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Video Jan 24, 2025

3 Questions with Diego Cresceri – Localization Providers: Changes and Adaptation

Welcome to three questions with MotionPoint. I'm your host, Dominic Ditherbaj. And today I have the absolute pleasure of being with Vero Cresheri. Vero is the CEO and founder of Creative Words, and he has over a decade of experience at the intersection of language and technology.

He's a driving force in breaking down linguistic and cultural barriers for businesses worldwide. And as the CEO and founder, he's dedicated his career to helping companies expand globally by leveraging innovative AI, machine translation, and cutting edge localization solutions. Diego, it's a pleasure to have you here. How are you doing?

Thank you, Dominic. I'm doing great. Thank you for inviting me. It's my pleasure, honestly.

Well, no. It's well, listen. We're both excited to be here. So let let's get started. I mean, what what really is a pivotal moment in your career that's shaped where you are and and how how much expertise you've gathered in the translation and localization industry?

So you said I have over a decade of experience.

It's almost twenty years, honestly. It will be twenty years in April. And I I started, let me just start by saying that I am a data by education first. So and I love to say I'm not an expert by the appearance.

Twenty years is is a lot, man. So, it's difficult when you have twenty years working in a single industry to identify pivotal moments. I would say it's probably a progression. I've been lucky enough to start as an intern in a translation company, and I spent twelve years then there.

Different roles, I started as a translator intern, and then moved to project management, then operations. Then I even became a partner there. So I I saw it all from the LSP point of view, of course.

After that, what I call my second life in the industry, I started really look outside. And so I've been involved in translation association, in industry association. I've been in ELLIH, the European Language Industry Association. A lot of different experiences that brought me to where I am right now. So it's more a progression of different things that brought me here rather than, you know, a very pivotal moment. And this relates to, you know, every technology disruptions that we experienced in our industry.

Yeah.

Really everything. If I have to think of a good decision, I do. For instance, getting into the ELEA board, was a good one. Getting to my first ELEA event in twenty seventeen was a good decision, but I cannot really identify, you know, a single moment, a wow moment or, that I really recognize. It's really a matter of consistency and resilience and ongoing, probably, effort also Yeah. If you know what I mean.

Well, yeah. It sounds like you've just, accumulated a lot of building blocks. You've looked, you've looked at different areas of the localization workflow experience from, starting as an intern and and and studying translation to then, you know, managing those processes and understanding, you know, how how the business has evolved. I think that's a great segue to one of the questions that we have here prepared, which is, you know, what are some challenges or successes that you've seen in adapting the additional translation workflows to, you know, more modern technology driven systems, especially, you know, the past few years with anything that's happening with AI?

Yeah. Again, and I'm I'm focusing on my second life in the industry. When I started Creative Words, it was twenty sixteen, and that's when newer machine translation was a kind of launch in the industry. And so this is where I found myself in and I had to adapt from the start, let's say. And since then, we've seen many different changes, many different evolutions and progresses.

And again, it's been an ongoing effort, technology wise to adapt to to get the to be doing new things and everything. The the biggest challenge, though, is the common, ground to all of these changes that I've experienced and is a managing change and managing change with my customers.

You know, you have those customer believing that technology is the solution to everything, and you have those customers that don't want to hear about that. Managing change with my staff as well because we are, we have a staff of twenty five at the moment, even more than that. And you need to be instilling the culture of a change every day at the moment within the office. So that's also a challenge in managing change with your providers as well, with DOPENDUS, because you need to to get in touch with them and ask them to do to deliver something else that they're not used to.

And this started from the very beginning with newer machine translation back in twenty seventeen. Now when Gen AI came into in into the game, it's even faster, and it's even more challenging to to keep the pace of change and to instill this culture of change. And and I keep talking about how and how vast we need to change. Yeah.

And resistance to change is is really a thing.

You know?

Absolutely.

On the old supply chain, the customer to the vendor and to the operational side and to the adoption of technology, it's, it's really more a soft skill thing rather than, you know, adopting the latest technology. Because if you had that base of, culture, then you can do whatever you want, I guess. But I have to say I've been successful as well because I cannot complain about how my team has reacted to it. Sometimes we, you know, more effort on my side. Sometimes it was easier. But I cannot all in all, I cannot say I'm I'm not happy about how to embrace change. And then you you you face new technologies and new things and new ideas every day, which is which is good and exciting on on my side as well, at least.

Yeah. I mean, I think our industry specifically is one that's very susceptible to change. I think all of them are right. But in translation, it can be, you know, one new piece of technology is released that completely paradigm paradigm shifts to everybody in our industry.

