Teddy Bengtsson, polyglot and founder/director of RoundTable Studio, discusses his nearly 40-year-long career in the translation and localization business, beginning with his early work at Aldus (of PageMaker fame). He touches on the significant changes in the industry and his appreciation for the community.

Have you ever read Multilingual magazine? If yes, which is your favorite part?
I have been an avid reader of MultiLingual magazine since its early days, which I believe was some 30 years ago. It has always been the leading media outlet for the localization industry, filled with articles that are relevant to all actors within it, including clients, vendors, technology providers, and linguists. 

As for my favorite part, I enjoy the interviews and columns, but I’m happy to scroll my way through and always find something that grabs my attention. 

I have also had the pleasure of contributing some published content in previous issues, including an article on ethics in localization and a case study of a project involving indigenous languages.

How did you get involved in the translation business?
My secondary education was focused on languages: I studied Swedish (my native language), English, German, Spanish, and Latin, but these didn’t really feature in my early professional engagements, which included working as a sports shop assistant and selling knitwear — as well as being a bartender! 

After having moved from Sweden to Scotland and thereby having fine-tuned my English skills (with a Scottish accent, of course), I decided to try to take advantage of my background in languages by doing some freelance translations, including some assignments via the Swedish Consulate in Edinburgh — which I performed on a typewriter. 

I also signed up as a Swedish teacher with Berlitz Language School. There wasn’t exactly a high demand for this, but one day they phoned me to teach a week of intensive Swedish classes. It turned out to be a German guy who had recently been appointed localization manager for the US software company Aldus (known for its PageMaker desktop publishing program), which had set up its European headquarters in Edinburgh. He had studied Latin languages (French, Spanish, and Italian) and, being German, also had a good handle on Dutch. The only language in the company’s initial target markets that he didn’t know was Swedish. I’m not quite sure what he hoped to achieve with one week of Swedish classes, but we had a very good time, and the next week he asked if I would be interested in applying for an open position at Aldus: Swedish project lead. Although I had very limited knowledge about IT and software, I thought it sounded interesting and applied — and got the job! 

Since you entered the translation business, how has the business landscape changed?
I started with Aldus back in 1987, almost 40 years ago now, and of course, there have been plenty of changes. As I mentioned, working with computers and software was a new experience for me — and a real eye-opener. I recall when I first saw a fax machine being used: I was amazed by the technology that made it possible to instantly share the content of a paper document from one part of the world to another. We’ve come a long way since the days of floppy disks and project handoffs via courier and have experienced a translation tool evolution with translation memories, machine translations (MTs), and currently artificial intelligence (AI), of course. 

In my early days, the service supply chain also looked very different — heavily dominated by local and regional language service providers. I worked closely with many of them during my Aldus years as well as in subsequent appointments on the client side with Microsoft and Oracle. The emergence of large-scale multi-language vendors in the 90s really changed things, and since then, a co-existence of providers has developed. 

After more than 15 years on the client side of the localization business, my personal landscape certainly changed in 2003 when I decided to start a language services company focused on the Latin American market, initially as Idea-Factory Languages and then rebranded as RoundTable Studio in 2011. The concept was very simple; I wanted to build the kind of company that I would like to buy services from!

Could you share your experience working with your first client or on your first project?
Applying linguistic concepts in specialized industries can be quite a challenge. I remember engaging in a passionate discussion with our Swedish vendor partner about how to localize the concept of “kerning” (the adjustment of the space between two typed characters to improve readability and aesthetics), which was part of the PageMaker functionality. In the end, we decided to leave it as “kerning” in the Swedish version, and I’m happy to see that this is how it continues to be applied today. 

As for an early experience during my time on the vendor side of the business, one of our clients (a software security company) engaged us to collaborate in their implementation of MT all the way back in 2004. It gave us a unique experience to obtain early knowledge of this groundbreaking technology as we helped them train their engines and prepare the solution for Latin American Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. They took a very sensible approach to implementation and did not rush to achieve any financial goals. The system was put into production some two years later, in 2006.

Do you believe it’s a good time to enter the translation business?
I consider myself very fortunate to be part of the translation business. It’s an industry full of smart, friendly, and culturally aware people, and connecting with them at work, meetings, events, etc., is always a great experience. I’m sure that those entering today will feel the same way.

Naturally, things evolve and opportunities in our current environment are different from what they were when I entered. The essential aspect of linguistic knowledge is still there, of course, but entrants who can bring in or develop complementary skills and qualities — technical, creative, or managerial, for example — will be better positioned to take advantage of these opportunities. 

Where do you see yourself professionally in the next 10 years?
Having been around for many years already and recently celebrating my 67th birthday, retirement planning is probably more of a priority than further professional career development. I’m very pleased that RoundTable Studio has a very highly skilled and experienced senior management team to look after all operational aspects, which means I can make decisions in this respect without any worries. Since I started the company and have an ownership stake in it, I will of course continue to be engaged for the foreseeable future but perhaps shift into more of an advisory board role and less involved in daily activities. Maybe I’ll even be able to play golf twice a week instead of just once! 

What predictions do you have for the future of the translation business?
The current AI revolution is certainly creating plenty of challenges, but with these come new opportunities. The amount of content generated continues to rise and so does the need for it to reach a bigger global audience. To meet cost and time-to-market objectives using MT/AI technology, there is a growing trend of producing “good enough” quality. Although this has a function — such as when simply intended to enable text to be understood in a different language — I believe we will see a reaction against its overuse, and people will not accept this level of quality for content they consider important. I think there will be a growing need to generate content that is not only correctly translated from the source language but also adapted to be culturally aligned with the target market to generate the desired global experiences. 

This shift will make localization more strategic and will require closer interaction between clients and their language content partners. Optimizing the potential of tools and technology will play a big part in this, and with AI facilitating the administrative aspects of managing multiple partners, I think we will see more clients looking to work with local and regional specialists.