M+E Europe

OOONA recently attended the Content Workflow Management Forum held March 22 at the Cavendish Conference Centre in London. Organized by MESA, CWMF is the organization’s premier media localization event. The previous in-person event took place in February 2020, right before the COVID-19 pandemic made global news.

After an online edition in 2021, this year’s event celebrated some return to normality. Set up in a hybrid manner, it was supported in person and online by speakers and delegates from many countries.

“The forum proved a useful opportunity to meet in person with existing and potential customers,” said Ooona co-founder and CEO Wayne Garb. “We were impressed to see so many localization specialists attending, including existing and potential customers. The event was very professionally managed and included great presentations on the current state of the media localization business plus the latest operational and technical developments.”

A reoccurring theme of the conference was the localization sector’s dependence on a finite number of experienced specialists. This was addressed in depth by panelists Mazin Al-Jumaili (ZOO Digital), Max Deryagin (AVTE & Subtle) and Jorge Diaz-Cintas (University College London), moderated by Yota Georgakopoulou (Athena Consultancy).

“The amount of broadcast, film and online content requiring localization continues to grow steeply, and the demand for talent is now more acute than ever,” Yota Georgakopoulou said. “We discussed the current situation from different stakeholder perspectives. The market is flooded with work, experienced talent is in high demand, rates are going up, translators are burning out. At the same time new training initiatives are being launched by the industry as well as academia, and the search for new talent continues with respect to all roles in the media localization market, from freelance to in-house positions.”

“We also detailed collaborative industry initiatives, such as the AVT Pro Certification program which has just been launched”, Georgakopoulou said. “AVT Pro certification is the brainchild of a group of localization experts at The Poool advisory board,” explains Prof. Jorge Diaz-Cintas, who has been tasked, along with Dr. Serenella Massidda, with designing the certification and launching it in the first few language pairs.

The program is run by eight supporting organizations, each of whom has a seat at The Poool’s steering committee. “The industry is changing rapidly and we need to react to these changes – we can achieve so much more by working together,” said Mazin Al-Jumaili, VP of Talent Management and Business Development at ZOO Digital.

“We are very proud to be one of the sponsoring organizations in this program and the tailwind behind it,” added Wayne Garb, Ooona co-founder and CEO.

In the parallel exhibition, Ooona promoted the latest additions to its Ooona Integrated media localization platform including the OOONA Mobile App.

New features include an expanded user interface now available in 12 languages, support for Japanese timed text editing, plus API integrations to management systems and language technology platforms from select partners.

Ooona will next travel to the NAB Show in Las Vegas, April 23-27l. Booth C3122!