Speaker 1: What are the challenges that the language industry is facing, coming up? Hello and welcome back to the Freelanceverse. Thanks again for coming back to the channel. Today I have a special guest on the channel. I'm going to talk to Filip Stankovic. He is the CEO of a translation agency called Lingua Mundi. And he kindly offered to come on the channel to discuss something very pertinent, very important to the industry. I feel like the language industry is in a lot of changes. A lot of challenges are coming, not only for freelancers, but also for agencies alike. And I had a great conversation with him about the challenges of 2023. I think there's lots to learn in there, a lot of amazing value. Thanks again, Filip, for coming on the channel. All his information are down below. So make sure to reach out to him if you have questions. And I hope you enjoy the talk. So welcome back to the channel. Today we have Filip Stankovic, the CEO of agency Lingua Mundi on the channel. Hello, Filip. Hello, Adrian. Very nice to have you here. It's quite rare to have someone from the other side, let's say, on the channel. So I want to make the most of it for the audience. And we are here today to address the biggest challenges that freelancers and agencies face in 2023. And I think we can have a nice discussion because you come from the agency side. I come from the freelancer side. We have a few challenges written down. We want to definitely address the prices seem to be dropping. We want to address project sizes. We will talk about technology, what customers value. And we will see where the discussion leads us. But first off, I would say you can introduce yourself to the audience. The people seeing you might think, OK, he's not the typical CEO. How did you end up in this role at such a young age?

Speaker 2: So the short answer is nepotism. But I like to think that I deserved it to some extent. So I started my career at Lingue Bundy when I was 22 years old. I started by doing linguist work. Actually, I'm a former linguist myself. I was a reviewer. Turns out I'm much better at finding out other people's mistakes than my own. So that's what I focused on. I think it takes a specific kind of brain to be a reviewer. And so I went for that. Then I moved on to roles in production, like project management, production management, being sort of the assistant to the CEO as well. And then finally, when the time came and I was familiar with all sorts of processes within the agency, including vendor management, sales, all that good stuff, I felt like I was well-rounded enough to take this leadership role. And so did my mother at the time. So from two years on, two years ago on, I've been in this position. And we've been doing OK. The company hasn't blown up. Quite the contrary. It's been growing, and it's been doing well. So here we are, basically.

Speaker 1: I hear people say, like, never mingle work and family or work and friends. Right? You went the opposite way. Has this caused any friction within the family? Or is everything OK? I think it's mostly OK.

Speaker 2: I think we get along fairly well, given the amount of time we spend together. Of course, there's always friction. But that's because people care.

Speaker 1: It comes from a good place. True. So let's address these challenges that could also be opportunities, right? So first off, let's talk about prices. Especially in certain languages, I get comments a lot about Spanish, for example, seems to be on the decline in terms of rates. What can agencies do from your perspective to combat this trend?

Speaker 2: So I think that the first point from a freelancer perspective that it's important to clarify is that we're all on the same boat. We're all in this together. So rates are going down for us. They're going down for you guys as well. So it's not like I say this because it's not like the case that agency rates have been going up, up, up. We've been crushing down the rates of the freelancers at the same time. That's not what's going on. It's more like a general. There's pressure on the agencies to drop their rates. And then the agencies pass that pressure down the production chain. So I say that's business. Yeah, that's more the case. The reason why I think that happens is because we're in a highly, highly competitive industry. We're literally competing with people from all across the globe. I can tell you that we are, you know, we apply to some tenders and you'll see companies from Romania, companies from Greece, companies from France, companies from India, companies from everywhere applying to these things. So we're competing on a global scale. And the good side of that is that, you know, when you want a project, it feels good, right? You know, you beat like a really large competition to get to where you are. The bad side of it is where there's a lot of competition. It's like in airlines. The rates tend to be very low. Unfortunately, price is a big differentiator in our industry, because I think that this is because most people that run agencies are former translators and come from a linguistic background. They maybe aren't specialized in sales and don't know how to sell value. So they end up differentiating themselves based on price. And everybody's doing this. So what happens is the rates keep going low and low and low. Basically, I think it's kind of like as if in 19th century, there were the coal miners and coal mining became a really popular way to make money. And at the beginning was very profitable to become a coal miner. But then so many people went into coal mining, the prices of and technology got better. So the prices, the wages for coal miners collapsed. But then people started leaving the coal mining industry. So the supply of coal miners went down. And the the the coal mining became a profitable job again. So I think we might be going to some through something a little bit similar to that. I think we've reached rock bottom. I think rates are starting to go up and we're starting to understand better how to sell value to customers. And if I could give one advice to freelancers is if you want to avoid the low rates, what I'd suggest is focus on projects with a higher degree of complexity, because that way you can make better money. If a project has stages like linguistic sign off, which tends to be easier and pays better. If projects have have these sort of like more a lot of how can I say this? A lot of background material, a lot of information that you have to study and read about a lot of sources, a lot of rule guides, that kind of stuff. Those agencies, I'm not saying always, but those agencies tend to pay better because they're demanding more of their translators. So they're less focused on price. They're more focused on people who can actually follow their processes. So if you're a good process follower, I think that's a big thing. I think this decade is going to be the decade of processes.

