Asavari Tamhane, Author at Confederation of Interpreting, Translation and Localisation Businesses

Category: - March 2022, Guest article, Newsletter

Guest Coloumn

Anand Shiralkar Founder and CEO Rian and Vizitech More about him here RIDING THE WINDS OF GLOBALISATION To ensure success, many companies are exploring different avenues to increase global visibility. One of the key focus areas for companies is to break down linguistic and cultural boundaries. Companies are adopting disparate ways to break such barriers. […]

Anand Shiralkar

Founder and CEO Rian and Vizitech

More about him here

RIDING THE WINDS OF GLOBALISATION

To ensure success, many companies are exploring different avenues to increase global visibility. One of the key focus areas for companies is to break down linguistic and cultural boundaries. Companies are adopting disparate ways to break such barriers. In Japan, CEO Hiroshi Mikitani mandated English proficiency for all employees. It is a great idea but not practically achievable with minimal efforts and resources.

The other day while listening to a Marathi audiobook, I realized that it took lesser time and endeavor to digest the information when compared to its English counterpart. This is true. Nelson Mandela had rightly stated, “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language that goes to his heart”. This tenet lies at the center of any communication which forms the building block of relationships, the basis for erecting successful businesses.

1. Why do we need to localize content?

The advent of globalization has made localization imperative to every business that is planning to expand to new geographies. In a country like India where diversity flourishes in many forms including culture and languages, a new dialect touches our ears in as few as 100 kms. Expanding services and products by hooking the customers happens magically when the Brand expressions exude local intimacy while simultaneously maintaining the essence of the brand. ‘Survival of the fittest’ befits this context – interweaving the regional marrow into the brand, allows the Brand to simulate an air like flow while establishing itself in the new market

In addition to the psychological basis, statistical data exists to back this precept. Studies point to the fact that only 25% of the internet surfers today are English-speaking natives[1], and, now the attention span of humans is lower than that of goldfish’s[2 ]. We only have a few seconds to hook the attention of prospects.

How will I benefit as a customer?

Not only is localization imperative to increase customer acquisition, but also inevitable for increasing Return on Investment on existing, passive content. Based on our experiences with numerous clients following are a few of the value-adds a company typically expects from the content its vendor/partner:

reduced turn-around-time to a fraction
manifold increase in productivity and efficiency of the core team by omitting management of fragmented, multi-phased, contemporary language solutions for numerous projects in various languages
multiply the number of accounts opened
multiply the transaction volumes
magnify number of likes, shares, impressions, followers, reach, views, site traffic, etc.
garner higher fraction of clients and new clientele through social media in addition to conventional channels
boost cost savings

The Vantage

With the right Language solution “embedded” into the Global Business Strategy, a business can leverage continuous localization to

command edge over its competitors
hasten speed to market
communicate with succinct, regional nuance with all stakeholders (internal or external)
enjoy sticky customer loyalty, word of mouth marketing
entrench international brand reputation
improve customer satisfaction
snowball outreach and penetrate markets rapidly
engage customers actively, in an age of decreasing attention span[3]
unlock untapped revenue
proliferate the topline

One of the marquee e-learning companies saw an unexpected 8X return within 2 months of launching localized versions of the US-based videos and that too in only 1 other language. Phenomenal results have been experienced by plenty of clients.

The optimal language partner understands the business strategy and dovetails the localization of assets (articulation, design, image, video, color, phrase, idiom, etc.) with the native culture to seamlessly blend the business in the new target market while evading the time required to build trust by starkly standing out as a foreigner.

Through the lens of the customer

Planning, budgeting, and prioritizing the localization process as well as the assets that need to be localized will help reap the most in terms of cost-benefit trade-off. Organizations have to keep learning from challenges and continue enhancing the strategy to reap rewards in the long haul.

