S03E06: Leading and Managing A Multi-Region LSP

Tea Dietterich

Thank you, it’s great to be here!

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

I’m so pleased to have you here today after such a long time, we’ve been trying to coordinate this. Let me dive into the first question, Tea. How did you come into our industry, localization translation industry? Where did things start for?

 

Tea Dietterich

You thanks, Sultan. Let me start first by respectfully acknowledging the Cobby Cobby people, which are the traditional owners of the land where I’m talking to you today in Southeast Queensland and pay my respect to elders past, present and future and they’re continuing connection to land, sea, language and culture great. So where did things start for me really traditional, I went to the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in Germany to the to the faculty that many in our industry knows for applied linguistics, and I studied thereto become a translator and interpreter with a specialization of international law. And then I came to Australia for the Olympic games and the German-Australian Chamber of Industry and Commerce recruited me and so… and I worked… I was involved in the Olympic games in Sydney 2000. I was… I was then after four years in the Kimberley region. It is a remote northwestern part of Australia and I was the director of an aboriginal interpreter service called at that time… today Interpreting Western Australia and it was the Aboriginal interpreter service we started and then I founded the company in Australia, which would have been a startup. But that word didn’t exist back then, so there you go, quite linear and not by accident, like many of my other colleagues in the industry.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Very very interesting. Now, Tea, it’s been a long road and I’m sure, you’ve seen lots of things, perspectives, please describe to me what has your experience has been like in this industry. What things did you enjoy? What things surprised you? And what things you would rather, have things we’ve done differently?

 

Tea Dietterich

Well, let’s take a couple of, sort of key markers out. anyone… let’s start with the Sydney Olympics which I just mentioned. I was already obviously a big international sports event, I already had a little track record in in that international sporting events theme. I had been an interpreter in 1993. OK, I’m disclosing my age here in Sierra Nevada in Southern Spain. We had the World Cup for men in Alpine skiing in 94 we had the World Cup for women. Again, I was an interpreter there for FIS, the International Ski Federation. In 95, the World Championships for Alpine skiing was staged there again. We were there for FIS as interpreters. Spectacularly, it was cancelled because even after it had already started it after the opening ceremony, because there was not enough snow and they re-staged it in 96, so again so there was sort of my initiation into sports event as an interpreter.

 

And from then that really marked all the experience of my company in conference interpreting up to, for example, even events like the G20, which was in Brisbane on our doorstep and many other international events. And now we’ve got the Olympics in Brisbane in 2032, so obviously I’m already involved with the task force and it’s a little bit of a full circle years later. So that is one thing, for example. And then let’s maybe take the aboriginal interpreter service in the Kimberley. This shaped the language offering, you know, for 2M… you know 2M Language Services, my company… as I had the relationship. So this is almost 20 years ago, right?

 

And I was there for four years, you know, not three months… four years… and this is in one of the most remote areas in the world most inhospitable regions in the world and there, from that time I still have the relationship, the trust, the credibility, knowing the cultural sensitivities of the different indigenous language groups and culture groups, the complex kinship system, avoidance relationships for example, what it means in interpreting the different indigenous languages. So now here we are, you know, all these years later, and we’re… Queensland government’s, for example, sole provider of aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages.

 

We have contracts with the New Zealand Government, obviously there it’s Maori, the indigenous language there, we have many indigenous languages here, so so again something from there that has sort of you know, even though indigenous languages… just mosaic of our offering it is a complex one, and it’s not just the language you add, right? So it is really the elders from many of those groups who still know this is their business, it’s OK to work with them. This is how it works. So and then maybe the business starting starting that business myself in the back of my bedroom with a laptop and going through the whole notion of growing the company, scaling the digital transformation, getting into international trade, and eventually the international expansion of the company. So, yeah, there’s there’s a lot in there in all these years.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Wow, Tea, before I get into the topic of our conversation today, you are a jetsetter. You travel between Europe and Australia all the time. How did this… how did you manage things with COVID? How did you stay in Australia all this time?

 

Tea Dietterich

Well, you know Sultan, that is very easy, you know, because I couldn’t. We were not allow it to leave. I mean, it was the only democratic country in the world that actually operated it, you know their citizens. If you had an Australian passport, which I have, I have a few but one of them is Australian, yes, so look… I couldn’t so you you managed…

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

And how… how did you… how did you spend your time? What did you do all this time in the past few years?

 

Tea Dietterich

Oh, that’s you know that’s you know that’s interesting because actually COVID was you know, very good for us, you know we grew by over 210%, you know, at least I mean, probably this financially was even more, through technology as I… you know Sultan, crisis is very good for communication sector, you know so there was a lot to do… health related, multilingual content demand exploded, but but also change in strategy extension in risk appetite. What would I do? Focused on tenders really, less travelling made me focus just very much, you’re in your bubble, you’re inward and yeah, we just responded really, really quickly to the explosion in demand, pivoted like many in the industry and we were really busy and I also, I actually I also went back to study. I did the Australian Institute of Company Directors course and graduated. So I used my time very wisely.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Congratulations! You’ve achieved quite a bit. Tea, today I’m going to talk to you and ask you questions about leading and managing multi regional language services companies and 2M is obviously very active on that front because you manage teams in different parts of the world. Talk to us about your organization and what does it do and how does it create value for it’s customers?

