Netflix hit the nail on the head with Money Heist. TV series produced originally in Spain now celebrates success around the world thanks to localization. What are the other streaming giants like HBO, Amazon and Viacom doing about it and why is everyone moving to Spain? Listen NOW at 16:15.
More topics:
- How Spotify localized content for the Indian market
- LSP lengoo raises EUR 6M to compete with Lilt and Unbabel
This is episode #11 of my speaking practice, also known as the Localization Podcast 🙂 #localization and #translation news across social media delivered to you by the power of my voice.
Timestamps:
16:15 – Netflix started streaming wars in Spain
25:21 – Spotify in India
30:12 – Lengoo – the future of translation?
Andrej Zito
I’m so nervous. I’m so nervous. Hi, everyone. This is Andre. And this is Episode 11 of the localization podcast. Once again, I have to confess and admit that just like every other time, I always have issues. I have a lot of fear. And I think I like subconscious to try to delay pressing the record button because I always feel them like underprepared. Especially this time, like I had absolutely no idea like what I’m going to talk about. I did my usual routine. And by that I mean, I went through the Slater articles, I went through Twitter, I checked LinkedIn, and I only selected very few articles, I think they were four. But for most of them, I have actually no idea what kind of value I can add on top of them. And so I was delaying this, I also moved to a new place.
Andrej Zito
And I still try to enjoy my last two weeks in Manila, so I’m always kind of like, my mind is wasting a lot of energy, making the making the decision whether I should focus on the content creation, or whether I should just go out and try to enjoy my life, because like, once I go back to Vancouver, I will probably be 100% focused on just working and doing things. So I feel like I’m wasting my last opportunity to enjoy my only vacation this year. And because of all this in decisiveness, I feel like I’m paralyzed most of the time. And actually, I have realized that also recently is that I think I heard this on a podcast with Tim Ferriss. And many of the high performing business man and entrepreneurs that he interviewed actually said that they’re trying to eliminate the decision making that they have to make during the day,
Andrej Zito
For example, like Mark Zuckerberg, I think that he only has like, I don’t know, black t shirts, or black pants or something like that. And I actually found that found out recently about myself that like even like ordering food, or like picking like a place where to go, like I spent a lot of time just trying to think about it and make the best the best decision kind of like, and as a result, I think I like waste a lot of time in my life. And the same goes for the podcast and even for the content creation. Like I always like try to like, for example, like when I was doing my last video, which I finally released. And that’s the review of the book The Power of Now and my experience with landmark forum. I think it took me almost like two weeks to to get it done. So I was working on like the script before that I had like some idea of how I want to structure the video.
Andrej Zito
But then, like getting to it like getting the like starting the recording for the first time. That’s like a lot of a lot of resistance, I think like internal resistance from from my my own self. And it’s the same thing with the podcast. Like every time I really struggle with it. I don’t know why. And it’s really just like about overcoming the initial fear. Like right now I have still no idea what I’m going to talk about. But as soon as I start recording and soon as I start talking, I feel like everything is much easier and things just unfold the way they should. So a couple of more things that I wanted to mention before we get into the articles. So I already mentioned the video that I posted. So that was my second kind of like educational video. Most of my YouTube YouTube content recently has been just localization podcast.
Andrej Zito
So shame on me because I I was primarily focusing on the podcast and I really wanted to do it on a weekly basis you know, to keep some regular schedule. But then I wanted to also squeeze in some extra videos because the first video that I ever did, like the educational content, which was how you struggle. And that is so far, like, significantly the best performing video that I ever posted on YouTube, it gets like a lot of hits pretty much constantly through YouTube search. So I’m very happy about it. So I think that I should be putting more effort into the content other than the localization podcast. But then on the other hand, I also reach out to many people on LinkedIn where I words like the main platform where I tried to promote the localization podcast. And the response so far has been pretty good actually find out that people are actually listening and finding the podcast.
Andrej Zito
So it’s definitely something that I still want to keep doing. And I was just recently thinking that I haven’t done a lot. During the last two weeks, were officially on vacation. So by the way, I’m back to working. So I have to get up at 5am these days and start working for global me. And then hopefully, I still have energy to do some content. So now it’s 4pm, here in Manila, and I’m doing this recording. And, yeah, so what I wanted to say is that, like, I have, like so many ideas, but I feel like, and this is something that’s also probably related to work. Like, I don’t feel like it’s even possible for me to keep up with the ideas that I generate, and turn them into something practical. So I’m actually thinking that maybe I should, because like, the response so far is, is pretty good. Like when it comes from the podcasts, or even the videos.
