S07E03: Vamos Juntos - Latin American Language Industry Forum

Welcome to this episode of the Translation Company Talk Podcast. We are going to hear once again about business opportunities and challenges for language translation companies in South America and the Caribbean. Charles Campbell will join us once again to speak about this topic. He knows this region very well and is a founding member of Vamos Juntos, a regional language services association.

Charles Campbell is the founder and president of Translation Back Office, a leading provider of project management, translation and localization services with offices in Argentina, Peru, Thailand, Ukraine, and Vietnam. Originally from New Zealand, Charles has traveled widely over four continents and has lived for the last 20 years in South America. Charles has been a frequent speaker at public events and conferences, having made presentations in New Jersey, Buenos Aires, London, Rhode Island, San Antonio, San Francisco, Wiesbaden, Lima, and Cordoba.

Charles has published two articles in multilingual magazine on the future of localization industry and also authored an article on vendor management in the ATA Chronicle. Charles Campbell has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Spanish from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, where he graduated top of his class in 1997. Charles has also completed postgraduate courses at Harvard University and the University of Australia and Buenos Aires, Argentina. Charles, welcome back to the Translation Company Talk podcast.

Well, thank you very much, Sultan, for having me. It's great to be here. It's always a pleasure to have you here, Charles. Everybody knows you in the industry.

I'm sure there's some people who haven't met you yet or had the pleasure of knowing you. For those that are listening to you for the first time, please tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do. Okay, so my full name is Charles Campbell. I'm originally from New Zealand, but I have been living in South America for like 25 years.

I also lived in the United States when I was a kid and well I've been working in the translation interpreting and localization industry basically for my whole adult life I was kidnapped almost as a teenager by this industry and I love it I work with amazing people I work at a company called TBO which has offices spread around the world in five different locations and also has five international quality norms so it's busy times at TBO and I'm also on the board of Juntos, which is an organization that represents translation, interpreting, and localization companies in Latin America and the Caribbean, trying to promote the adoption of norms in the region and raising the bar of standards in general, promoting benchmarking, networking, coaching, learning, and so forth.

and I really like working with Juntos. We've been organizing annual conferences. How are things with business these days in general? Well, I think business is challenging, not just for translation, interpreting, and localization companies.

I think it's challenging across the board. There's a lot of turmoil and confusion in the markets. The regulatory framework is not clear. you know these are difficult times for companies people are holding off on investments and people are stalling plans and then of course you know you have our ongoing international conflicts ongoing war in in ukraine with the russian invasion i mean there's just a lot going on in the world at the moment and i think it's making it difficult for business leaders to plan ahead and so forth.

And how that percolates down to the translation, interpreting, and localization industry means that some big jobs and big investments are stalled, and therefore the translations are stalled as well. On a government level, certainly the United States government is pushing to spend less money on translation. It's not a huge spender by international standards on translation, to the best of my knowledge, but it certainly contributes It's a lot to the well-being of a number of linguists in the United States and companies that work on government contracts.

And these government contracts, they're for a reason. I mean, they're translating conversations between immigration inspectors and people who have been arrested or victims of violent crime or in an educational setting, in a health care setting. So it is challenging, to say the least, for people who have been working in these roles to suddenly see cutbacks set in. And then further afield, for example, the almost instant closure of USAID has significantly affected translators, for example, in Africa, who perhaps worked on USAID-related programs for HIV prevention, other disease prevention, domestic violence prevention, A whole lot of different things that USAID was involved in, potable water access and so forth, that has suddenly been, like, frozen.

So, I mean, there's a lot of turmoil, a lot of turmoil, and people are not really sure what to do about it. You know, and I think in that context that you have to stop what you're doing, sharpen your axe, and then continue cutting down the tree. You need to stop. If I use a different, like a soccer metaphor, you're running, they pass you the ball, you stop.

Even if it's not all for a long time, a few seconds, you stop and you think, where am I going to kick this ball next? Or am I going to run with the ball? What am I going to do? So it's a stop and think before you keep on doing.

It's not a just do it, you know, the night swish. I don't believe in just do it. I think right now it's think about it carefully and then do it. But all of that process has to be relatively quick because everything is moving so quick.

