M+E Daily

LinQ Media Group: Localisation With Heart

What happens when a trio of localisation industry veterans band together and go out on their own? You get Stockholm, Sweden-based LinQ Media Group, a new venture launched in March of this year, with the goal of making localisation services more customised.

Sophia Klippvik, marketing manager for LinQ Media Group, spoke with MESA about the company’s origins, why smaller can be better in the localisation space, and what, exactly LinQ means by “human-enhanced machine translation.”

MESA: How did LinQ Media Group first come about, what was the impetus for the company?

Klippvik: LinQ Media Group came on the scene after our founders Björn Lifvergren, Lennart Löf, and Henrik Wikren, all former senior executives at BTI Studios, felt that they were not finished making a mark in the localisation industry. They also noticed a monopoly situation occurring from the latest round of consolidation and saw that as an opportunity to re-enter the market. With an appetite to fill the gap created in the marketplace and build something new and on their own terms, they established LinQ Media Group.

MESA: It’s a crowded market in the world of M&E localisation. What does LinQ Media Group do differently than its subtitling and dubbing competitors, what makes you stand out?

Klippvik: It’s true that M&E localisation is a crowded market, but it’s crowded with companies that have grown to a size that doesn’t enable a close relationship or one point-of-contact type of service. We intend to become a more boutique-style service and will work closely with clients on a local basis and apply the same business structure and principles when we expand internationally. We offer a customised service, superior technology and frankly, openness about how we do things. If you want machine translation, we will give it to you, but it’s the levels of human Interaction that are the key – we call it human-enhanced machine translation.

We are also focusing on employee and client value, as they go hand-in-hand. When you treat your employees well, they will take good care of your clients and help your business grow.

MESA: There’s been a greater emphasis on accessibility services in media and entertainment of late. How has LinQ Media Group approached this area of service?

Klippvik: We are very delighted to see the emphasis on accessibility growing in the media and entertainment industry. We understand that offering more accessibility equates to more inclusivity in not only our industry, but the world.

In today’s information society, no one should be excluded. That is why, we create a seamless process to make it easy and cost-effective for companies to localise their content to any language of their choosing so that everyone, no matter their language background and/or disabilities have access and feel included.

At the moment, we offer the accessibility services — closed captioning and SDH-subtitling. Our experienced team of subtitlers has the unparalleled talent to make your content accessible to everyone, especially those who are hard-of-hearing and/or sight impaired, so that no part of the message being translated is lost or misunderstood.

MESA: How has the pandemic changed how LinQ Media Group does business and the needs of clients, and what changes do you see sticking around permanently post-pandemic?

Klippvik: We have seen changes in how teams work together with the use of remote collaboration tools like video conferencing platforms and other file synchronisation services. However, there’s a limit on how many webinars and video meetings you can squeeze in during a week. The value of human interaction should never be underestimated.

Work-from-home (WFH) isn’t going anywhere — the pandemic has allowed us to improve the WFH environment, creating more opportunities to connect with remote talent across the world.

MESA: What’s next for LinQ, what advances and offerings for the content protection space can we expect from you next?

Klippvik: Machine translation is here to stay, that’s just a fact. Within the next five years, more than 75% of all translation work will be post-editing. The good thing is that you don’t have to invest in expensive, proprietary systems. If you are active only in a few language sets, you train your dedicated engines on those combinations.