Andrej Zito
So I was thinking that maybe I should start to pour in some more money into it. Because it’s definitely something that I want to do in the future, I really think it’s a, it’s a good opportunity for me, within the industry. So I’m thinking that maybe I should try to find some first help for this side project of mine. Probably someone who could edit both audio and video for me, even though I really like it even more, well, my computer is really shitting. So editing some of the videos that are long and that have a lot of edits. My Adobe Premiere keeps constantly crashing. So that’s not very helpful. And I think that’s another thing that I realized that I think I’m like, pretty good at improving things the way they are. Maybe I’m not as good at starting from scratch. But maybe I’m better at commenting and making things better.
Andrej Zito
So maybe it would be easier for me and faster and more efficient. If I just do the roll recording, like I’m doing right now and then submit the material to the editor, then maybe they make first draft and then I just revise it and then then we continue with the iterations until I until I’m ready to publish it. Because the current model is not very scalable if I do everything on my own. So So yeah, those are those are my thoughts about the future of my content creation. And another thing that I wanted to mention to where are we almost 10 minutes, okay, so try to keep it short, but I mean, whatever. So what I wanted to mention is that we are going to I think with this episode when I release Episode 11, we should probably hit 100 total place of the podcast. So I’m really happy that it keeps getting constant traction constant place.
Andrej Zito
And I think like the number of audience is slowly growing. But another thing is that I still do want to keep I mean, I still want to have someone come to the podcast as a guest and I think it will be much easier for me to work in that format and it Probably even more entertaining for people. And hopefully it will be even more practical because I had a thing that I recently realized is and this was actually based on feedback that I got on LinkedIn when I was promoting one of the episodes. And that person, I think he was like a translator, I think, Mario, I forgot his name, I think it was Mario. And he mentioned that something about like practicality. And that’s like, a really good point is that I do generate a lot of ideas and thoughts during this podcast when I’m like reading, like the ladies news from our industry.
Andrej Zito
But what I would ideally like to do is, I would actually like to kind of like, demonstrate like how the ideas would be executed on real projects. Because I don’t want to be just like, like a guy who like comes up with a theory because like, I think most of my life like I was executioner. And I definitely do value the practical experience or someone who just like reads books and talks a lot. Okay, so those were a couple of announcements. Is there anything else that I wanted to do? Or say, the usual thing for those of you who are new? Well, if you’re new, and if you get to this point, then congratulations. I’m just warning. This is my solo podcast. So I just talk to myself, I practice speaking without a lot of preparation. And I try to cover the most interesting articles and posts from slider and across social media in the last week.
Andrej Zito
So with that being said, I think there’s one last thing that I wanted to mention. So the last episode number 10, that was kind of like the, you know, a nice round number episode. I think it was the worst episodes that I ever did, especially considering how much time I had to spend on editing. So in order when I first started with the podcast, I really tried to minimize the amount of edits. And the last episode, like took me a lot of a lot of time to edit because I got stuck with my thoughts. And I kept going back and forth, especially when it comes to the first topic. And then I was repeating myself. And I don’t know. And I know that when I started, I was like more. I was more in the mode of like, not giving a fuck.
Andrej Zito
Like if it’s perfect or not, I just tried to like remove like long delays. I tried to keep talking. So I think that’s what I’m going to do for this episode as well. Because again, I’m trying to, well, it’s already Tuesday, and I shouldn’t be releasing it today, which definitely won’t happen. So hopefully, I’ll release it on Wednesday. And yeah, how did I even got here talking about this thing? Yeah, yeah. Okay. So if there are like a lot of weird pauses, I have warned you, this one will be very this one will have very little amount of edits, even for the video. So, and the final final disclaimer, because I mentioned in the beginning that like, I don’t know, like what I’ll be saying, for these articles that I picked, so maybe let’s try to do a new thing. And that is that actually, I’ll try to put on my smoothing voice.