You know, so it's a very challenging environment, you know, and it's very exciting, but very challenging. Absolutely. Since we last spoke, Charles, you know, focusing back on Vemos Santos, this organization, this, you know, association, it has grown. And you have a few events in the past few years that were very successful.

So, why don't you give us an intro on the organization and its activities? Sure. So, Vamos Vento started five years ago. I basically called about 100 people in Latin America.

I either called them or emailed them and said, we need to have an association that represents translation, interpreting, and localization companies on a regional level for Latin America and the Caribbean. And we need to promote the adoption of national associations like the ALC in the United States or CLIA in Canada or ATC in the United Kingdom. We need to promote the adoption of international quality norms. We need to raise the bar of standards through the organization of face-to-face networking, coaching, and mentoring events.

So we need to do a lot of things so that Latin America can take its place at the table. I mean, you see the reports. Latin America represents 1% of global translation and interpreting sales. How can that be when almost everybody in the industry works with somebody in Latin America?

Or seems like about a quarter of companies in language industry in the United States have owners who are connected to Latin America in some way. So how can Latin America only be 1% of the global industry? You know, something's wrong. Maybe there's an underrepresentation there.

So that's how we got started. And we the pandemic hit and derailed us for a while because we didn't really know each other. It was myself living in Argentina, New Zealand. We had another board member in Peru and another board member in Brazil and another board member and two board members in Mexico.

Like, you know, we don't even really know each other. So we got together in Peru and we wined and dined and we were stuck on our name, which at that time was unpronounceable. It was the Association of Language Companies of Latin America and the Caribbean, or it was A-S-L-A-L-C or A-L-C-A-L-S. I mean, it was just unbearable to pronounce it, and we always got it wrong ourselves.

So we were sitting there, and we were together eating, and I said to the Portuguese board member, how do you say together in Portuguese? And he said, juntos, with a J. And I said, well, you know, in Spanish, it's juntos, also with a J. So the spelling is the same and it means together.

So we've got a perfect word. We're coming together. And the word is the same in Spanish and Portuguese, which, of course, represent 99 percent of people who speak languages in Latin America and the Caribbean. So I thought, you know, let's do it.

And we voted and we unanimously voted to call ourselves Juntos. and then we moved to organize our first event to continue breaking the ice you know after the pandemic people were second online meetings and people wanted to meet face to face so we said let's do an executive retreat in rio de janeiro beautiful beach pretty affordable and sort of in the middle of south america on the east side so not at the bottom like argentina but not at the top like mexico so people come from both sides east west north south and uh we were thinking you know maybe like 25 people we ended up getting 56 people so it was a fully blown conference we had sponsors speakers it was fantastic uh we had the support of multilingual magazine mimsy uh plunet memo q um was a great event uh a very high standard and uh very affordable um local political and economical circumstances meant that we were um on the beach you know having beers for $1.

50 a beer, and it was great. People loved that, and the weather was wonderful, too, because it was held in March, so people from Canada, the U.S., Western Europe could escape the winter.

The next year, 2024, we moved to the other side of South America, to Lima, Peru. Quite different, not humid like Rio de Janeiro, but also in front of the beach. We were at the JW Marriott, a classier hotel with an amazing sea view it was a more expensive event but the number of attendees tripled to over 150 and we had more than 10 sponsors we had people attending from southeast asia from eastern europe from australia uh from all over western and uh eastern and southern europe um scandinavia obviously canada um it was an amazing event um with 155 people i think uh and the the quality of the speakers just shot through the roof and everyone and it really put us on the map and then just we had vamos juntos in mexico city and about the same number of attendees but the another quantum leap in terms of the quality of speakers and so forth we had a rooftop cocktail party.

There was an eclipse, there were tango dancers and an earthquake all during the same cocktail party. And that's when we announced that in 2026, it would be in Buenos Aires, Argentina. So this is a little bit like the Olympics. We're moving around different parts of Latin America and the Caribbean, basically trying to promote growth in these different parts of the region, and also organizing events in places that don't normally get events.

