Come take a walk through the grass with our Merging Minds host Javi Diaz and his guest Jamie Brown! They make conversational stops at the opera, in Brazil, and they, of course, end up talking about the localization industry!

Jamie Brown is a Localization Consultant, former Chief Language Officer, and overall optimist who overcame a childhood stammer and fear of speaking to become an accomplished linguist and public speaker. Jamie has given a TedX talk and is currently working on composing choir music in “non-traditional” languages to bring more diversity to the concert hall.

Join Jamie and Javi as they discuss:

- The overlap between music and language

- Writing choir music in new languages for classical music

- Having a stammer as a child who loved studying languages

- Jamie’s life-changing experience in Brazil

- The fundamental desire to understand different people and different cultures

- The importance of preparation for public speaking

- The importance of having a team with diverse skills

- Needing humility to hire people who are better than you at things

- Recognizing the “humans” on your team

- Learning to adapt your message for different stakeholders

- How to make difficult decisions as a #leader

- Javi’s networking advice

And of course, the beauty of walking barefoot in the grass on an especially hard day.

Click play to hear Jamie and Javi’s conversation!

You can learn more about Jamie Brown here:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-brown-8a436540/

www.jamiebrown.info

P.S. Don't forget to leave a comment and subscribe to Merging Minds Podcast powered by Bureau Works for more thought-provoking podcast episodes.

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Ted Gibson is pretty impressed with how well #LLMs can produce English. But, he doesn’t think they will ever be able to produce the languages of the indigenous tribes he worked with in the Amazon. The reason? Data. Language models have been trained with trillions of words to make today's English results. But, there simply aren't enough words being written or spoken to make good models in many other languages. This challenge leads Ted and Gabriel to discuss the differences between human language learning and language models. They ask:

Why can humans learn a language with so few words, while models need so many?

Ted Gibson runs a language lab at MIT and works on all aspects of human language. He has worked with two indigenous populations in the Amazon and has a PhD in Computational Linguistics. Ted and Gabriel’s discussion leads them to discuss some of the most prominent theories of linguistics and to dive deep into human #language cognition!

They discuss:

- If LLMs have proved Chomsky wrong

- Low resource and high resource languages

- The lack of consensus on how language operates

- How machine learning differs from human learning

- How language is used for connection, not just passing information

- The appeal of “automatic” #translation products

- Language cognition across cultures

- The challenge of universal language rules

And more!

Click play to join our Merging Minds host Gabriel Fairman and his guest, Ted Gibson, for a deep conversation about language, the human mind, and how it is very different from the machine! You can learn more about Ted Gibson here: https://tedlab.mit.edu/

P.S. Don't forget to subscribe to Merging Minds Podcast powered by Bureau Works for more thought-provoking podcast episodes.

Podcast powered by Bureau Works, a cloud localization platform that makes complex translation tasks simple and predictable.

www.bureauworks.com

Follow us on YouTube and X @bureau_works for more and don't miss the latest live sessions and offers on LinkedIn:

www.linkedin.com/company/bureau-works/

The #localization industry needs creative and competent people now more than ever. If you have a passion for languages, now is the time to double down on your skills and dig out your niche. Things are changing, but there are a ton of new opportunities cropping up everywhere. Don’t give up and don’t be scared.

This is advice straight from Florian Faes, Managing Director and Co-founder of #Slator (the localization industry’s largest intelligence publication). If anyone is qualified to give advice about our industry, it is him.

In this episode of #MergingMinds, Florian joins our host Javi Diaz to chat about the future of the industry as well as:

- How to separate hype about #AI from reality

- What kinds of people the industry needs

- The need for creative people

- The “3 buckets” for a career in localization

- Finding jobs in #loc

- A key piece of advice for starting out in localization

- Dealing with fear of the future

- The importance of keeping experts in the loop

Click play to hear from Florian and Javi as they carve a path forward in uncertain times! And don’t forget to subscribe to hear more from Javi Diaz and Gabriel Fairman every Tuesday and Thursday wherever podcasts are found!

You can learn more about Florian Faes and Slator at:

https://slator.com/

Join us at the Slator London Conference on May 23, 2024:

https://slator.com/event/slatorcon-london-2024/

Podcast powered by Bureau Works, a cloud localization platform that makes complex translation tasks simple and predictable.

www.bureauworks.com

Follow us on YouTube and X @bureau_works for more and don't miss the latest live sessions and offers on LinkedIn:

www.linkedin.com/company/bureau-works/