Andrej Zito
And I’ll just try to read the articles and if something comes up in my mind that I could contribute with. I’ll say it and if not, then I just read the article. Okay, so, here we go. Finally, homelessness 20 minutes in. That was probably one good intro. Okay, article number one. This is from Hollywood reporter.com how Spain became a case study for the global streaming wars. Netflix may have been the first to correct the key European market with locally produced hit money heist, but a streamer is now facing heated competition from the likes of Amazon HBO, Viacom and local player movie star, which are all vying for Spanish talent and content. When Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Saran dose to the stage at the world premiere of the third season of the streamers international hit money heist.
Andrej Zito
In July, he was met with loud cheers and applause from the packed house at Madrid’s downtown Hello cinema. Outside fans had amassed in front of the theater well Usher’s don’t Ingrid jumpsuits and Salvador Dali masks, as used by an automobile in the series managed to foot traffic. It’s a great honor to be with you tonight for the world premiere of La Casa de pop Hill. Saranda set, pronouncing the Spanish title with an American accent to the light of the audience. This show is extraordinary. It is from Spain, but the youth all over the world from Istanbul to Paris from Rio to Los Angeles, Los Angeles. fans love this show. They cannot wait. They cannot get enough of this infamous band and they are clamoring for their return. It’s true. Money heist has been one of Netflix biggest international success stories and its most watched non English language series ever.
Andrej Zito
It won an International Emmy and the third season was seen by more than 34 million households in the first seven days. It lead actors are now internationally recognized. So it was noteworthy when Amazon originals recently unveiled details of its first real slate of originals out of Spain, including the casting of Netflix’s money heist, and elite co starred Jamie Lorenza as delete in its new series l seed made with zebra products Jonas and built as one of Amazon’s most ambitious series in Europe, as well as in 1947 mystery series in production with bamboo pureness, known globally for its high end period dramas for Netflix, like cable car or cable girls and high seas. Amazon is banking on Lauren Tez now global appeal is also capitalizing on bamboos proven track record with mystery dramas and zebras experience with historical productions.
Andrej Zito
Notes conception cast saharsa, Senior Lecturer in media studies at Madras Carlos, the third University and a regular television companies in paid newspaper. Well, I’m so bad at this. The platforms aren’t ordering new things. They’re ordering productions that Spanish companies have experienced in and with good production values considering how cheap they are. She says calling the Spanish production sector a well oiled machine. Indeed, many of the companies and people working with Netflix in Spain also work with its competitors. In this relatively small territory. platforms are going head to head for projects and talent. Spain is an attractive market for multiple reasons, says Peter welter Soler partner in production services outfit fresco film and line producer in Spain on ACB. He owes Game of Thrones and ethics is warrior none among otters.
Andrej Zito
He cites relatively low prices and salaries for local productions tax incentives with a payback cap that favors TV series more than feature films, wide variety of geographic locations in a concentrated space. And infrastructure that comes with a long tradition of training very highly qualified, international standard cruise aspect is driving the streamers to Spain as the world of weights and the new landscape of streaming to come in the year ahead. With the introduction of competitive platforms from Disney, HBO, Apple and NBC Universal, and in light of the EU EU directive requiring streamers to carry at least 30% of content from the region. Spain can be seen as a case study for how they’re likely to compete. For generations, one country and one culture has been exported around the world.
Andrej Zito
What la casa de papel proves is that great stories can come from anywhere in the world and make the whole world happy. Okay, and this article is super long. So I’m going to actually try to find the parts which might be useful for us. Instead they’re just telling you what are the new? What are the new series that all these different platforms and streamers are creating many credit Netflix, which began producing originals in Spain in 2016, and opened its first European production hub in Madrid this spring for inspiring other international platforms to hone in on on the country, as well as motivating local players such as movie star to ramp up its origin and productions. There’s been a before and after since Netflix came to Spain, says some president of Spain’s production professionals Association APA, who calculates more than a doubling in the number of series produced in the country since 2015.
Andrej Zito
HBO Espana, launched in November 2016, and it’s producing five series in Spain this year, while Amazon released its first original Spanish production last year, just the day before the Netflix has opened in April, Viacom international studios announced it would launch its own production center in Madrid. And in July, telecoms giant orange announced its first fiction series in Spain in CO production with the Media Pro studio. But how are they going to compete with Netflix? Would you get a head start in Spain and this year has around 14 series and firm films in the works? And how will they each attract talent and distinguish their content? calling this an exploratory period kashia hosa says the platforms are working hard to establish relationships with local producers and filmmakers.