 

Tea Dietterich

2M is a language technology and language service provider, so translation localization into 350 plus languages. So the standard ones, but also with specialists for rare and emerging languages. Pacific Island languages, African languages, both displaced communities in Asia, like Rohingyan, Karen, Hakka… so that’s in the translation localization front, then there’s interpreting your RSI, VRI, on-site… third one is media localization and language technologies, the last one. So that’s what we do, but your question how does it create value… I would say we help our clients to engage in power and give equity to their customers, to their stakeholders. But really is those three Es – engage, empower, equity and they under… you know they apply to everything. And this really underpins everything as well because if you do that engage, empower, right? You drive sales.

 

You know, you reduce hospital stays, you retain staff for example, through the CEO’s messaging, you know, this is working with corporate comms, compliance, right? Reducing the risks. The translation, interpreting services, they are really only the tools, Sultan. For example the RSI we see, you know, people have meetings and they didn’t previously use interpreters because why? Well, they all speak English well, yes they do, but it’s not their first language. So actually they were sitting in these meetings and didn’t say anything and meetings are very expensive.

 

If you look at who is in the meeting room on Teams, Webex… you know, the meeting and what their hourly rates are for engineers, for you know, the executives who are in that meeting and then you’d walk out of it and you think that was a waste of time because you didn’t get the engagement you needed, you didn’t get the ideas, so by applying and bringing the multilingual meeting, you know, and our side, for example, that remote, simultaneous interpreting… even though everybody spoke English, engagement levels went up, right? The productivity increased and that already expensive meeting, you know, finally had with that little investment of one hour, RSI had a large return. So you know, so again, it always… it doesn’t matter if it is sales, if it is compliance, where you are at, the value you’re adding is that your clients are able to engage and empower their stakeholders.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

So there is this debate in our industry that we are in the business of value transformation, not value creation, but you just proved that by making a difference in someone’s life or in someone business, we do create value, we just have to demonstrate that value to our customers.

 

Tea Dietterich

Look, absolutely, and it really, I mean, and I’m obviously not the only one saying this, we are not this, you know we’re not selling this, you know the translations. It is that it’s that value and it’s different for every you know for… it is project management, it is HR, it is, you know, eliminating headaches, but it really for me… for us, it’s the three Es at 2M. You know , everything you know, be the patience of the culturally linguistically diverse community that if that is, you know, your end stakeholder… is it, you know, your international target market because you’re exporting. But if you don’t, you know if is it in the meeting but if you’re, you know… if we can help our clients to engage and empower and ultimately give them the equity then the client is successful and we all know what happens when the client is successful, the client is happy, you know, and it will come back for more.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

As an Australian language services company, 2M is very iconic and now it has a full international presence. Please talk to us about how you expanded the organization from the early days you started yourself, you mentioned with a laptop and today it’s an internationally renowned organization. What was the journey like?

 

Tea Dietterich

Yes, so the first years, as a sole trader, which is a legal entity in Australia before you incorporate the company. It took quite, you know, many years it was… it was only in 2012 when I started the first overseas office. So 2012 Paris, the driver there was the mining resources sector. Australian Mining companies very active in Africa in the mining sector, and that’s why I chose Paris, because it was a lot easier to manage language services in Africa from Paris because of the talent, because of the times… Paris still our location today for Europe it is very central, you can fly to New York, you can go over to Germany flight, you know, take the Eurostar to London. So there was a very good location. So that was our 2012 was Paris and then it took another five years, 2017 was Argentina and 2018 was Manila, and then 2020 was Colombia, and then 2021 only last year, during COVID… three offices, Perth, Auckland and Santiago de Chile.

 

So yeah, so Paris was driven as I said to cater for our European clients and the Australian mining activities in Africa. So that makes sense. Right? The follow the sun project management, the 24/7 offering you know that that was the reason for some of the other offices, we were already the night shift for clients, for some of our clients in Europe. But then we started needing our own night shift as well. You know that makes sense so Latin America is really like, there’s a real hand over there, you know, I mean we don’t over lap at all with Australia, you know with the timezone and let’s go back to the mining sector where we are very strong as you can hear and resources, there’s a lot happening in Santiago, all the mining companies are there so that obviously Latin America is in is a very obvious expansion.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

So Tea, let’s talk about structure. Now with this type of growth comes complexity. Please explain to me how do you see your organization structured. How do you define the core functions and support functions and all the different roles? Do you distribute them geographically? How do things work?