So if you look at ALC or Lock World or Alia, Gala, they tend to gravitate around similar cities, like Lock World has been so many times in Barcelona or Dublin or Silicon Valley. Gala has been so many times in Barcelona, San Diego, you know, they tend to repeat. So we wanted to organize Vamos Juntos, which is the conference that Juntos organizes, in places that haven't really been protagonists in the global translation, interpreting, localization industry from a conference standpoint.

There's a huge number of translators and linguists in Mexico City. There just hasn't been an event there to bring everyone together. The same goes for Rio de Janeiro. The same goes for Lima.

Buenos Aires has had its fair share of large events, and we are expecting an even bigger crowd. But it's been very interesting to organize these events in what we call off-the-beaten-track locations. and we've gotten a huge amount of positive feedback about, you know, I loved Vamos Juntos and I loved the fact that it was in Mexico City and not at, for example, Cancun in the swimming pool. Loved the fact that we were in Rio de Janeiro at the conference or in Lima and not in the same old, same old destination that perhaps other conferences are organized in.

So, you know, it's been a really interesting process. I myself have gotten to know Latin America much better. Because that was the thing. We discovered that the Brazilians didn't really know much about what was going on in Mexico.

Mexicans didn't know much about what was going on in Argentina. Argentinians didn't know much about half of the rest of the continent. Everyone was looking north to the United States in particular and not focusing on their regional relationships and their regional knowledge. So it's been a very rewarding process.

And I myself have made some amazing friends out of them. Well, I'm very happy how things are going. Looks like, you know, the organization and it has molded itself with the changing demographic. I mean, the changing dynamics in the landscape with economy.

I mean, initially it was just COVID and then a lot of other things happened and politically the world is adjusting and shifting. So it was a good timing for, you know, this organization to represent that side of the world. But speaking of the upcoming get-togethers, I'm sure that there's a lot to be talked about. You have conferences coming up.

What are the main goals of the upcoming conference? And what are the topics or themes that you and your colleagues are working on to support the industry, in particular in the Caribbean and Latin America, for the foreseeable future, 24 months? Well, in terms of Vamos Juntos 2026, which is in March 14 and 15 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the conference doesn't have a theme. Vamos Juntos is about bringing people together in our industry, and it doesn't have a theme.

There's several themes that people are mostly talking about, like AI, for example, the growth in interpreting, language access as a civil right. I mean, there's several different things going on that are center stage in the industry at the moment. But there's no one themed conference. We are aiming for 200 or more people.

In Mexico City, we were at a hotel called El Presidente. And that was the hotel where Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Fidel Castro, I think the Pope, and I don't know who else, had all stayed at that same hotel at some point in their careers. So it was a very classy hotel with several restaurants and beautiful decor and facilities and gym right next to a park. No, it's not going to be easy to match that.

And in Lima, we were on a cliff looking out at the ocean. So you were having lunch and you just see the blue ocean. Not easy to match that, I'll tell you. But we'll be doing our best in Buenos Aires.

and Buenos Aires is full of architecture and culture and music and history. It doesn't have, I don't know, the sea view because it's on a kind of murky gray river that you can't see the other side of because it's the Rio de la Plata. It's one of the widest rivers in the world. You can't see Uruguay on the other side.

So there's not that same view that we had in Lima. but there's architecture there's culture there's history there's music there's and there's there's nightlife um so we're very excited about that and uh we're expecting it to grow from around about 150 attendees in 2025 to over 200 in 2026 which is not easy to do in the current business environment and people people are cutting back on conferences um there was a one recent conference I believe where there was like one third of the attendees just dropped away and they only they only you know they had like a 35 or 40 percent drop in the number of attendees so in that context I'm extremely proud of the fact that the Juntos board which currently consists of Maria Jose Alberto from Argentina, David Migo from Peru, Rafael Sosa from Brazil, Saul Villegas from Mexico and Rosalind, famous from Bermuda, who lives in Puerto Rico, though.

It's a tricky one. She's famous. And we're also in the process of bringing a couple of new board members on. So, you know, wash the space.

So it's due to the hard work of these people that this is happening. It's a joint effort. Nobody's paid. Nobody gets any benefit.

