500 projects or something. And now the scope of what a client expects is they expect more probably at a lower dollar amount to like the agency model. If you think about like social media or otherwise, like once upon a time, the amount you would charge for.
One post per week was, was a fair amount. And, but now if the client, whether you think your creative is one way or another, if the client wants one per day and they’re willing to, you know, they want, they’re okay with some AI and they’re okay with some other things so that they can get it within their, you know, their cost parameters.
At the end of the day, you can give them your professional opinion. Sometimes it’s going to be good. Sometimes it’s not going to be, but either way, it’s what the client wants. Like, what are you gonna do? Exactly. You’re going do say no. Yeah. And then they go to another agency. So all, any, any service.
Right. We have to think about the end result, like how we’re providing value. Right. Right. Yeah. Adam? Yeah. I know you have a financial background. Mm-Hmm? . You’re good with the numbers and you could count, calculate. Did you My 10 to a hundred? Yeah. I’m so fan, so fancy with that one. Alex . Yeah. So you could count and you could, but I could say 10 to a hundred.
I could count . You’re right. You’re like, that’s awesome. Before that, I don’t know, like a 10 years ago the amount of content which was translated was like zillion words a year. Now it’s a 10 or a hundred zillions. And right. Some of them, then my guess is like, it’s right. Like you’re, you’re affirming that my guess is That the, cause I didn’t know, I just, that was just an assumption based off our conversation.
I’m like, so it’s getting that big. Wow. So, and we have a huge demand on linguists even now, you know, more and more. Translation done by by machines. So there’s more opportunity, but we still have a huge demand, like post editor, you know, proofreader who gonna check, who gonna you know, prepare the data, data sets, yeah.
You know, parallel corpuses for machine translation to train. So now this, all this linguist, they work in, you know, in different spheres, they do different things. Yeah. And I find, I find, and I’m not speaking for your, your industry, cause I don’t know this, but just in general, a lot of the, the rote work in many industries, it’s kind of like taken away.
Like I think about like industrial revolution before, you know, robotic, like, you know, production lines on a, on a car assembly line or otherwise, like, you know, it, it, it changed. Things changed. But the other individuals that would have maybe historically done that particular job, putting that bolt on for 30 years, not saying, not, not saying that the people that did that was anything wrong with them.
I mean, that built this country and many other countries like that. Yeah, that’s what was needed at that time. But now that person gets to maybe express more of themselves in their life and it, and going to work doesn’t necessarily have to just be a trade off of your life and existence, because you want to provide for your family.
So now the level of complexity for whether it’s your industry and it’s a linguist or it’s somebody that loves language, and now they get to explore and explore the, or they may have had something that was more wrote in the beginning or whatever level they were at, whatever, but now they get to do more.
It’s like more, you get to provide more value to the client. So it can be the circle of wins really just wins. Right. And you mentioned the industrial revolution and I think, yeah, now we are going through AI revolution. You know, some jobs will be replaced, but we are much more flexible than, you know, a hundred years ago.
For sure. We learning with. Even on our expectations as employers now, like, you know, X amount of years ago, you could work for one employer and you were with that employer for 30 years. But now it’s like, if somebody says they have another job or another side thing, well, as long as you’re working and getting your work done for the amount of hours you’re, you’re being paid for here.
Great. That’s wonderful. Yeah. And that never happened before. That’s different. That’s different for the workplace to get hired for a serious job. And you’re doing something else at the same time. I believe that in the future, you will not have a one employer, you will have a bunch of different projects you can choose from for freelancers.
Right. And I think most of the jobs want to look like, like, like this in the future, you know, you’re going to be more independent, you pick what you want, you’re done, you finish. And actually, you know, that’s a good conversation because I, I work with thousands of freelancers for some of them, for big number of them.
I’ve worked for 15 years. Wow. Wow. That’s significant. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, that allowed it, that allowed that way. Doesn’t stay with me for so long. Yep. But you know, freelancers, we think that, you know, they are not dedicated. They, I don’t agree with that. But They stay for so, so, so many years if they like it, you know, like if you’re providing the right, the right value proposition between the person writing the check and the person cashing it and the quality of work and expectations, like it’s, it’s interesting.
Like, like I remember New York cab drivers you know, 10 years ago, I paid 150 bucks to get to the airport. And he was yelling at me because I was like one minute late and and, but now they’re so nice when I’m calling Uber, they’re so nice. They want to, you know, give you a water charger because because And they’re freelancers, right?
Because they need good rating. Yeah. They need a tip and so on. So this technology change everything and they’re all freelancers. And I work with freelancers for many, many years. Yeah. They, the job is changing right now, but. Still, I love to work with independent contractors, with freelancers here in the U.
S. and many different countries. Amazing. Alex, I just have to say, So much fun having you on the show. I love it. I learned a lot. Like my, my aim and my goal is to bring great content for my audience and you delivered today. I learned more about what’s going on in linguistics and also in AI related to that industry.
I want you to look at the camera, tell everyone how they can learn more about Effective and how they can follow you and your company. Yeah. So my name is Alex Leshinsky and I’m a founder CEO at Effective. It’s E F F E C T I F F you can find us on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, everywhere. So please follow and join us, our team.
If you’re looking for a job. Amazing. Speaking of that speaking of join, I don’t got anything for you to join, but you can hit that subscribe button. This is a daily show, you know, it’s coming long term listeners, you know, I always end with that. So if you haven’t hit that subscribe button yet, this is a daily show each and every day, we’re bringing you new guests, new thought leaders, new inspiration, new stories, new knowledge.
If that sounds interesting again, hit that subscribe button, Alex. Subscribe again. Thank you so much for coming on. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you, Adam