 

Tea Dietterich

Yeah, Sultan, that is, A, a good question and B, a huge undertaking I would like to say before I even explain this structure to in order to even define the core functions, then with support functions you have to really, A, you have to understand them… really understand them, you know so, so it’s not just like you know, sort of you come up from you know some CEO comes across from another organization and just does something that that looks logical on paper. You need to understand them, then you need to be very adaptable because believe it or not, our org chart changes. I mean, but every month, sometimes every week. Right? Because why? Because we calibrate. So you have to be adaptable, you have to calibrate constantly. You know that function. Now you need that function there. OK, you’re hiring, but is that talent there? What are you doing? You know, constantly, calibrating, constantly determining and fine tuning. Also the company values with the team, only then only if you’ve really done and you know then you can plan and allocate the right resources, so then we clearly define the relationship with obviously our functions and the resources for that. Very importantly, we offer training and share a company direction with them, a very big one throughout those functions, which are of course people we help manage the employees’ career course. That’s very, very big within 2M that we look and empower all the employees and make sure they have a career because of course you can only hold and retain talent if you give them a perspective, if you give them a career and then we identify gaps fast. So all this is crucial and needs to be constantly done so our org chart as I said changes all the time. And yes, there’s a leadership team. Yes, there’s a CEO. It’s me. There’s a CFO, a CTO, a COO and then there’s the heads of departments, right? Translation, interpreting, media localization technologies and our 2M Academy. So they have obviously overheads and then they have all their teams underneath. But then we’ve got the international offices, right? So that’s when things become intertwined because some in our international offices are support functions for the senior project managers, you know in our Australian offices, but then they have another function because they’re in their timezone, so it’s quite complex. And on top of it, I say this because all these influences both the functions are we created, we have a culture of empowerment and leadership as I said before. So you’re not a leader until you have not produced another leader. So we really want to see in those functions that they’re reporting to the project manager, you know the project manager to the senior project manager, right? Because we want to, we want to teach having people reporting to you is no, not an easy task because you’ve got to look after them, You gotta want it… to motivate them so all of these functions, all of these deliberations I shared with you, they define, and they determine, you know the core function with support functions rather than a static org chart we have to fill, does that make sense?

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Absolutely, so from what I understand, basically the structure evolves with the business demand, with with how things operationally need to need to happen, so I’m guessing with that type of complexity… well the question is how do you stay on top of things? How much data does your organization generate? And how is it organized?

 

Tea Dietterich

Look, we’re data driven organization so for, we… if you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist, right? So we collect, in general we collect and generate, you know, a fair amount of data and we try to maintain its structure so we can get intelligence out of it, you know. So there’s always new opportunities and avenues to get more data, but the most important is finding how to leverage it, you know, data if you don’t use it, it’s also not useful, so you gotta be very disciplined on the structuring, you know and with structured data comes potential for AI applications down the track. So it’s always something we keep in mind when we gather data, right? On top of it we work with the defense sector, you know. So data I s heavily protected as well. So not only we’ve got all the data, you know, we were just invited to the government’s defense sector cybersecurity program and we graduated from that. You need to be nominated by a European, well by a defense prime, in our case it was a European one. We’re going through ISO 27100 audit at the moment as well. So, yeah, we structured it, but then we have a very sophisticated information security management system. Obviously we use SharePoint, where we hold a lot of the data, but yeah, it more is what I said in the beginning. We always look not only organizing and collecting the data, but always thinking of you know how useful, what can we use is the data for? And can we down the track if we have enough, can we create and build an AI application out of it? That’s a is… really, an important deliberation here?

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Again, we’re talking about leadership here, leading and managing, you know, an organization like yours, it’s an undertaking. Let’s talk about strategy. How do you define your organization’s strategy from top down and how often do you revise it?

 

Tea Dietterich

Every February, right? We do a strategy, I think this year it’s actually going to be early last weekend and then March, and we do one mid year so we’ve got the yearly strategy earlier and then a mid year one and that’s that’s our… we always do them… we set the risk appetite and the course, right? Long gone is the five to 10 year plan, right? It’s now one to two years, you know, even with three months and six months horizon, right? And that’s where we also, we always look again at our… at the, you know, the famous why, how, what, your vision, your mission and the strategic growth pillars, right? So in our case they are people, right? Building the organizational capacity within 2M, you know, attract the talent, right? With domain expertise anyway, so it’s the people without going too much detail, then it’s technology, right?

 

Driving the innovation and supporting progress, you know by investing in R&D, right? And piloting all the technologies through our 2M Labs, which is our R&D department. Number three of the growth pillars processes, integration, automation sectors, you know, where we’re partnering with key clients, you know that’s the 4th and the fifth one is growth services, right? There we define where the growth services you know and we also go through digital transformation, are we truly digital? You know, I mean, people like to say that. But steps are still manual, right? And really, the most important thing is I would say the strategy on the fly right. Our COO Helena and myself, we are onto that strategy on the fly all the time. We have to stay alert, nimble, correct the course, you know, that calibration as I mentioned earlier on it’s very important, right?