Based on our experiences of servicing hundreds of MNCs across the globe, we have realized that a few aspects have increased customer’s confidence in our offerings and thereby organically augmented customer loyalty. Vendors with the following attributes have seen an influx of purchase orders after certification of protocols and streamlining established processes:

Data security (ISO 27001) and well-defined processes
A diverse team with latitude in expertise
In-house, proprietary platform

End to End Growth Schedule

The products and services that dazzle the clients across sectors like e-learning, NBFCs, Legal, Consumer Goods, Retail, News and Entertainment, etc. are mainly directed towards bespoke solutions, APIs, integrated workflows, that have catapulted these firms to a whole new trajectory while remaining within the ambit of their internal regulations.

We have shared the key facets of our journey in as few words as possible. End-to-end, continuous localization services serve as the front-line shock absorbers for organizations on their fruitful, high-speed, global expansion journey.

If you are keen on exploring more about localization and content transformation, you can visit https://rian.io/ and/or write to us for a demo at anand@rian.io; information that helps us magnify our productivity is indeed powerful!

Category: -- February 2022, Editorial, Newsletter

Editorial

by Asavari Tamhane

Asavari Tamhane Secretary |CITLoB Editor | Indovox More about her here Dear readers, Hope you all are staying safe. With the world coming back to a kind of normal things look bright. Hope everything remains the same way and we can all soon meet in person at one of our CITLoB events. Team CITLoB has done […]

Asavari Tamhane

Secretary |CITLoB

Editor | Indovox

More about her here

Dear readers,

Hope you all are staying safe. With the world coming back to a kind of normal things look bright. Hope everything remains the same way and we can all soon meet in person at one of our CITLoB events.

Team CITLoB has done a lot of brainstorming and we have come up with some meaningful plans for the coming year which will benefit everyone from our language industry.

IndoVox now reaches more than 700 people. To give more substance to our newsletter we have invited experts from the industry, who would write for our newsletter which will add more value to it.

In this issue, you will be reading an article written by Ms.Vijayalaxmi Hegde on ” Subtitling and Dubbing for Indian OTTs: Everyone Can Win“. I am sure you will enjoy reading this article which throws a lot of light on how the Indian media localisation scene is becoming interesting where everyone can be a winner.

Our President Mr. Sandeep Nulkar shares some of CITLoB’s exciting plans with everyone. There is a lot more in the pipeline that will help each one of you leverage the CITLoB platform to increase your visibility and credibility.

CITLoB offers you a lot of opportunities to share your knowledge with your peers and increase your visibility. Make sure you participate in all the webinars and meetings which will add a lot of value to your professional growth and up-gradation.

I hope you enjoy reading the February issue of CITLoB

Best regards,

Asavari Tamhane

Secretary | CITLoB

Editor | IndoVox

Pages: 1 2

Category: -- February 2022, Newsletter

From the President’s Desk

by Asavari Tamhane

Sandeep Nulkar President |CITLoB More about him here Dear friends, I hope the new year has begun on the right note for all of you and that things are looking up for you personally as well as professionally. From our association’s point of view, we did surely manage to start the new year with some plans […]

Sandeep Nulkar

President |CITLoB

More about him here

Dear friends,

I hope the new year has begun on the right note for all of you and that things are looking up for you personally as well as professionally. From our association’s point of view, we did surely manage to start the new year with some plans that we are all very excited to roll out starting this month.

Although ours is a very young association and we neither enjoy the luxury of adequate funds or the comfort of enough resources, the one question that has always guided us is how our members can benefit from the association. It was perhaps this question that was the inspiration behind some incredible ideas that came from our Zonal Vice Presidents, Mr Sunil Kulkarni and Mr M.L. Sudheen.

First up, we will now have paid, professional contributors who will write for IndoVox. This should help us improve the quality of the content we put out by leaps and bounds and make it instantly more relevant. On that backdrop, I would like to urge all of you to let us know if there are any specific topics that you would like our contributors to cover. We really want IndoVox to be the source of high quality, researched content that you can use to get ahead professionally.