Speaker 1: And how is it possible, then, when you say that agencies also face this price pressure? But before you said that your agency is growing, right? So how can this how does this balance work? How can you grow as a company without having the stability of good rates?

Speaker 2: So I think what has happened and this touches a little bit on a on another topic we want to talk about is that, yes, we are growing, but there's a lot more work that needs to be done to get the same amount of money or in this case, a little more. So, for example, we grew 15 percent in 2022, but the number of projects we received grew 50 percent. So that's a lot more work for a little bit more growth. And you see this on reports all the time. It's like if you read an annual report by one of the big information agencies in our industry, like Slater or Namesy, they'll all tell you the number of words that need to be translated in a given year is going up. I think the part they don't tell you is the the the quality of the words, so to speak, that people are required to translate that's going down. Yes, there's more stuff out there to be translated. But I think the stuff has dropped in level of complexity and that kind of stuff. So people want to pay less.

Speaker 1: So you think the quality of the source material is is getting worse. So people so that the clients don't require a very good translation because it's just like like noise, just internal communication or just like background. And yeah, for these, of course, for this stuff, the prices go down. But then I mean, technology is always a big driver of of of rate dumping, let's say. But on the other hand, it also improves productivity by a lot. Right. So one thing that freelancers can do is rethink their workflows in order to make the same or more, even with a lower rate. Right. If you can if you can incorporate AI tools within your workflow, you might raise your your your throughput from 800 words to 1200 words and then it equals it out. Right. So that's definitely also a way to go for us. You mentioned before your projects grew 50 percent. That is insane. When you then look at the revenue growing 15 percent. You told me this has to do with project sizes. Right. Can you tell us a bit what what's what's behind that? Why do they get smaller so much?

Speaker 2: So I think that's another thing where we're on the same boat. Agencies and freelancers. It's project size has changed quite a bit in recent years. So projects are getting on average a lot smaller. And the thing the reason why I think that is, is because there has been this drive for lots of little tiny projects that arrive all the time, which is like a big consumption on your availability, for example, because it requires a lot of availability on your part. It makes it harder to plan for the future because you you don't have a number of work that gives you some guarantees for the next following days. You constantly have to be looking for the crumbs. They call it continuous localization. Right. That's the the technically correct term for this sort of approach, where it's like many tiny projects that have a lot of background information, a lot of research that you need to do, a lot of style guides, a lot of glossaries, a lot of that type of stuff. And another worrying trend, at least for me, it is is that there has been a drop in the amount of clients willing to pay minimum fees. So this wouldn't be a problem. Many little projects, I mean, other than the one planning and that sort of thing, it would still be a problem in those regards. But if minimum fees held up, that wouldn't be that much of a problem. The problem is that this trend is being accompanied with a trend of we don't want to pay minimum fees. So these two together, I think, are causing a big, big problem in our industry, which I think will be solved by automation. So what I would suggest to freelancers is don't get too too worried if the emails from the companies you work with start sounding really automatic and robotic, as opposed to personalized email from a project manager. That doesn't mean your company, you know, is getting more distant. It just means that we have to optimize our time. And because there are so many projects, maybe we can't give freelancers the very personalized attention that they should be able to have. So this is one of the solutions we're having is we're trying to automate everything to make things faster and less labor consuming.