 

Not everything you do and you said works out, and that’s not a problem, but you need to know and recognize it and then calibrate it and then, you know, you stay on the course so yeah, so it’s really that strategy on the fly, which I would say is you know, is the big success factor here.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

So, and you mentioned that you have a midyear strategy meeting as well. Is that the time one you see how strategy is working out and how to tweak things, or is that defining new action items that we could get attached to this strategy?

 

Tea Dietterich

Yes, no, it’s not very tweak. We tweak and that calibration I talked about it that is constant. That is because we’re doing the strategy on the fly constantly in touch. The CTO, COO and myself, and then you know other leaders… but midyear is looking where we at, right? We get the reports in… all the heads of departments you know… and we can see already the impact I mentioned before we also have a three months and six months horizons, and so six months we can really look back. But we’ve been already tweaking, you know, by the time we come to the mid year strategy so that mid-year strategy probably consolidates and confirms you know that that strategy on the fly we’ve been on about, that makes sense?

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Absolutely. Tia, on a separate note, I admire your work across our industry, your involvement in GALA and how you show leadership in promoting our industry at large, it’s impressive. Tell me how much of your time is invested in that front, and how have you measured the results of your engagements in terms of business.

 

Tea Dietterich

Oh, GALA, I like the sound of It always of course, big smile To my face, I was on the GALA board for four years, right? And I’m also still now the president and the chair of the Australasian Association of Language Companies, right? The AALC, right? Obviously, the ALC is one of our sister organisations. I’m also on the NAATI, which is our National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters. Our basically also… standards body, so to speak, in Australia on their regional advisory committee and sat for five years on their technical reference advisory group. I sit on other boards in the international trade sector as well and yes, this does consume a lot of time. I would say about 35% of my time. At times it has been even more. So the the rewards are really obvious though, a powerful business network in the international trade and export sector, you know, that opens doors and creates opportunities for cross sector collaboration it stimulates, you learn, right?

 

And I mentioned the AICD, the Australian Institute of Company Directors course before, where you learn to look at everything through the lens of a director, right? The steward of the organization… not the executive director as our CEOs, right? No, as a non executive director. And in those boards, you know, in our industry as well as the other boards they give you this opportunity to hone your experience on a board of an organization, which also propels you then and gives you experience to grow on other boards, right? And that’s where you potentially not everyone, but some of us as you want to be is very interesting to have an NED and non executive director career right and and sit on the board of some other organisations, right? B

 

But even also it coming back to our industry and the Australian Institute of Interpreters and Translators, I was the president in Queensland for many years. I was vice president nationally for little while and today 15 years later, maybe not quite 15 and this still, is like with the Aboriginal interpreters, it’s a solid foundation. It’s very easy for me to reach to linguists for 2M. You know, to have translators and interpreters as powerful allies and as ambassadors of your organization is very powerful, right? So there is big rewards, you know, and of course, GALA… some of my best friends are there so yeah, but very well worth it.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Absolutely. Tea, let’s talk about another aspect that most leaders, especially company owners in our industry have to go through, one of the problems with language companies is that we have an issue being able to differentiate from each other. Basically, they all look the same. We’re all good and we all deliver the needed services. How often do you revisit your organization’s core offer and update it? You mentioned you you have annual strategy meetings, but how do you differentiate it? How do you define it to your customers so they can understand it and relate to it directly?

 

Tea Dietterich

Yeah. So as you said the, we do revisit the organization’s core offer in, you know, in the strategy that I mentioned before we look at the landscape, we know where we are different, right? And where we want to stay so that that that landscape here in that region, right? So our differentiators, for example, is the language offering clearly, you know, as I said before, they include rare and emerging languages. I mean we have clients even other language service providers you know in Europe and the States who come to us for The Pacific island languages, indigenous languages, and in those other emerging or rare languages. So that’s one differentiator. The sectors… we have defined sectors mining or resources, you know, which includes, of course renewables, energy, all that… resources, defense and medical technology… medtech there… three you know… so not life sciences, right? Medtech… so they’re sort of… so we know, OK, this is where it’s our sweet spot, right? We have the expertise, you can have a lot of competition.

 

We, you know, really known… customer service… you know, another differentiator is the customer service. I know everybody says that, right? So that’s why I wanted to find it a little bit more… yeah, I mentioned our 2M Academy, which actually we launched early last year. It has been a success, which is Australia and New Zealand’s first free professional development platform for translators and interpreters, right? That’s where it started, but we also use the 2M Academy if we on board a new client for example, let’s say in a utility company like… you know, like an electricity povider or insurance, our interpreters need to speak their language, know the values of the client. We actually bring the client together with the interpreters, they meet on the 2M Academy. They meet them, you know, in webinars. This way the client really knows that the we… who are the voice of them, be it through the over the phone interpreting that we really understand that, so again, that’s a little bit different… so there… you know, whatever your differentiators are, right? We look at them, we look at the landscape, what is needed where we don’t have to go, but it’s the on the fly strategy I mentioned before, right? That’s important, where sometimes react to a sudden need, right?

