SlatorPod

• #255 The Rise of Voice Productivity with Krisp CEO Davit Baghdasaryan

  Davit Baghdasaryan, Co-Founder & CEO of Krisp, joins SlatorPod to talk about the platform’s journey from a noise cancellation tool to a comprehensive voice productivity solution.Originally built to eliminate background noise during calls, Krisp has expanded into real-time accent conversion, speech translation, agent assistance, and note-taking — technologies being rapidly adopted in enterprise environments.The company’s accent conversion is now deployed by tens of thousands of call center agents, significantly improving metrics like customer satisfaction and call handling time.Davit details Krisp’s live AI speech translation feature which uses a multi-step pipeline of speech-to-text, text translation, and text-to-speech. The majority of use cases are in high-resource language pairs such as English, Spanish, French, and German, although Davit recognizes the importance of expanding to lower-resource languages.He shares how Krisp is also seeing increased demand in human-to-AI voice communication. AI voice agents are highly sensitive to background noise, which disrupts turn-taking and response accuracy. Krisp’s noise isolation tech plays a foundational role in enabling smoother voice AI interactions, with billions of minutes processed monthly by major AI labs and startups.The CEO discusses LLMs' impact, noting how they enable advanced features like note-taking, call summaries, and real-time agent guidance. He sees Krisp as a platform combining proprietary technologies with third-party AI to serve both B2B and B2C markets.Davit advises startups to explore the vast and still underdeveloped voice AI landscape, noting the current era is ripe for innovation due to AI advancements. He highlights Krisp’s roadmap priorities: expanding accent packs, refining voice translation, and building more AI Agent Assist tools focused on voice workflows.

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• #254 EU Language Law with Professor Stefaan van der Jeught

  Stefaan van der Jeught, Professor of EU Constitutional Law at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and a Press Officer at the Court of Justice of the European Union, joins SlatorPod to talk about the complex relationship between language and law in the EU.Stefaan outlines the historical evolution of EU language policy, from French-only founding treaties to the gradual inclusion of all member state languages. Despite formal equality, institutions largely define their own internal language regimes, leading to fragmented and often English-centric practices. Stefaan’s book EU Language Law, now in its second edition, examines these issues in depth. Updated with new case law, legislation, and developments in AI and governance, it includes a 10-point roadmap for reform. Stefaan advocates for greater transparency, legal protection of linguistic diversity, and a constitutional debate on the role of language in EU integration.AI, Stefaan believes, is a tool that can enhance multilingual access and consistency across EU communications. However, he cautions against using AI as a cost-cutting measure that replaces linguistic expertise. Instead, AI should serve as a support tool, with human revision, especially in legal contexts.On regional languages like Catalan, Basque, and Galician, Stefaan notes they face legal hurdles at the EU level because they lack full legislative status in their home countries. He argues for a more transparent and constitutional debate on language policy, drawing inspiration from multilingual countries like Switzerland and Belgium.Stefaan concludes by advising universities to train future legal linguists by going beyond technical instruction to foster critical thinking, comparative law expertise, and cultural literacy.

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• #253 SlatorPod Tom Elias Hanna on Why On-Site Interpreting Is Here to Stay and the Trump EO Impact