Speaker 1: I see. Yeah. Some of my clients started collecting these small jobs and then sending them at the end of the day or at the end of the week as a bigger job. Is that something you consider or is the time pressure just not feasible?

Speaker 2: Yeah, that's one of the solutions we look. I'm not sure what the silver bullet to this one is, to this problem is. I think automation. I strongly recommend people looking in to be lazy, for example, as an automation tool, maybe even if you're a freelancer and have enough work to justify it, your own TMS, maybe one of the cheaper options like Protemos does the job well and you can manage sort of your work or just an Excel sheet if you're good at Excel, managing things through there. So automation, to some extent, would be one of the steps that I that I think is going to solve it. And then the other one that you mentioned, this project bundling, that's one that requires you to coordinate more with your clients. But it's good for everybody. Right. Because you're if you're working with an agency, then they don't have to open ten little projects. They can just open a big project. Right. And then you do the same and so on down the production chain. It saves time. So I think that's another one that that could help in this regard.

Speaker 1: Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. And you should also not you, but the people watching should also kind of balance it out. You know, who is the client? How is your relationship with the client? Like there are some clients that I wouldn't charge a minimum fee because I know that they send me work every day. And if if there is a small project of four euros, I just do it and it's fine. But if it's a new client or a client that doesn't come regularly, I charge my minimum fee. And then often an email comes back and says, I mean, we can't pay you that. It's just an email. Can you just reply with this one sentence? Right. But even opening the job, confirming, sending my TNCs and, you know, the negotiation and then the delivering on on anything that I do, I spend at least 15 minutes. Nothing is just happening in one minute. Right. So it's it's not feasible to to pay anyone two, three euros for just a line when when it's not just a line. So much more comes with it. And especially people working in marketing, they know that just a line can mean hours of work. Right. Every two days. It's not so simple. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. So I agree with you. The minimum charge is the tricky one, because as you say, like you can only charge minimum if the agency can also charge minimum to the end client. Otherwise, it doesn't make sense for them. Right. I mean, if if they get paid three euros and you charge, I don't know, 25, then there is absolutely no balance. Yeah, I want to move on to something that my viewers are very interested in. You coming from an agency and they kind of are looking for agencies to work with. Right. So do you have a few secret tips how to approach agencies, especially in prospecting? Is there something on LinkedIn that needs to be there? Cover letters, do's and don'ts. Do you have any tips when people are looking for agencies to work with? I actually do have a couple.

Speaker 2: So one of them is join. Now, I know some people are against this, but I recommend at least giving it a chance, which is join some vendor management platforms. So pros has its limitations, in my opinion. So maybe not that one, but there's new one out there is trying to fill in the role that pros should be fulfilling in. Like ZingWorth, for example. That's a good one, too, because that's one of the places where our vendor managers look for translators is in these portals. Oh, nice. OK. The second thing would be have it very clear on your LinkedIn profile that you're a translator, that you're looking for work, that these are the language pairs that you do. Don't have us guess. Don't have us look too deep. And then another really easy way is just if you type in vendor manager in LinkedIn and just press enter, you're going to get a ton of vendor managers, mostly from translation companies, pop up. And then you can just send them a request and tell them, oh, if you ever needed my services, I'm here for you. Because usually vendor managers already have their strategy. They already have their plan for what they're looking for. So they might not be able to add you right away. But at least that like that, you create a memory, you make yourself memorable. So the next time that people come, that they that they do need somebody, they'll they'll ask they'll ask for you. And the other one is go to conferences. Conferences go a long way in prospecting. Once you know somebody, you're much more likely to take their calls, to answer their emails, to answer their messages on LinkedIn. So, you know, just get that first personal touch.