 

In our R&D department goes after… I give you a clear example, concrete examples are… We had two towers in Melbourne, you know, during 2020… July 2020 that suddenly went into lockdown. They were language groups so a lot of people lived there didn’t have… they had language other than English as a first language, right? They went into lockdown and suddenly there was this need of short messages that had to be sent out immediately to these language groups. That was done. Somebody did it in government use Google Translate anyway, you can imagine it went through the press. We, you know, the usual this happens in every country and everybody is up in arms because as our… you know industry friend, Renato Beninatto always said, what does he always say… nobody… it’s like toilet paper, nobody talks about it, only if it goes wrong… nobody talks about toilet paper, only when it’s missing, right? So obviously it went wrong, and so that whole short ultra fast messaging in the Australian context where government requirement is that linguists have to be NAATI certified, you know your National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters…

 

There we responded, for example, immediately created the two 2M On Demand app that’s been used then since for those, you know… bypasses the project manager, can be used on your phone can be downloaded from, you know, from your Apple store. So, sometimes we react really quickly and but otherwise, yeah, we did fine in this strategy, are we… you know, other sectors… is there a new sector? Do we ditch something as well? Because as you know, the last thing you want to go is your differentiator is the quality because you know it’s just nothing, I mean the language quality, everybody says that.

Sultan Ghaznawi

One more, Tea. I think you are one of probably the few leaders in our industry who speaks the customers language. I see you constantly talking to defense delegations, government delegations, visiting Europe and so forth. We don’t have that type of engagement in our industry, most of the ti the time, we’re talking to each other so do you think? There is a problem in us talking outside our industry and and understanding what our customers industries are all about. Because that’s I don’t see enough of that happening.

 

Tea Dietterich

They certainly are, you know, switched on… you know, industry peers here I think of, you know, who also are very good in this. Yes, of course, look it’s important that the leader of the company in general, you know, is engaged but yeah I am sales person number one, it’s true here at 2M. We have a sales culture, right? All project managers, everyone is in sales, right? And that’s, you know, beautifully sort of instilled by our COO, Helena Rojas. But, yes I am… it is really important, how do we sell? We go where the client is… absolutely, as you say Sultan… mining, right? We do go, we go to API, you know we go to IMARK. I mean these are, you know, those international mining conferences or in the oil and gas, you know Australian Petroleum Exploration Association, for example.

 

We go to Land Forces, which is the defense, you know, for ground forces so as the name says, we go. We go to these conferences, right? We stay in the industry. We learn their language? What contracts are going? Who’s who’s winning a contract where? It is very important, it took a while to actually get into that industry, you know, and you can imagine how, how sort of especially 10 years ago, 15 years ago, the demography of a mining conference. You know this, you know, old white men in theirs suits, right? You know, maybe knowing I’m middle aged, you know, but yeah, you need to go in there. So we have many sales meetings, actually. You asked about how was it during COVID as well, that’s actually very good, you know, once we are in front of the client, so I might meet people there, as you can see also on LinkedIn, in those groups.

 

Once we are in front of the client, once we get the client, we get the chance to present to the client our team. We usually convince then convert, you know, it’s just obviously getting there, so a very disciplined approach as well… one thing is to be around, but very disciplined. I mean, we use HubSpot, right? Religiously… hmm… religious follow ups, you know, and getting to these meetings, that’s in that space. The other space, Sultan, in Australia is of course called the culturally and linguistically diverse communities, right? It’s a very big we’ll probably talk about this later but same, obviously you need to be in that space as well.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Absolutely, so let’s talk about sales. It’s a good segue to the next question, it’s a well known fact that the leader of a company is its best salesperson and obviously you are a great example of that. How do you sell your company services and core capabilities? Obviously you’re not going to sell translation to people you are going to sell solving a problem, how has that changed with, as you mentioned, digital transformation and recently with COVID pushing everyone to do things online I’m.

 

Tea Dietterich

I am trying to really get your question here, so how… what, how, how it has changed, how we sell? Is this what you’re asking?

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

I’m trying to get a context difference in terms of how we used to do sales of translation before versus how we are presenting it now in the context of everything being virtual.

 

Tea Dietterich

Right, of course. Yes, I mean already, you know, the client is so much smarter, you know so much more informed. I don’t know about smarter but smarter about our industry for sure, right? If done, you know, by the time they contact you, unless they just meet me at a conference out of the blue, but by the time they usually contact us, of course they’ve done their research. Everybody knows, this is nothing new, you know. So you have to demonstrate the value to them. Because again, it’s not the translation, you’re not showcasing anything. It’s not statically, we do translation, we’re interpreting, you know that’s not what it is. You need to find their pain points. And know what is it, you know… and what is it that they are trying to achieve? Even that is nothing new, right? But it really is what I said before we try… you know once we get into a meeting with them and we really know about the organization, right? We’ve talked to them, we’ve gone through this pipeline already at a conference, know what they… you know, which tenders have they won? Or maybe their threats, which markets do they want to enter?