I think we get one free complimentary ticket to the conference, and that's it. So, you know, people are putting it in, putting in their free time in order to get out, you know, learning experiences and meeting new people. I'm glad to hear that there is a lot of interest. There's so many different angles and the Amazon seems to be one of the new and up and coming trendy events in our industry.

Let me ask you about the ideal attendee for this conference. Are you just targeting the LSPs or it's open to freelancers, maybe nonprofits, technology providers, or a mix of everybody, basically? Do you also have representation from governments, from policymakers? Well, we have all of the above, I believe, in Mexico City, although I'm not sure about nonprofits.

I mean, we had a whole bunch of students. We had some university professors from different universities in Mexico City. We had a lot of people making tools and technology. So we had people there from Bureau Works, MemoQ, Plunet.

We had individual linguists attending, especially in the interpreting field with a tremendous amount of personal experience. We had a lot of project managers, team leaders, company owners, sales managers, marketing managers, business leaders from LSPs. And then we had a whole bunch of people from buyers. So we had people from Uber.

We had three people from Uber, Meta, Salesforce, Corn Fairy, Rotary International, and I'm probably forgetting somebody. So it was wonderful to have those world class. I mean, they're not just buyers of localization. They're the buyers of localization on a world level in attendance, which I thought was fantastic.

So we had a buyer's panel in which they all got to basically talk about how things look from their side of the fence. We also had a women business leaders panel, which was tremendously interesting. And we had a panel about interpreting. And then we also had an academic panel.

So lots of panels. We had pre-conference workshops, four of them, probably too many. I don't think we'll have four pre-conference workshops in Buenos Aires. I think we'll just have two or maybe even one.

Who knows? But we won't be having four. It was too much. Two of them were sold out, and the others, I think, because they were simultaneously running in conjunction with the ones that were sold out, were not as well attended.

In general, I think that we put a lot of, as we say in Argentina, we put all the meat on the barbecue. We didn't call back. I think maybe we had too many speakers. That would be the criticism that I think has come up in the feedback surveys and that we could do more with less next time around.

So instead of having simultaneous tracks, just have one track, everyone in the same room, things like that. This podcast is made possible with sponsorship from HybridLynx, a human in the loop provider of translation and data collection services for healthcare, education, legal and government sectors. Visit HybridLynx.com to learn more.

You talked about representation from so many different angles, different people. What languages and regional perspectives are represented at the conference that listeners might not see at other global industry events? Is it just interests of South America, Latin America, and the Caribbean? Or is this actually kind of opening up that part of the world to the rest of the world?

people who are not very familiar in terms of doing business with that part of the world and what possibilities it offers them? Yeah, it's a very good question. So 40% of attendees were from North America or Western Europe, Australia, China, Ukraine. So 60% of the attendees were from Latin America and the Caribbean.

Now in Buenos Aires, we might see a larger home crowd just because the the translation industry in particular in argentina is is loud and healthy noisy um so but certainly in mexico city it was very very diverse i mean people from all over uh 25 countries represented it wasn't all mexicans now in terms of the languages being spoken most of the presentations were in english some were in spanish uh there weren't any presentations in portuguese um and everyone seemed to be speaking a bit of everything uh yeah so that was pretty amazing it was it was interesting to hear germans speaking spanish and australians trying to speak spanish and uh and of course the cuisine uh and social life uh artistic opportunities things to do basically were amazing so i personally went with a whole bunch of friends to the teotihuacan pyramids which are just outside mexico city other people went to the frida kahlo and diego rivera art museums um some people went out to a tango dancing uh night i don't know how they went to the sessions the following morning so um there were a lot of different things on offer and it will be the same in buenos aires why is it important charles uh for the global translation and localization industry interpreting as well to pay attention to developments in Latin America and the Caribbean?

First of all, Latin America and the Caribbean is a growing region, both in economics and in terms of population. And the number of people studying languages, getting involved in translation, interpreting, and localization, and all the ancillary jobs like project management and engineering, vendor management, talent community management, quality management i mean there's a whole ecosystem of people working professionally as full-time in industry here it's not a part of the world where people work part-time doing this and they do a little bit of this a little bit of that and you know like it used to it used to be that way and in argentina maybe 30 or 40 years ago but now now it is a job an industry of full-time jobs of professional uh project managers professional language professional interpreters who make their full-time income from working in the industry, and the industry is growing.