We also plan to tie up with global associations and buy advertising space on their marketing collaterals. This space can then be shared by willing CITLoB members to ensure that your cost of global visibility comes down significantly.

There are more ideas in the offing, and I will write to you about those in due course of time. In the meantime, do take care of yourself and your families and stay safe.

Happy reading and happy CITLoBing.

Sandeep Nulkar

President

CITLoB

Category: -- February 2022, Guest article, Newsletter

Guest Coloumn

by Asavari Tamhane

Vijayalaxmi Hegde More about her here Subtitling and Dubbing for Indian OTTs: Everyone Can Win Back when I started writing for the language services industry in 2010, it took some effort to explain to people that there was actually such an industry. Not so any more. Over-the-top platforms have single-handedly made translation and localization a […]

Vijayalaxmi Hegde

More about her here

Subtitling and Dubbing for Indian OTTs: Everyone Can Win

Back when I started writing for the language services industry in 2010, it took some effort to explain to people that there was actually such an industry. Not so any more. Over-the-top platforms have single-handedly made translation and localization a thing in India.

With 40 plus OTT platforms and counting, India should rank as one of the most competitive markets in this genre globally. What does this mean for the translation and localization sector? How can OTT players use language services to meet their viewers’ expectations? We take a look in this post.

The Indian OTT Landscape

The players

The Indian OTT market has a healthy presence of indigenous as well as international players. Among the desi players, regional rajas such as hoichoi (Bengali), Planet Marathi, aha (Telugu), and their ilk rule the markets they operate in. Not to be left behind, global players such as Amazon Prime and Netflix, come in loaded with original content mostly in Hindi. Then there are the hybrids such as Disney+ Hotstar, who were among the first to realize that the way OTT could draw people in is by being an extension of their TV.

In the last year or so, many regional OTT companies have come up. They are highly focused on their language-specific markets. According to a FICCI-PwC report, the share of regional language consumption on OTT platforms will cross 50% of total time spent by 2025, easing past Hindi at 45%. It further stated that content costs will continue to increase as the overall quality benchmark rises to address the needs of a more aware audience, particularly across regional markets.

The viewers

Currently, there are about 350 million OTT viewers in India. Increasingly, they are male, within the age of 18-35, and come from rural areas. About 80 million are paying subscribers. Though we don’t have a break-up of rural versus urban, we can safely assume that most of the paying subscribers come from urban areas. The viewers are maturing very quickly and there is some level of discontent brewing. They find that they are spending much more on entertainment via OTT than they used to via cable TV. They also feel it difficult to navigate across platforms – meaning they are feeling boxed in.

And everything else in between

The devices and the connectivity required to push this OTT revolution are already here. Still, some points to consider: the mobile phone remains the primary source of internet connectivity in many households. And, a mobile phone as well as the streaming service is shared by family or friends. This is one reason why free/feemium streaming services such as YouTube or Voot are hard to challenge as they are light on the pocket.

Language services get a boost, thanks to OTT

Indian-language viewers of OTT content outnumber English-language viewers. And, let’s not forget that even the English-language viewers mostly do speak or understand one Indian language. No surprise then that a substantial volume of content is being localized from English to Indian languages. But Indian language to English and from thereon to other languages has found a niche of its own, thanks to the diaspora and an appetite and curiosity shaping up for mainstream Indian cinema.

Along with this, Indian language to Indian language is emerging, too. I remember my aunt gushing over a Bengali teleserial dubbed into Kannada. Her interest in the content was all the more because of the fact that it was originally Bengali content. She was curious about how it would compare against her own culture. Dubbing made this possible.

Subtitling and dubbing have both taken off like never before in the Indian localization sector. Some audiences might prefer subtitles, while some others might go for dubbing. In the more premium markets, subtitles might be acceptable. But my aunt’s ilk, I suspect, would be much more comfortable just listening to the dialogue in their native language rather than having to read on-screen.