 

If you know like to give you an example, let’s say if I speak to an Australian exporter who says what language should we localize in, right? German? No, because the Germans speak such good English. There’s no point, I’d rather, use the budget for Spanish, right? The Spanish don’t speak so good English, you know. And, so, then you go and you look at different factors. Maybe, let’s see, let’s take an Australian pump manufacturer, right? Maybe who is actually surging for that, who is actually buying pumps and then you look at that and you find out that the East European countries are buying pumps from the Germans, right? Because Germans have a very good reputation, yeah, for good pumps, and so they search in German for the pumps so by getting this Australian company to localize into German not because the Germans don’t understand English. No, because all the East European countries search in English for those pumps. This way suddenly the Australian pump also gets a look in suddenly increases sales of whole new markets in East Europe and wins some German businesses on the way.

 

So then you tell clients, ah, this is another way to look at that, that really adds value. They go like, never thought about this. This makes such sense, right? So this is really important. Saying with other things of, you know, if you’re localising, should I localize for Finland, you know, or for Germany, again, this is such a good example. Because they go Germans, actually they speak English. Another thought process is what is the tolerance here? Right? What are the tolerance levels of that culture to non localized content? Germans who speak English their tolerance levels are actually very low. If a website is not localized into German, you know, because they are used to dubbed movies. They are used to, look, having German you know as a localized… whereas you go to Finland or to some other countries or Iceland, they’re used to having the content in English, so the tolerance level is a lot higher. So, you know, this is a good way to sell. You give your clients tools and sales, and then if it makes sense to them then they buy. Does that make sense to you?

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

A hundred percent. Shifting gears here, Tea. Your staff love you and your organization from what I know. What is the secret to that? How do you form that bond and that relationship with your team?

 

Tea Dietterich

Well, I don’t think I’m the right person to answer this here. I mean you really need to talk to my team. We do have a culture of a 2M family, we are a real tribe, you know, even now, that we’ve grown so much that I don’t even know everyone in the organization anymore personally, bad we get together, from Brisbane we fly to Melbourne. We obviously haven’t had the chance to all come together with COVID internationally because of the travel restrictions, but I really have to shout out to my leadership team here because they’re doing this. You know they’re creating the bond and first of all, number one is our COO, Helena Rojas. She’s the one who forms that bond, keeps them engaged and she’s across everything. So it really… actually, I mean it’s her doing.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Well, that says a lot about you and your leadership and how you were being able to attract such great people to your organization actually, I think you’re an envy to a lot of us in our industry.

 

Tea Dietterich

Thanks. I do have the best team. Yes, I agree.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Let’s, let’s talk about about how you do that So your team… how engaged are they to you? Do they have a direct line to get in touch with you in case someone from another country, you have international teams, they need to reach to to the CEO, can they just pick up the phone and call you or send you an email? Or do they have to go through a chain of command?

 

Tea Dietterich

No, we run slack. We use like a lot, right? So that’s a great tool. We tried to reduce emails wherever possible, so yes, so we slack… we got slack channels that groups and people can just slack me directly and they do absolutely. And if I’m I have it on my phone, you know, and that is the beauty. So yes I am, there is no line of command, they get directly straight to me.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

That that’s very interesting. Let’s talk about something else. I want to hear your thoughts on the subject of commoditization. The services that we’re selling, translation, localization has always been considered an afterthought, but now is it something that that’s being replaced in the community? Do you see that people think it’s something that machines can do and how does that affect the way you conduct your business?

 

Tea Dietterich

Well, look as my CTO says, you know what’s it… you know what is being commoditized here is actually the language data, you know and those language service providers who understand that, you know, they can open new areas of revenues, you know, via the language data for AI services. So instead of feeling replaceable, right? Use the data you gather in translation and localization services to be your own replacement. You know, wire that language data for AI services so that’s already one thing you know. But that’s, you know, that being said. There’s a bright future for human expertise, right? And expert linguists in our industry… the jobs change, you know, not, but the people are not being replaced. The jobs, you know that you just need to adapt. So if we go to… you know, I mean technology is constantly changing, right? The rules of the game in our industry, so the model, you know whether it is, it’s really for linguists and LSPS to adapt or to go out of business in general.

 

You know, I said years ago technology is a single most economic driver of the future. So we took this very seriously. We established the 2M Labs, which is our R&D department so, you know, I say this all time because you know the whole commoditization, you know concept of technology is very closely, you know, connected. Technology has an increasing role, right? And value in our industry… whether it’s a save costs or to differentiate from competition. You know LSPs who are not actively implementing new technology, you know they’re bound to disappear, we know that, unless they have a super niche expertise, right? Because otherwise there will always going to be a competitor who will be able to do the same thing better and cheaper with technology, right? Then again, technology requires investment, capacity, you know, which is a challenge for LSPs, but as my CTO says, you know to quote Thomas Lespes Muñoz, he says the more technology we use the more human we need to be. And that’s really really important because there is, you know, so we don’t see a replacement at all, we just see this shift, you know, which happens in all the other sectors too. Diesel engineers are retraining here to hydrogen engineers, right? Doctors, right? You know they look and take decisions.

