Contest designed to celebrate innovation in the language industry
AMSTERDAM/WALTHAM, Mass. – July 13, 2016 – Paula Shannon, chief sales officer at Lionbridge, will host the Game Changer Innovation Contest at the TAUS Annual Conference on October 24 and 25 in Portland, Oregon. Over fifty startups as well as established companies from inside and outside the language industry are expected to take part in this annual competition. The participants in the TAUS Annual Conference will select two winners: an ‘Insider-Innovator’ and an ‘Invader-Innovator’.
“The translation industry is bursting with new offerings, technologies, platforms and solutions,” said Shannon. “This annual competition at TAUS helps everyone to understand the power of innovation in the language industry and benchmark their own capabilities and levels of automation. Innovation in this industry is the key to corporate growth in international sales. I am excited to host this inspiring session at TAUS.”
Translation technology is becoming increasingly popular, and the language industry is undergoing a wave of innovation. Industry insiders estimate that automatic translation apps on the internet translate more than 200 billion words per day, mostly free of charge to the users. Corporations are using a combination of machine learning, big data and translation technology to build powerful services and solutions. Companies of all sizes, inside and outside the translation industry, are jumping on these opportunities to grow their businesses and engage with customers in all languages.
“We are very pleased to have Paula Shannon join us again at our annual conference to help us make this a fun and inspiring event,” said Jaap van der Meer, director of TAUS. “We are expecting contenders from all parts of the world. It is exciting to see so much innovation in an industry that, for a long time, has been slow in adopting technology. At TAUS we call this the convergence era, which means that translation is becoming a utility embedded on every screen, in every device, in every app.”
In September, TAUS will be publishing an update of the Translation Technology Landscape Report, which was first published in 2013. This updated report will contain an exhaustive list of technologies in the many different categories covered by language and translation technology, such as crowd or community based translation, speech-to-speech translation, audio and subtitling translation, machine translation, predictive translation, translation quality and productivity evaluation.
Companies interested in participating in the TAUS Game Changer Innovation Contest can submit their proposals until August 15 (see: https://events.taus.net/events/conferences/taus-annual-conference-2016#innovation-contest). The TAUS Annual Conference is open to members and non-members. The agenda covers many important themes and topics relevant to decision makers both on the buy and supply side of the industry.
CONTACT
For questions about the TAUS Innovation Contest, please contact Ms. Anne-Maj van der Meer (anne-maj@taus.net).
About TAUS
TAUS is a resource center for the global language and translation industries. Our mission is to enable better translation through innovation and automation. We envision translation as a standard feature, a utility, similar to the internet, electricity and water. Translation available in all languages to all people in the world will push the evolution of human civilization to a much higher level of understanding, education and discovery. We support all translation operators – translation buyers, language service providers, individual translators and government agencies – with a comprehensive suite of online services, software and knowledge that help them to grow and innovate their business. We extend the reach and growth of the translation industry through our execution with sharing translation data and quality evaluation metrics. For more information about TAUS, please visit: www.taus.net.
About Paula Shannon
Paula (Barbary) Shannon manages Lionbridge’s $600 million global sales forces and account management teams. Her international career was featured in the Wall Street Journal in 2009. Paula joined Lionbridge in 1999 as Vice President of Internet Alliances and assumed additional responsibilities in 2001 and 2008. Prior to joining Lionbridge, Paula was the Chief Marketing and Sales Officer for Alpnet, Inc., now SDL.
She has more than 30 years of experience in the language and translation industry, including 10 years in senior roles with Berlitz International. Paula Shannon is fluent in English, French, and Dutch, and functional in German, Spanish, and Russian. Educated in Canada, Belgium and the US, she holds a B.A. in Russian and German with a minor in Linguistics from McGill University, Montreal, Canada. Paula was recently named By the Canadian Board Diversity Council to the 2016 ‘Diversity 50’, a listing of 50 diverse men and women from across Canada with strong competencies that align with the requirements of many Canadian boards. Learn more.
Media Contact:
Lucy Huber
Text100 for Lionbridge
NALionbridge@text100.com
+1-617-399-4985