Speaker 1: Definitely. And there it's important to not expect like immediate results when you go to a conference, right? It's not about that. It's it's exactly as you say, making this first connection. We also met at the conference. Some people might remember the video I made about Teff. We were on the same panel and now we are here. So, you know, every connection leads to somewhere else in the in the business workflow, definitely. Just don't go to your first conference and expect, oh, I'm going to be clients from this. It's it's not going to work. So just to manage expectations as well. I want to move on to the last point because time is running extremely quickly, but we still have a huge point to discuss, which is technology, right? Yeah, I think there is a I mean, this is the number one challenge and opportunity in the industry, not only in the language industry, but in many right in all of them. So how is your agency leveraging technology? How do you look in the future? Is it scary for you or is it an opportunity?

Speaker 2: I think it's an opportunity to some extent. It can also be scary because technology costs a lot of money. And with the industry becoming more technological, it may mean that the time where the industry was mostly made out of a lot of very small agencies may end because with this need for larger and larger investments in technology, the typical size of a translation company may change to a lot bigger because you need to have the funds to to make those investments. So on that side, we'll wait and we'll see. And we'll adjust based on based on what happens in the future with technology, with specific technologies. I've mentioned two things. One is processes. Processes are also a form of technology. So the fact that nowadays you can have workflows that involve involve voice to text, which I strongly recommend if you want to raise your productivity, look into Dragon, look into the Windows voice to text tool. That's a cool way. If you don't want to always be typing using the meat sticks, you can you can use the voice to text stuff and you'll go a lot faster. So different workflows, like you already mentioned, lots of instructions, different QA profiles, regular expressions being introduced into the QA and into the workflow. So all this stuff, I think processes can be a form of technology, linguistic sign off, final verification stage, all that stuff. So the processes are getting more complex and that's a change. And so if you want to master technology in the 2020s, I'd say focus on building really good processes. The second one is just regular technology, right? Stuff you buy and you add to improve your workflow and your system. So on that side, I'd say that, first of all, the translation industry were early adopters. So I wouldn't be we're not being caught off guard. We've been using AI and MT for years now. Like this isn't something that's totally brand new. Yes, there's new stuff coming out. There always is. On the other hand, I'd say that technology is a complement that helps us raise our productivity. And I don't think it's going to be taking away any of any of our jobs in the near future for a simple reason. MT is still very unreliable in 2022. There's three very common mistakes it makes. One is mistranslation, which means content gets translated incorrectly into a different meaning or is translated into gibberish. Hallucination, which means the content is just not in source and it was introduced into translation by the MT or deletion, which means content was in source, but they didn't put it in the translation. So there's still a lot of very critical types of mistakes MT makes. And I don't think they're going to go away anytime soon based on what I've seen and based on what translators on the ground are telling me.

Speaker 1: It always depends on who the audience is, right? What the register needs to be. There's so, so much coming into place. And I feel like a lot of translators are always, they have this fear that everyone is against them, right? Like technology developers, agencies, it's all working to get rid of them. But that doesn't make sense. I mean, agencies rely on freelancers for their whole business, right? It can't be your goal to get rid of freelancers. That doesn't make sense. So I feel like there needs to be more of a collaborative approach. And that's why I urge anyone like studying translation. Don't be afraid of technology. Like everyone is in the same boat. We just need to figure out a way to work together to make the most of it.

Speaker 2: I really appreciate the kind words that you're saying and standing up for some agencies. Let me go the opposite way and say that I do think that there are agencies that have like people. There's all sorts of people. There's all sorts of agencies, right? And I do think there are agencies that have predatory behaviors and that don't treat their freelancers with respect and very nice. Identify those early on in your career, figure out what the profiles for those tend to be and stay away from those. If you starve them out, if clients starve them out of work and the freelancers to starve them out of suppliers, they'll have to change or they'll die. So hopefully we can all work together to get rid of those more predatory agencies, because they do think some of them exist. And they don't give a good image to the rest of us.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Thank you very much, Philippe, for coming on the channel. I put all the links down below. Viewers, make sure to reach out to Philippe if you have questions. And if you want to see a part two, I think we would still have a lot to talk about, so if he wants to come back on the channel, I'm very happy. It's very interesting to see someone that is leading an agency at such a young age. It's exciting. And I hope there will be a lot of profit and a lot of success coming towards you in 2023.

Speaker 2: Same wishes to you, Adrian. Thank you very much.

Speaker 1: Thank you. Take care.

Speaker 2: Bye bye, everyone. Bye.