The number of people enrolling to study translation and interpreting localization is growing quite fast. It's amazing the number of different university institutions that offer courses in Latin America in the industry. So, as compared to countries like the United States or England, where the number of people studying languages is dropping, in Latin America, the number of people studying languages is increasing. So very interesting times for the industry.

And as I said at Vamos Juntos, 40% of attendees were from outside Latin America and from all over the world. One person had even had to fly, had to stop over in Fiji in order to get to Mexico City. So people coming from a long way off. Pretty impressive.

It's not a regional conference where you're absorbed in regional issues only. The role that this conference plays in elevating underrepresented voices or emerging markets in our industry, you know, Latin America is a melting pot of languages, cultures, and all kinds of people. How does this conference actually bring attention to those people and their capabilities that they have to offer linguistically, technologically, and so forth? Is that something also within the scope of this conference well i mean we're talking about as i said countries that have not really had events like this before so the the culture is on display the art is on display the cuisine is on display the music is on display um people are traveling to the event because the event is in latin america in a different location each time because they want to learn or they want to connect or they want to reconnect with that part of the world um it's amazing the number of people who've been to Mexico is very high, but the number of people who've been to Mexico City is very low.

So I think that from a cultural standpoint, Vamos Juntos has a lot to offer. How does the conference foster collaboration between translation professionals, language service companies, and social impact organizations? Because we also have to speak with people who are outside of our industry, not just with each other. Well, in particular, at Vamos Santos, there was a lot of emphasis on language access.

We didn't have non-governmental organizations or government departments present. It wasn't easy for us to connect with organizations of that nature or government departments in Mexico. We're hoping that in Buenos Aires we'll get more social and governmental input. the government is not easy to deal with in Latin America but then it's not really easy to deal with government anywhere in the world right now but the social impact is on the agenda always in Latin America and particularly in Vamos Juntos there was a shadow hanging over Mexico at that time and I guess there still is in general related to the United States sudden decision to impose very steep tariffs on mexican products so um it kind of caught mexico off guard you know mexico had been putting maybe too many eggs in one basket in terms of exporting to the united states for a long time because it's natural border the whole northern border of mexico is the united states the southern border is very small in central america um and now suddenly Mexico is scrambling you know to to reorient its economy and policies so this cast a bit of a shadow over the event but not in a negative sense I mean certainly no anti-American feelings or anything like that that's not what I mean but it was just just the just the pace of change you know and so everyone was talking about how to deal with change um how to keep up with change keep the head of change in this extremely unpredictable world.

So very interesting, very interesting indeed. Are there any initiatives or partnerships tied to the conference that focus on things such as accessibility? You mentioned language access or indigenous people or anything related to communications and languages as we enhance or improve people's lives in the region and across the world? Good question.

We did not have any presentations at Vamos Juntos about indigenous languages, which I think is a shame. I think it was a missed opportunity when we did receive a presentation, but it was after the call for papers had closed and we'd already committed to the speaker should be selected. I definitely would have liked to have had something particularly about the Mayan language project and other things that have been in the media recently would have been very interesting. But it didn't happen, unfortunately.

Mexico so that is something we'll have to learn from in Buenos Aires in Argentina I believe so you know it's important for the conference to have a social impact and these these are times when social issues are you know at the forefront of everything that is going on so and of course in Latin America a very significant percent of the population is poor or very poor so it's important to bear in mind you know that it's a different world sometimes the the the problems that are taking place or occurring in in the united states or western europe are uh alien to the people in latin america in terms of how they unfold and the solutions uh that are involved how can people get involved either as attendees sponsors or speakers i'm pretty sure that you could use some hand here We'll be hoping that our sponsors from last year will be back again and we'll have some new sponsors.

We had 14 sponsors in Mexico, which is amazing growth in sponsors. And as I said, we are looking to have different speakers this time around from the speakers we had in Mexico and Lima. You know, something new, not because we didn't think the speakers were excellent in Mexico. We just want fresh voices.