The choice between subtitling and dubbing may actually vary between types of content rather than language to language. Content producers have to put in some research here to understand what will suit their audience.

Challenges galore, despite the opportunities

Language service providers (LSPs) are scrambling for trained resources when it comes to subtitling and dubbing and there just aren’t enough. Firstly, formal training institutes are few and far between and new recruits have to be trained on the job. This means that subtitlers and dubbing artists cannot hit the road running. Secondly, even the availability of enough native language speakers and linguists is not a given.

On the tech side, LSPs have some serious investing to do in terms of server space and computing power, which is required for heavy audio/video files. However, even if an LSP does not want to spend heavily on tech infrastructure, it can still find its place under the sun by taking on smaller, contractual work from the bigger LSPs. There’s surely something for everyone in the Indian localization sector right now.

OTT players, translate to multiple RoI on content

On the OTT side of things, the scramble is for content. With time, viewer maturity will increase and not just any content will do. Then comes the question: how much original content can be produced within a reasonable framework of time, budget, and other constraints?

The answer, OTT friends, lies with the language services industry. Sooner or later, you will hit the limit on original content production. Perhaps you already have. But with subtitling and dubbing, the story is only beginning. Take the examples of crossover content, be it Indian (such as Jai Bhim) or from overseas (such as Squid Game or Money Heist). Or even the mainstream Bengali>Kannada content my aunt was watching. The producers of this content multiplied their return on investment manifold simply by translating and localizing it.

Shailesh Kapoor, founder & CEO of Ormax Media, told Business Inside r, “The language barrier has been broken considerably by the OTT medium. With dubbing and subtitles available in many languages for all major shows and films now, platforms cannot stick to single-language, homogenous offerings any more. We can expect more language-led experimentation, both in content acquisition and presentation.”

The cost of subtitling or dubbing is a fraction of the cost of producing fresh content. But it’s not just an attractive option from the cost angle, but might be a more convenient option in these pandemic times. Plus, one is never short of content this way. It can even provide some buffer time while new content can be produced.

Also, captions or subtitles are not just for someone who doesn’t understand the language: they increase viewership and engagement. You only have to look at YouTube or Facebook to understand the power of captions. Captions help make the video more accessible. They also let the viewers watch the content anywhere – during their commute, while in the gym, etc – where they might have to turn the audio off.

The Indian media localization scene is very interesting right now: everyone can win here. Provided, OTT players wake up fully to the potential of translation and localization and LSPs are able to cope with the surging demand.

Category: - January 2022, Guest article, Newsletter

Guest Column

by Asavari Tamhane

Kshama Dharwadkar Professor Goa University More about her here Translation- a teacher’s perspective Introduction Proper use of communicative language in a timely manner is an essential dimension of good personality. For the exchange and communication of emotions and thoughts that surface in the human mind, language plays an important role alongside body language which alone […]

Kshama Dharwadkar

Professor Goa University

More about her here

Translation- a teacher’s perspective

Introduction

Proper use of communicative language in a timely manner is an essential dimension of good personality. For the exchange and communication of emotions and thoughts that surface in the human mind, language plays an important role alongside body language which alone cannot suffice. Language satisfies the human need for communication with the outside world. Human beings need language to express a plethora of emotions such as happiness, sorrow, hopelessness, sadness, love, anger, etc., as well as to experience life. Language acts as a bridge to communicate with the outside world as well as with the inner world. Humans use language when they are thinking, when they are dreaming. Not only this, with the help of language you can do wonders. Language is essential for human communication, writing and creating literature. In an era of globalisation where boundaries are shrinking and people are coming closer, we are opening up to new cultures and languages. However, to understand this newfound knowledge it is not practically possible to learn every language that exists hence for this, ‘translation’ is the best solution. In the present age, ‘translation’ has become a means to an end.

Is translation difficult?