Andrej Zito
If you’re a platform and you want to get into Spain, and you want to have these relationships, you need to be quick in buying this new series. Because if you wait too long, the series will go to someone else. It’s a very competitive situation. She claims a free market and complete competition always favor business as bamboo executive producer Teresa Fernandez Valdez who notes that while her company never uses pressure tactics to negotiate with the platform’s it’s a reality that exists they know that if they’re not going to support a project it can go somewhere else. Okay, here we have a list of series that each network to collect network. So this is creating so here we have HBO Espana Amazon originals movie star plus ny com internationals duteous Oh, it’s the end of the article.
Andrej Zito
Okay, so I think I cut it short. Are there any takeaways that I’m thinking about, and I’m running out of battery again, fuck. So what are the takeaways? I don’t have any takeaways. I think I don’t have any takeaways. article number two is from entrepreneur.com. And it’s titled Spotify has been able to localize content for Indian users. That’s a success for us. Okay. Internet has brought the world together, literally and figuratively, having gained more than 500 million users who are leveraging the power of new media, India has caught the eyes of investors from around the globe. international businesses are looking at opportunities for launching operations in the country, and many have already taken the leap. India as a market has evolved over the years.
Andrej Zito
The International models which were barely replicable in our fragmented market earlier, are being accepted by the Indians. The heartwarming welcome received by the Swedish music streaming app. Spotify is a testimony that though homegrown players might have an edge over international platforms due to better understanding of audience needs and tastes, but they can overshadow the international content. global brands come with having served over 232 million monthly active users 100 and 8 million of which are paid subscribers. Spotify did not become the world’s biggest music streaming platform without fighting the locals from various economies. The curiosity around its foray in the country added to its popularity among millennials.
Andrej Zito
America Amarjit sync Batra, the man who’s leading Spotify in India talk to entrepreneur India about the platform. localization of content localizing the product, localizing the product as per the audience’s need has been at the top of Spotify agenda since it entered India. significant research relating to local users and their preferences also play a role. The platform features over 3 billion algorithm based and user curated playlists playlist, featuring over 200 localized playlists for India and access to over 450,000 podcasts. We recognize that in India, people listen to songs in different languages, so ensuring that the initial content is available in their language, including local content and interaction content. Apart from language onboarding, and the right selection of artists made it really smooth for people to start using Spotify.
Andrej Zito
Set Batra currently present in 79 markets. Spotify has a library of over 50 million songs with 40,000 new songs being added globally every day. But the Indian audience is coming to the platform to listen to international music more. The top 40 discoverable artists in India are 45% coming from Kpop Batra expressed. However, in India, understanding consumer behavior would not be an easy task, due to the complexities associated with music consumption. Being a price conscious economy, Indians are used to consuming pirated content nine out of 10 Indians are unwilling to pay for these services. India is a huge piracy market added the Batra while entering India is easy. Surviving is the key. There are challenges that Spotify can’t overlook. There is much differentiated music listening behavior in India.
Andrej Zito
Film Music is the most hurt source which promotes the actor performing more than the actual artists behind the song. The global music scene pushes original singers which is a big differentiator. Interestingly, there has been a shift in the overall music behavior of customers. Bollywood has been the dominant player in music, but the share of blue to the overall listen listenership is diminishing now, independent music is rising very fast. By trustedid, notably, four out of 10 most stream songs of 2018 were non film music pieces. And that’s the end of the article. Bravo. Okay. And the last article that I picked here, and where I’m going to do some extra research is from Slater and it’s about the German LSP lingo. That raises 6 million euros series A from red, Alpine and angel investors.
Andrej Zito
So the funding round completed in August 2019 was led by tourists based venture capital firm Reto fine with other fellow investors and angels participating lingo develops a translation workflow that combines neural machine translation with human post editing, resembling the operational models of tech forward lsps, lilt and unbabel. The series A is language for funding around to date lango has now raised almost 8 million euros, of which zero point 75 million USD came from an EU grant in April 2018. Slater contacted lango co founder and CEO Christopher Kranzler for a comment on the latest funding round grants Hello declerck declined to disclose the company’s current valuation lango was founded by Christopher Chrysler CEO Philip Kok Beutner CEO and Aleksandra Giga Cmo in 2014.