Let's talk about, you know, the format of this event. is it just in person or is it in a hybrid environment it's in person juntos means together we want people to get together face to face uh we don't record the conference we don't do it online it's it's about being there breaking bread together um asking questions objecting we had some pretty uh pretty interesting questions from the audience in mexico city and some objections and, you know, some healthy arguments. It was great.

You know, sparks flew. Ideas were created. So it's definitely a face-to-face, on-site event. You talked earlier about the different standards and norms within the industry that you'd like to see reflected in Latin America and the Caribbean.

What impact has the conference had on professionalization of translation and interpreting in latin america and the caribbean so far well um everyone is upping their game everyone is moving forward fast and i think that everyone is connected and learning from each other and uh that is really important i think that the people who everyone out there has a whole bunch of questions about what to do now what to do next how to manage this situation and the people that are attending the conference are the ones who are best informed uh and and readiest uh to hand of the law.

That said, we don't know what the road ahead is going to bring for us. But I do feel that the people attending the conference are going to have the edge in terms of learning what their competitors are up to, sharing ideas. I mean, at Vamos Juntos, there's a very generous spirit of cooperation and idea sharing. People are not holding their cards too close to their chests people aren't really selling to each other either i mean i guess we're always selling but we're not uh overtly pushing our products on other people uh so it's wonderful you know i personally i find it really enjoyable what trends or challenges do you see emerging in the region that the global industry should be aware of and that this conference could actually educate us through well a huge challenge right now for the translation interpreting and localization industry in Latin America is the United States government's sudden decision to cut back on translation, interpreting, localization, spending.

So that has hit the Spanish language in particular very hard. Spanish language and African languages have been the ones hit the hardest. So it's put everyone on alert. And some people have seen their volume of work drop.

Others are doing the same amount of work they always did. But I think that the lesson to be learned is that, you know, we have to be prepared in our industry to have a rocky year, to have a challenging year, to have a year where we don't grow, just like every other industry out there. You know, we have this sort of belief in our industry that every year has to be better than the year before. And if you see the reports from certain consulting companies out there, they show this staircase of sales in the industry just going up you know this this tide that lifts all boats and you know i think that's true but you know we used to arrogantly say with hindsight i say arrogantly that our industry was recession proof there's no industry on this planet which is recession proof every now and then you're gonna have a tough year and that's part of the deal nobody said it was meant to be easy so i think that's the lesson to be learned from this situation you know the the objective of course is to get back on track back into growth uh as soon as possible absolutely looking ahead charles uh what are your hopes for the future of uh vamus on this and the role it will play in shaping the language industry across the americas well 2026 is in buenos aires 2027 is in colombia so we're moving around different countries that have not had large events in this industry before so we're trying to put latin america and the caribbean on the map make sure that latin america and the caribbean take their place at the table um and are involved in leading the way so you know we're very excited and we believe that we're on we're on the road there's a long way to go uh but that's what it's all about thank you for your time charles lots of exciting things happening of course and And I hope we can touch bases later and discuss this topic again in the near future.

Again, it was a pleasure speaking with you and look forward to speaking with you soon. Thank you. It's been a pleasure for me, too. But if anyone has ideas that they want to share in the meantime, the board members, myself, Maria Jose Alberto, David Migo, Rafael Sosa, Saulo Villegas, and Rosalind Famous, we're all available, very easy to reach.

uh we'd love to hear from people you know um juntos together it's all about doing things together uh and sharing ideas so bring it on i say and i wish you all the best and i look forward to speaking with you soon thank you very much selden really appreciate it it's great talking to you okay it's time for my roundup of the interview and my analysis as to what has been discussed. Our industry is going through transformation and shifts on so many levels. Trade, geopolitics, artificial intelligence, and emerging markets all present new dynamics and opportunities as well as challenges for language services providers.

Organizations such as Vamos Juntos are important in bringing people together to share their expertise and ideas and pave the road for our industry to grow and flourish. What Vamos Juntos has accomplished post-pandemic is very interesting. The regional language services organizations have built new relationships and the dialogue continues. That's a wrap for today.

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