The translation process is easier if both the source and the target language belong to the same geographical and cultural and have similar linguistic concepts. On the other hand, if both the source and the target language are different, in different cultural environments, in different geographical areas, this process is likely to be more difficult but not impossible. If the translator is alert, well read and inquisitive, he may not find the task daunting at all.

Theory of Translation

The French scholar Etienne Dolet has discussed certain principles of good translation. They are –

The translator should understand the SL text and be able to capture its sense
S/he should be competent in both the SL and TL
S/he should not be literal in translation
S/he should use common idiomatic language
S/he should be able to reproduce the correct tone of the original, by a careful use of words, in the TL text

Translators are invaluable

According to the principles of economics if the subject is in high demand and if the number of experts in such a domain are less who can accomplish a task then higher is the cost that one pays to get the task done. A compelling translation takes shape through the combination of the translator’s perceptiveness, sensitivity, and translation skills, who are fluent in both the target language and the source language. There are few such good translators. Due to this, it is advisable to master the art of translation and to use this skill to earn one’s livelihood in the contemporary world.

India is a country of myriad languages, an attribute which aptly reflects the term “unity in diversity” People of different castes, creeds and religions live in different states of the country and communicate in many languages and dialects. Songs, music, literature, plays, films are produced from these languages. Translation is the link that connects the regional artwork to the world and to other parts of India where a particular regional language isn’t spoken or understood.

Religious texts, scriptures and literary works were read and understood by people all over the world by means of translation. Translation acted as an efficient medium to propagate and popularise Indian literature to global readers and vice versa. In the history of modern literature, an age of translation made an appearance. To cite a recent example, Telugu-Tamil film “Bahubali” was translated and released in Hindi and the rest is history. Translation as has been used since ages to market products and goods in non-native markets to reach and capture a wider consumer base. Translation has become the need of the hour across many domains to not just shift from one language to another, but it aids in transmitting the message successfully without loss of meaning. As I mentioned previously India is a land of myriad languages and official documents need to be disseminated across the citizens in languages they understand so these documents can be implemented and acted upon.

Translation as a subject

Translation is taught as a course at Bachelor as well as Master’s level across universities in India. In today’s world it is primordial to be aware of skills that need to be mastered to be a good translator. These courses on translation cover various facets of translation such as the theory of translation, scientific and technical translation, literary translation etc. Emphasis is also laid on comparative translation studies in order to analyse, compare and appreciate Indian works translated in global languages and vice versa so that the students are aware of the contribution that translation can do the literary field. Whilst teaching translation it is also important to cover the technological aspect that is involved in this process. CAT tools have become an indispensable part of a translator’s life. At the same time, we cannot overlook the importance of formatting and editing which is another facet of translation. With changing times there has also been a shift in the work that is actually carried out by a translator, translations are now undertaken by machines and at times the translator performs the duties of an editor. Students need to be made aware of these changing trends and guided accordingly so as to be aware of what to expect when they step into the market hunting for career opportunities as a translator.

Raising awareness about this interesting and enriching domain of translation is of utmost importance to attract and rope in more and more capable and talented translators to further enhance this art.

Category: - January 2022, President address

FROM THE PRESIDENT’S DESK

by Asavari Tamhane

Sandeep Nulkar President |CITLoB More about him here Dear friends, Let me take this opportunity to wish all of you, your families, and your near and dear ones a very happy, healthy, and prosperous new year. It’s been a long year, a year in which we all lost something, learnt something and most importantly, survived everything. […]

Sandeep Nulkar

President |CITLoB

More about him here

Dear friends,

Let me take this opportunity to wish all of you, your families, and your near and dear ones a very happy, healthy, and prosperous new year. It’s been a long year, a year in which we all lost something, learnt something and most importantly, survived everything. It looked seemed for a while that we had hit rock bottom and so the only way from here is going to be up. In that sense, I am confident that we are all going to have rocking 2022.