 

Translators look at the output of machine translation and have to, it’s expected for from linguists, in a fraction of a second to decide MT output useful, right? Great, use it not useful, n o, not agonizing over it, and complaining that that MT output actually made their translation worse. No if, it’s not useful, you know, but that requires switched-on-ness. It requires creativity, you know, and we pay for the skill. Even if some if the translator changes nothing from the machine translation because the translator has the skills and the knowledge to decide this is the correct output. You know? So gone are… of course what is replaceable… gone are the days of average mediocre translators or if you’re not adding the value, right? If you’re not taking these decisions, it’s still the creativity we have what AI doesn’t have. Right? It’s not yet replaced. Let’s see what happens, right? You take two independent concepts and create a new one. This is something AI is not doing yet. This is what I teach also to students, even in primary school, you know, and I talked to kids. This is what’s going to shape now their immediate.

 

We’re here to take decisions. It’s not anymore, we learn something and no, you have the skills you know the systems, things are automated and you’re there and you have… and that takes, you know… gone are the days of go to work, I relax from 9 to 5 because I’m just doing this job, because I don’t want any headaches. Now you have to really use your brain. But if you do this, you know, neither technology is a threat nor the commoditization, in my opinion.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

On the subject of technology, Tea, let me ask you one more question. What type of new applications of language, whether it is verbal, like interpreting or whether it’s in the form of text or even probably other means that we haven’t thought of, do you foresee that the technology will enable in our industry? For example, last year or the year before we saw that some of the technologies like GPT 3 and whatever they enabled us to produce text or generate text to give it a, for example, uh, a topic to write a press release about something, it was like maybe not as great as humans do, but what does that mean for mean for our industry? What type of new applications do you foresee the technology will enable us to offer as a value for our customers?

 

Tea Dietterich

You know, I literally I am so convinced that there are such incredible technology inventions around the corner which we don’t even think of, right? So there are, you know there could be something next year, which I’m so… the answer is I don’t know. I really don’t know because there will be things that haven’t been invented yet. Sure, we all have this wish list, right? Of… we all know that neural machine translation, you know, is going to, you know, improve a lot, right? Which is, you know, I just don’t want to… I don’t want to repeat what’s already, you know, being discussed and what’s already been, you know what’s already on offer. Let’s go maybe into, you know intersegment, are we looking at what like what’s the wish list here?

 

Maybe that’s a good place to start because let’s go into interpreting what do we want? What is good for and what do the clients want? Of course, the clients, by the way, who have now embraced RSI or the multilingual meetings, right? The platforms have embraced it because Webex, you know, has come on board. You know, I’m sure, you know, that Webex has now an RSI function which is actually, you know, pretty good. You probably know that Zoom has one. The Zoom one didn’t have the features so interpreters still have to talk to each other, via WhatsApp to do the hand-over because it didn’t have a hand-over button then, the RSI platforms in our industries that we know so, but Webex is… so yes, they are responding so then the ultimate is of course that you don’t need a real simultaneous interpreter behind it. You know, that’s the ultimate. I mean, there aren’t many that are really waiting for this. If we stay with this application, for example.

 

And you know, there’s I think we will see this, you know, so if I pick one, I think we will see a lot of development going into that in the future. And again, this is not a threat to those talented simultaneous interpreters in our industry, which by the way I mean, of course, you know they have all… I mean, I’ve studied interpreting so, you know, I’m very close to them. Interpreters will be the most interesting people you ever meet in your life, right? We like the machine translation, you know? How we translate so much more now, you know, human translation hasn’t gone down… has gone up. Same with simultaneous interpreting, right? It’s because these applications, like for example, you know, machine simultaneous interpreting, which I see completely coming will be used just like machine translation in settings where it was, where simply no interpreting was done before.