  Tom Elias Hanna, COO of Hanna Interpreting Services (Hanna), joins SlatorPod to talk about how a family-run interpreting initiative grew into a national language solutions integrator (LSI).Tom explained that the company was born out of necessity during an influx of Arabic-speaking refugees in San Diego, with his mother providing interpretation and him leveraging his legal background to establish a compliant, scalable business that now serves healthcare, government, education, and social service sectors across California.Tom described how their inclusion-focused work led to partnerships like one with San Diego FC, where they provide ASL at every home game. He emphasized that while AI holds potential in sign language interpretation, it must evolve with and for the deaf community to be truly effective, due to cultural, emotional, and experiential nuances that current technologies cannot replicate.On-site language interpretation remains the core service, especially across healthcare, education, and social services. Though remote interpreting and AI are on the rise, Tom emphasizes the irreplaceable value of human interpreters, particularly in high-stakes, emotionally nuanced settings like hospitals.Tom explained that their recent rebrand emphasizes both human connection — central to their on-site interpreting services — and technological growth.Initially, without a sales team, Hanna grew through referrals, client satisfaction, and high service quality. Only after COVID did Tom begin to formalize a sales strategy and identify account management as a natural extension of their client-first approach.Tom expressed that despite considerable internal and industry-wide discussions, the Trump Executive Order designating English as the only official language of the US had no tangible effect on Hanna, so far. He noted that no clients inquired about it or changed their behavior.Looking ahead, Tom aims to scale geographically, explore strategic acquisitions, and develop proprietary technologies to improve experiences for clients, staff, and linguists alike.

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• #252 What Are Language Solutions Integrators and Language Technology Platforms?

  Florian and Esther welcome Slator’s Anna Wyndham and Alex Edwards to SlatorPod to explain the rationale behind the new industry framework introduced in the Slator 2025 Language Industry Market Report.Drawing from the flagship report and echoing the buzz of SlatorCon London, the team explains why the traditional labels, Language Service Providers (LSPs) and Translation Management Systems (TMSs), no longer capture the scope and complexity of the evolving market. Instead, Slator has introduced two new terms: Language Solutions Integrators (LSIs) and Language Technology Platforms (LTPs).Anna defines LTPs as pure-play technology providers that develop language tools, applications, orchestration platforms, and AI models. LSIs, she explains, are organizations whose core offering is to deliver fit-for-purpose multilingual content solutions by integrating language technology and AI with human experts as part of a fully managed solution.Esther confirms early advisory adoption of the terms, noting investor interest in clearer tech-service distinctions. Alex adds that automatic dubbing startups tend to fit LTPs better than LSPs, as they often operate self-serve AI platforms.Anna clarifies that big tech players like OpenAI and Google are excluded from the market sizing as they are foundational enablers, not language-focused businesses. The team also discusses why the term “AI” was excluded from the new categories as it may become as ubiquitous as “Cloud”.To close, Anna points out that LSIs currently capture the bigger portion of the total addressable market (TAM). The team sees a strong demand for expert-in-the-loop services and growing LTP–LSI partnerships.

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• #251 Inside the LSA–Lingolet Strategic AI Partnership

  In a SlatorPod first, four guests — Scott Cooper, CEO of Language Services Associates (LSA), Pablo Tercero, COO of LSA, Jerry Song, CEO of Lingolet, and Edward Varela, VP of Business Development at Lingolet — shared their insights into a newly forged partnership.Scott explained that the decision to partner instead of building an in-house AI solution allowed LSA to stay focused on its core strengths while leveraging Lingolet’s technical edge. The alliance goes beyond a vendor agreement, with LSA taking an equity stake in Lingolet, anchoring the relationship in shared strategy and long-term commitment. For Jerry and Edward, the partnership is a natural progression, rooted in their deep knowledge of both software development and the language services market.In a standout use case, the two companies helped a Major League Soccer team enable multilingual, AI-assisted communication in coaching sessions — bridging language gaps in real time for international players.On the tech front, Jerry and Edward explained that Lingolet doesn’t build large language models from scratch but instead acts as an orchestrator, offering clients the ability to customize and deploy AI tools within secure, dedicated environments. Pablo underscored LSA's HIPAA and PCI compliance, as security, compliance, and privacy are essential pillars, especially in regulated sectors like healthcare.Looking ahead, LSA and Lingolet are preparing to offer hybrid solutions where AI can bridge the gap during interpreter unavailability, even for brief moments, potentially transforming session wait times. Their roadmap includes broader language coverage, deeper integration with healthcare platforms, and innovative pricing models that will reshape how interpretation services are sold and scaled.

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