We are kicking off the new year in style, with a webinar that will be hosted by the Zonal Vice President Mr Sunil Kulkarni. Sunil will be speaking to Dr Subalalitha on an extremely useful and pertinent topic – the impact of NLP on our industry. They will also dwell upon how start-ups are leveraging NLP to solve real world problems.

As usual, I would like to request all of you to firstly sign up and attend all the webinars yourself and also help promote it within your circles. This year we aim to do more and do better in terms of events and opportunities. We will keep you informed in due course about the line-up of events and about how you could get involved and benefit from it.

In the meantime, do take care of yourself and your families and stay safe. Happy reading and happy CITLoBing.

Sandeep Nulkar

President

CITLoB

Category: - January 2022, Editorial, Newsletter

Editorial

by Asavari Tamhane

Asavari Tamhane Secretary |CITLoB Editor | Indovox More about her here Dear readers, Greetings from CITLoB the confederation for interpreting, translation and Localisation Businesses . On behalf of the entire governing body and the management of CITLoB we wish you a very Happy New Year! Hoping for a variant and Covid free 2022. About this month’s […]

Asavari Tamhane

Secretary |CITLoB

Editor | Indovox

More about her here

Dear readers,

Greetings from CITLoB the confederation for interpreting, translation and Localisation Businesses .

On behalf of the entire governing body and the management of CITLoB we wish you a very Happy New Year! Hoping for a variant and Covid free 2022.

About this month’s issue, we have an article written by our member, Ms Kshama Dharwadkar , on “Translation- a teacher’s perspective”. Industry and academia always work hand in hand to support each other in various possible capacities. Kshama, a polyglot has been an active language enthusiast. She has been teaching translation at the Goa University since a couple of years. Her article definitely reflects her expertise.

The January webinar was a huge success. we had over 50 registrations for the same. CITLoB will always strive to bring a variety of topics meaningful to the industry on the table. Do let us know about the areas that interest you or topics that would enhance and educate us as an industry.

I would like to appeal to all the readers to increase their professional visibility by making use of the platforms offered by CITLoB to connect with your peers and be visible. Be involved :-). We all possess expertise and have developed ourselves through the lessons our professional life taught us. Lets share our knowledge with our fellow linguist and colleagues and grow together as a community by sharing .

Do give it a thought!

Stay safe and take care. Happy reading!!

Asavari Tamhane

Editor | IndoVox

Secretary | CITLoB

Category: Uncategorised

Editorial

by Asavari Tamhane

Asavari Tamhane Secretary |CITLoB Editor | Indovox More about her here Dear readers, December is always a happy time. Looking back to what we have achieved and setting new goals for the upcoming year is somethings we all do. November was a quiet month at CITLoB. But we ended it with launching our webinar series on […]

Asavari Tamhane

Secretary |CITLoB

Editor | Indovox

More about her here

Dear readers,

December is always a happy time. Looking back to what we have achieved and setting new goals for the upcoming year is somethings we all do. November was a quiet month at CITLoB. But we ended it with launching our webinar series on spotting opportunities. It was well received from the industry and I thank each and everyone of you for signing up and participating in it.

About this month’s issue, we have an article written by team Braahmam on” How Multilingual, AI-Powered Chatbots Can Take Customer Support to a New Level “

The “Meet the Member” section has been a platform that has helped us provide excellent visibility to our members. This month we have the privilege to listen to the very talented and dynamic Sameer Dhamangaonkar from Snovel.

We look forward to your contributions in form of articles and participations in our webinars. Do let us know about the areas that interest you or topics that would enhance and educate us as an industry. If you wish to conduct a webinar or know a resource person feel free to connect me with them. Do get involved and help us to make our language industry more visible on the global map.