And I think you're right. It's about managing change. And it's not only, at a technical level, it's, managing customer client expectations, managing, the new workflows that you have to adopt to be more efficient when there's a new, you know, technology that's that's helping you fulfill the work that we have to do. Right?

As someone in the localization industry, then you have to have a lot of soft skills to manage your internal team, like you're saying, and, customers and then the supply chain of of how you fulfill. So absolutely. And I think people in our industry more than more than others get to experience that almost every year. And, you know, so you were talking about twenty sixteen, like, neural machine translation.

That that sounds like so antiquated now. Right? And look at it sounds like so far away. But, I remember when we were trying to, you know, wrap our heads around how we're going to, you know, address this in the market, address this with our customers.

But it really seems like every single time there’s a new technology that helps make translation easier.

We also get customers and user expectations to be that translation quality is continuously getting better and more affordable. Right? And Yep. We know that there's a lot of things in the background, that kinda have to, you know, fit the mold for that narrative to be true.

And sometimes it's not as simple as it might seem to to someone that's not in the industry. So it's very interesting what you're saying that. I I totally agree. But I've seen that, Diego, you specifically, have really, you know, honed into, you know, the the Italian market and helping people enter the Italian market.

So I think the next question here is, do you know or would you like to share any cultural linguistic barriers of entry that res you know, that resonate with Italian culture and citizens?

Basically, when you're when you're trying to enter Italy, what are some things that companies from a cultural and linguistic point of view have to focus on? Uh-huh.

So in Italy, we have a very strong cultural specificity. We move our hands like this. We are banking on food, for instance. And so that's something that we really need to be taking into account. The company a US company, let's say, wants to, market their products in Italy, that's something we need they really need to be taken into account. We have a very, very strong cultural specificity, and we want it to be addressed, to be respected Yeah. To start with.

Also, I need to add if you talk about linguistic skills and linguistic barriers, they're probably not the best people in terms of, you know, understanding a foreign language, which is a pity because I studied languages all my life. So that's a very strong barrier. If you do want to come to Italy, and, yes, that's valid for other countries as well, you need to localize your products. You need to, make us really understand and trust, I guess I I have no data to support this.

But in Italy, a very big part of the population would not buy if they really cannot understand, like, you know, the terms and conditions. And if the customer journey, the buying journey is not localized perfectly, we will not trust the product. And that's that could really be a barrier unless Yeah. You want to, you know, compete on twice.

I mean, everybody goes on big ecommerce. Let let's not mention them. But everybody would go there, take a save a lot of money. Yeah.

That's I really imagine. Have a very specific on quality, then you need to really be very focused on the quality of the language and on providing a customer journey that would give us trust. Probably, we're not the only ones that not very specific or Italian. It's valid for other countries as well.

But we are very, very keen on that.

Yeah, absolutely. We've had a similar situation, in in my career where we we really try to sell into the Italian market. And, it's ironic. It's a little ironic because you work in a translation industry, but when you you you have a salesperson talking to someone that's, you know, from Italy, that speaks Italian, that's managing their entire business line and and employees in Italian, and you wanna talk to that person in English, ironically, even though if you try and translate a good localization for them, you're not gonna really close that deal because they wanna make sure that the buyer's journey and that's inclusive of people that you're talking to, right, or or your customer support team, they want you to speak Italian.

So from fulfillment perspective, even from a go to market and sales and marketing perspective, you know, you can sell translation, you can sell localization, but if you yourself aren't really representing that you are fluid in that language as a as a person talking to the the prospect or future client. Right? It's really hard to make that connection. And it really speaks to the, you know, cultural and and and traditional undertones of, you know, business in different markets.

If you go to, you know, the UK and you speak English with them, if you're an American company, for example, or maybe in Mexico, you speak to them in English, even though there's a little bit of a cultural barrier, or a linguistic barrier for for Mexico, it's It's still feasible to close the deal to get a relationship, but in countries, like Italy, we really have that experience. I've had that experience. And also in in France, I've had that experience where, you know, you have to really show that beyond just the translation and localization that as the person that's fulfilling this, you can relate and you can have a connection with them.

And and that’s absolutely something true I’ve experienced that it’s and it’s ironic sometimes, you know, but very interesting.

Absolutely. I can totally relate to that.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, those are our three questions, but I have to ask, where can I get myself a pair of those glasses, man? Those are some pretty cool glasses out there.

That's Italian fashion, you know? That it's very local. They they are made in general where by offices. Is. So it's very specific.

Yeah. I mean, I gotta I gotta find it.

I have a very strong confession, you know, with strong on style. Not saying I am strong on style, but we are strong on style.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I love it. I love it, Diego. I really wanna thank you again for coming on.

That that does it for three questions. With most important, thank you very much for tuning in and until next time.

Thank you very much. Bye bye. Bye everybody.