Andrej Zito
Prior to lango, Kranzler was working for a big us consultancy as a localization manager, and witnessed firsthand how the translation industry was. And in big parts still is highly inefficient. He said, looking to eliminate efficiencies, language original offerings centered around automating project management task through an online platform. Hey, that sounds familiar. The company then introduced machine learning for smart, smart outsourcing. Although lango was founded before the advent of neural machine translation, the company quickly integrated it once it became available. Having completed our first financing round, we shifted to an AI for strategy automating the translation process itself. We started developing nmt technology in 2016 and received an new grant to turn an empty fit to perform expert level translations in 2018.
Andrej Zito
Language proprietary platform is narrower geared toward streamlining the post editing workflow. Yet Kranzler believes that post editing of neural machine translated output is just a transition face, speculating that the future of translation will see true interaction between humans and machines and move way past sequential process where one part completes one step, and the second performs another. lango focuses on traditional b2b Enterprise selling set Kranzler and the company has made inroads into this customer base in Europe, no mean feet. Since b2b customers are often loyal to incumbent providers. One upside to this market is the language b2b customers all have a professional translation process in place and hence can provide us with their past translations in a structured way.
Andrej Zito
Language is then able to use the vase vast amount of data contained in customers translation memories to train their machine translation engines. According to Kranzler, the fragmented Germany market is the perfect market to start a language company and its location offers a great opportunity for rapid growth. Ask about the time crunch for machine learning and AI talent. most pronounced in rising tech centers like Berlin, Kranzler agreed that Berlin has become a vibrant tech hub attracting top talent, adding that lingo attracts engineers into the business by providing them with the opportunity to work on real world problems. Do we have here we have a number a list of angel investors. Okay, final thing is lingo lingo plans to invest the funds raised in scaling our enterprise sales team to handle the great demand cranes listed.
Andrej Zito
They also plan to add features to the platform and to continue research into machine translation. Okay, so here comes my creative input. And for those of you listening, I’m just going to look at the website or the language and see how it goes. So okay, first impression is kind of okay. They’re their value proposition is it’s the future of translation, expert translations up to 50% cheaper, and three times faster thanks to revolutionary technology. So their customers include Michelin star travel, one in one call how Uber and foenum sin dotnet. So looks me like German clients. They have some ISO that’s boring for me. Translations by experts for experts, teams of certified linguists and native speakers specializing in a variety of fields trust in document with within their areas of expertise, with creativity and intuitive feel for culture and nuance.
Andrej Zito
Okay. So expert linguists and AI working hand in hand, we pair our expert translators with custom trained, newer translation networks for every one of our clients. Through this process, we achieve higher quality, better consistency, shorter turnaround times and lower effective costs. All we need to get started is your previous translation data. So here, they have a nice, small animation, which basically describes the process. And it starts with uploading the source file. Then they train your network, then you get in some Translation by your network. And that is then proofread by a linguist and then you download the target files, so nothing special. Okay, I think that’s it. Yeah. So this is, I think I beat my last episode that I did last week. Because this, I thought that was the worst one.
Andrej Zito
But maybe this one is even worse. Because here, I haven’t provided almost any value, I think, pretty much no value. So let’s just consider this as a big experiment. If I could do podcasts, that would be just me reading the news. So only to play with the filters so that my voice sounds super great. I’m not sure how I’ll achieve that. Um, anyway, that’s going to be it for Episode 11. If you got to this point, I appreciate your time, very much. And hopefully, maybe there’s a chance that the next episode might be an interview with someone, I have few people kind of like lined up. We just need to actually set a proper date and then get to it. So I hope that will happen soon. And also, I want to just mention briefly that applied for link in a live streaming. So LinkedIn is starting with live streaming, which would be perfect for me.
Andrej Zito
I wanted to live stream before I try to live stream the last recording on Twitter. I don’t know why I didn’t do it this time. So yeah, if it’s a new thing, I definitely wanna try to utilize it in a certain way. Well, maybe like if I do the interviews for the podcast, I could livestream that. And maybe we could take some actions, actions. Maybe we can take some questions from the audience and make it a little bit more interactive, but okay, I’m just talking too much. So that’s going to be it for Episode 11. Thank you for listening, and I’ll talk to you next week. Bye.