Asavari Tamhane
Editor | IndoVox
Secretary | CITLoB

Category: Uncategorised

Guest Coloumn

by Asavari Tamhane

Team Braahmam More about them here How Multilingual, AI-Powered Chatbots Can Take Customer Support to a New Level If your website is your online storefront, it’s a no-brainer that you must greet and attend to your customers as they enter your shop. That’s what a chatbot primarily does. A chatbot online serves as the first […]

Team Braahmam

More about them here

How Multilingual, AI-Powered Chatbots Can Take Customer Support to a New Level

If your website is your online storefront, it’s a no-brainer that you must greet and attend to your customers as they enter your shop. That’s what a chatbot primarily does.

A chatbot online serves as the first “live”, interactive element of your website. It intercepts the customer where they are and tries to help them achieve their objectives from your website quickly and smoothly. Given this, it only makes sense that the chatbot must speak the language of the customer so as to enable a truly engaging conversation.

On the mobile phone, chatbots provide a direct and quick access to customer care, which people can access anytime at their convenience.

Chatbots are already a reality of business globally, though they might be more popular in some parts of the world than others. However, with development in their abilities, they are quickly catching on everywhere.

Power of AI transforms your customer support

Artificial Intelligence (AI) makes a key difference in the functioning of chatbots. First off, when a user types in a query, it can detect the language of the query. It can also try and figure out what the query is about by analyzing the keywords in the query. Then, it retrieves the answer or possible answers from user help documentation. Over time, the solution can recognize the most frequently-asked questions and get better at retrieving more accurate answers.

At least, this is what happens or is visible at the front end. At the back end, the question is translated from the visitor’s language to English, or whichever language the help documentation happens to be in. Probable answers to the query are looked up. They then need to be translated into the language of the visitor and presented to them. This translation at the back end is carried out via machine translation (MT).

When designing a bot, it is critical that you work closely with an experienced language services provider (LSP) because its efficiency hugely depends on the expertise of the linguists who train the MT engines. A query may be worded in many different ways. A translator should be able to map the different synonyms or similar phrases to the right keyword, so that they bot is able to dig up appropriate responses.

Pros and cons of multilingual chatbots

Chatbots are your way of proactively starting the conversation with a potential customer. They have many strengths and some challenges.

1. Addressing the visitor in their language: Imagine people walking into your brick-and-mortar store. They’d clearly like to be talked to in their language. The same goes for online visitors. A chatbot can detect the user’s language in multiple ways: a) by simply asking the visitor to choose from the available language options; b) by determining the user’s location and their IP address; or c) by detecting the user’s browser preferences.

2. Enhancing the customer experience (CX). HelpScout found that more than half of the customers didn’t make their purchase decision based on price alone – it was also CX. Well-designed, multi-language chatbots put the customer at ease and help them quickly find what they want, thus scoring many CX points.

3. Aiding conversion. Chatbots not only improve CX, but give a personal touch to customer service. All of this contributes to increasing the conversion rates.

4. Cutting costs. A single chatbot can save you tons of money that would otherwise be spent on armies of customer service representatives to handle queries in different languages. Of course, chatbots will not entirely replace human touchpoints, nor are they meant to, but they will definitely reduce the number of customer service representatives that you’d otherwise need. They can even make the work of the customer service representatives easier and less mechanical, by filtering out the more basic and routine queries and bringing only the more complex queries to them.

Multilingual chatbots also help to cut costs on translation. Earlier, a company had to translate huge volumes of user assistance information in different languages in order to make them available to customers in different locales. With changes in products or their features, the user help would need to be updated and then re-translated.

With AI-powered bots, however, companies translate only the information the customer is looking for. And this, too, is done on the fly with trained MT engines.

5. Getting insights. Careful analysis of the queries a chatbot gets can tell a lot about the issues customers face or how they view a particular product or feature. You can use this information to better the product, or improve customer service or any other area where customers seem to be getting stuck.

There are not too many downsides of using a chatbot, provided it has been designed well. Do take care that the responses are not too stilted and robotic-sounding. Also, people sometimes use a mix of languages in their conversation. This may sometimes present problems in language detection and comprehension of the query.

