SlatorPod

#54 Oxford Languages President Casper Grathwohl, M&A Report, LSP Growth Opportunities

January 15, 2021 Slator
SlatorPod
#54 Oxford Languages President Casper Grathwohl, M&A Report, LSP Growth Opportunities
Show Notes Chapter Markers

President of Oxford Languages Casper Grathwohl joins the Pod from sunny Florida this week to discuss OUP’s business in lexical data, working with big tech customers, the world’s under-served and low resource languages, and more.

First up, Florian (from snowy Switzerland) and Esther (from lockdown London) talk about Slator’s newly-launched 2020 M&A and Funding report, a 40-page report with in-depth analysis of the 39 M&A transactions and 13 startup rounds covered by Slator in 2020. 

Esther gives an update from the UK, where the Ministry of Defence (MoD) launched a new USD 74m call for expressions of interest for interpreting and translation services, and outsourcing giant Capita put the planned sale of its translation and interpreting division, Capita TI, on hold.

Florian talks about transcription and audio/video editing tool Descript — which raised USD 30m to expand its capabilities for enterprise use — and potential implications/use cases for the language industry. He also shares news from Japan-based MT and human translation provider Rozetta, which grew MT revenues by 40% in the nine months to November 2020.

Agenda and Intro
Key insights of M&A Report
UK MoD USD 74m Tender
Capita pauses sale of Translation and Interpreting Unit
Descript raises 30m
Rozetta Q3 FY 2021 Results
Caspar joins the pod
Caspar's role at Oxford Languages
Types of data Oxford Languages works with
Shift from print to language data service
Change from a niche space to a fast-growing global industry
Team composition
Similarities and differences between clients
Content building hub in India
Codification of language work in India
Under-served areas of data provision
New annotation and visualization tools
Impact of Covid