 

And I’m actually quite passionate about our science, simultaneous interpreting in the cultural, linguistically diverse community setting. It is something that’s never, never been used in that setting before. Simultaneous interpreting was always something for your international trade, for your diplomatic, for the big conferences because it was elite. It was expensive. As I have change set, you know not the interpreter, right? But of course, you know the travel and all the other costs around it, and we are actually quick leaders in democratizing simultaneous interpreting and bringing it and making it possible in the in the migrant space by, for example, you know using platforms I’m paying for ourselves for the platform only for the interpreters. You don’t have a whole hour as a whole day. You can have only one hour, so coming back to your question, what tech applications do you see? I see needs, I see a place for machine simultaneous interpreting that is not threatening at all the human interpreters we have at the moment, but which will be applied in settings where currently there simply is no interpreting happening at all, just to name one.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

that that’s a very interesting thought, Tea. I just I got reminded that a couple days ago I I read somewhere that Monash University in your corner of the world actually… they were given a $5 million grant to develop something that in addition to interpreting the content of speech, their system will be translating body language and facial expressions which basically provides cultural cues to prevent a breakdown in communications and ensure smooth and cross cultural dialogue. This this type of an application coming from academia probably has its place in our industry. Maybe somehow we can couple that with RIS that you just mentioned. Right? Like how do we understand body language when we when we are doing interpreting especially I guess virtually it will have it even more of a role to play. So yeah, I’m very excited about these things to happen and you are right that we will see many applications that we haven’t thought of. It comes down to how do we make sure that we stay relevant with these applications and these technologies. And you’re right, the only way we can be using technologies to become more human. So with that, what is your message for people listening to you right now? Other leaders and executives in our industry would like to know what is the one thing that you cannot wait to tell them.

 

Tea Dietterich

What a question! I am not sure if they are really hanging out for, you know, something for me to tell them, but you know, maybe OK. A big heartfelt thank you. You know, there you have it. Thank you to all the leaders and executives in this industry, who have given me such generous advice throughout the years, you know, who’ve helped me to grow my business into the successful international company and you know who you are… you know if you’re listening from GALA, from ELIA, you know, like well from the from you know, the from this sector are some big, some of the biggest service providers we have in this world to smaller ones. Generously, they’ve shared the trade secrets with me behind the scenes info, invited me to sit in their office, look at their systems, how they do things you know, and I do recommend this to all those new leaders who might be listening to this, to do the same. It can be a lonely existence, you know, to be the CEO. And it was really other LSPs, the CEOs of other language service providers who gave me the mentoring I needed early on. Now today, it’s my people, my leadership team and the and the broader organization. So this is nothing new, you know, I just like to repeat it again, you your people are your biggest asset, treat them really well.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Tea, we have reached the end of this interview. I would like to give a little bit of shout out to your organization and to yourself for being such a great champion. If our listeners want to get in touch with you regarding any of the topics we discussed today or for any business propositions, what is the best way for them to reach out to you?

 

Tea Dietterich

Look, thanks, Sultan. It’s a pleasure, and by the way, I’m very happy you mentioned Monash University in Melbourne. Indeed, they do great things. As a matter of fact, just now, as we speak parts of our R&D team are actually meeting with Monash because they’re part of all this R&D that’s happening there. Many of our best people are all coming from Monash University. So big shout out to them, but of course we have other great, you know universities in in Australia. How do you find us? 2M… that’s number two, M for Mary dot com dot AU is obviously our website. But find me on LinkedIn and send me a message, if you are connected. If you’re not connected yet, connect to me. You can reach us, of course, by email to team@2m.com.au or directly, obviously to my email, which is my name Tea without an H dot Ditterich at 2M dot com dot AU, I would love to hear. And as you heard, before giving back to the industry is really important to me because I have, I got so much from this industry and from you as well, Sultan, you know, so thank you very much for this.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Absolutely, that was a fascinating and fun conversation, Tea. You are always an inspiration for me and for so many people in our industry. I’m sure people listening to us today have learned at least one thing that they can apply to their life or work and improve how they do things. I hope we can do this again and you can share your wisdom with us on another topic with that, thank you for your time.

 

Tea Dietterich

Thank you very much, it has been pleasure.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Leading and managing are two different but related things, and as an owner or leader of translation company with presence in multiple jurisdictions, you need to be forward thinking like Tea. The most natural evolution of expanding an organization in the language spaces to branch out geographically for such advantages as time zone, extension of operations, cultural diversity, local market presence, foreign skills access and much more. Tea clearly laid out how complex and difficult it is to define roles and responsibilities in such a structure. I think it comes down to taking your corporate vision and mission and identifying how every team and individual across different locations add value, reducing overlap and increasing complementing strengths.

 

It is a true leadership challenge to build a well functioning, multi jurisdictional language operation. Tea also pointed out that you are not a true leader until you train another leader. This will be absolutely critical in scenarios where every geo-location operates in harmony In Sync with the core operations. These are the leaders that lead and manage people and their locations according to local customs, traditions, cultural and business norms, as well as regulations that may not resonate or be known to central leadership. It is an interesting and exciting time for our industry in language services companies that are expanding geographically as they have to work cut out for them along with the rewards that come with it.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

That was my conversation with Tea. I am hopeful you enjoyed it as much as I did talking to her. She’s very strategic minded and always works with the big picture. As I said, she is a true inspiration and we are lucky to have leaders like Tea in our industry.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the Translation Company Talk podcasts on Apple Podcasts, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or your platform of choice. Give us a thumbs up or five star rating wherever you’re listening. It is great for our ratings.

 

Until next time.

 

Outro

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