Some chatbots are menu-based, while others are context- or keyword-based and aim to provide a more fulfilling experience. But they also have a bigger challenge of living up to the expectations of human-like conversation.

Types of chatbots

Different types of chatbots exist, depending on how well they can interact with the human visitor. However, the function of every type of chatbot is enhanced with the addition of multilingual AI capabilities.

FAQ or form-based. These are simple rule-based chatbots. They work with a set of keywords that are already mapped to help pages. When the user keys in any of these keywords, the chatbot will automatically generate a list of pages that mention the keyword. But the efficiency of these chatbots is improved only when the translator can think of different keywords that a person might use to describe what they are looking for.

Note that not everyone will type out sentences correctly or even complete them. There might be spelling mistakes or other types of errors that human beings can make. There will be specific ways in which people word a query in different places. The chatbot will have to parse such queries efficiently so that the customer can get accurate responses.

Decision tree-based. These are complex rule-based chatbots. Essentially, they normalize the query and then input that into the system to arrive at the responses. It feels more like a human conversation, as these chatbots build a dialog with the user.

Machine learning chatbots. They learn through questions and answers with the user. The system tries to figure out the intent of the user and thereby arrive at responses.

Hybrid chatbots. They are rule-based and have machine learning capabilities. The chatbot is already trained in the rules of a language. And it uses this knowledge to try and figure out the query. However, it’s also learning constantly. Linguists are involved in the training of such machines.

Voice bots. Chatbots also differ based on whether they are text- or voice-based. Queries are increasingly becoming voice-based, thanks to the mobile phone to a large extent. As such, voice-based bots can aid shorter and quicker conversations. There are hybrid voice bots which can text as well as speak. And there are also purely voice-based bots, which only speak. Whether you choose a purely voice-based bot or a text-and-voice bot depends on your business sector and the typical requirements of your customers. For instance, if they are going to be on the move most of the time, text capabilities are good to have, as voice might be difficult to access in noisy or remote areas with limited data connectivity.

Enabling global business

As companies move to new markets, it is not always easy to hire and train customer care officers quickly. Chatbots can step in here and provide the necessary back-up.

The future of chatbots is just beginning. The ways in which companies can tap their potential is limitless and can be very powerful. And when the chatbots can speak the language of your customer, you solve many problems for the customer as well as for yourself.

Category: Uncategorised

From the Presidents Desk

by Asavari Tamhane

Sandeep Nulkar President |CITLoB More about him here Dear friends, We are already in the last month of this year and it really feels like the year just flew by. December is usually a comparatively quiet month for our industry with the western world enjoying the festive season that many of us choose to indulge in […]

Sandeep Nulkar

President |CITLoB

More about him here

Dear friends,

We are already in the last month of this year and it really feels like the year just flew by. December is usually a comparatively quiet month for our industry with the western world enjoying the festive season that many of us choose to indulge in too. Nevertheless, we have a webinar lined up for you in December. It will be part of a series of webinar we are launching in November called Webinar Series on spotting opportunities.

The demand for conventional language services has changed over the past couple of years and so have the high growth sectors. This webinar series is our attempt to bring to all of you, some key insights from experienced industry leaders on the new high growth sectors and the opportunities they have in store for language professionals and language services companies. We plan to have guests from domains and skills as diverse as pharma, eCommerce, Fintech, Eductech, subtitling, voice overs and more.

As usual, it is my earnest request to all of you to help promote our webinars within your circles and to also make sure you sign up and urge others to do so too. I also encourage you to suggest any sectors or skills that you would like to get more insights about. Your feedback and suggestions will help us make the coming year even more learning intensive than the current one.

In the meantime, do take care of yourself and your families and stay safe. Happy reading and happy CITLoBing.

Sandeep Nulkar

President

CITLoB