74% of checkouts did not have a local language translation

Stripe.com Study

Check out another great podcast by our friends from Slator! GGLOT has automatically transcribed the speech of two hosts: Florian and Esther Bond. The new episode reveals a staggering study conducted by Stripe: “74% of checkout pages of top online merchants do no have a local language translations“. We always knew that language translation was an afterthought in business industry, but we didn’t know that top merchants overlooked it so much! That’s simply amazing.

Transcript of the podcast:

Speaker 1 (00 : 09)

Welcome everyone to split apart. 29. Hello from Zurich.

Speaker 2 (00 : 14)

Hi from London.

Speaker 1 (00 : 16)

So I heard you went on a pub crawl.

Speaker 2 (00 : 20)

I did not go out and have a cruel no, I went for tea. Very respectable pub lunches on Monday and Tuesday.

Speaker 1 (00 : 29)

Pub lunches. All right. Yes. You? Yes, a couple of day off. So 29 when I was when I was 29. 29. What’s the number? 29. I lived in Singapore when I was 29. It was very hot in Singapore. Nice. It’s Ah, yeah. It was an interesting experience, Remember? I think I arrived when it was Yeah, probably around 29. Exactly. Actually, 28 s o. When I got there, I was a shock to the system. It was It was 30 degrees Celsius every day. All day on. You really walk around? Flip flops all the time. I love the place Moved on when I was 30. 31. So that’s my storey about 29. Thank you so much for bearing with me on that. So on the housekeeping side. Well, we had a great slater con remote yesterday. We’re gonna talk about it soon. We also have our digital marketing. Webinar coming up There’s literally like I think we have word for 100 participants now s Oh, it’s ah, it’s already big success. So go on, go head over there and sign up for that digital marketing webinar. And then we’re gonna announce a new slate Akane remote soon. You know, Slater Kandra mode? I don’t know September October with the others Later Kanzi always calling silicon linens in the San Francisco etcetera. But this time, of course, we do not have a location. So the agenda today first

Speaker 2 (01 : 59)

We’re gonna

Speaker 1 (02 : 00)

Talk about stripe and they ran a super interesting survey around e commerce and some of the biggest fails and errors and things like that in Europe. Then we’re gonna do a quick run down on Slater con remote. We’re gonna talk about the Lux and their localisation business. Then the biggest computation linguistic conference a C l took place virtually. I think it’s still taking place. I think it’s

Speaker 2 (02 : 25)

I think it finishes. Today is a lot of heart. Me

Speaker 1 (02 : 27)

Today also remote on, then just briefly about young Chris, new CEO and then them source. Ah, morning. For there were we’re gonna run a piece next week. So, um stripe Very interesting. Storey. We picked up a tonne attraction on length in. I think we’re the triple it likes, which is which is nice. So basically, they ran a survey around errors and things like that during cheque out, right? I mean, you go and you buy something online, maybe that their websites in English or well, in English or in your local language. But then the actual cheque out, um, is in a different league, which is still in English, right? So they ran a customer experience survey around the checkout point of the buying journey among 450 European e commerce site, the big European e commerce site, and yeah, drum road. The most common error in European e commerce is a checkout lack off translation. So that was very interesting. And, you know, it’s it’s okay for consultancy says that are some I don’t know, some other smaller or interested party as an interesting part of what I mean. Stripe is literally the most valuable private firm at the moment, I guess. Silicon Valley. I think I called it the world’s most, um, valuable start up. But I think I think it’s Silicon Valley is most valuable to start up, so they just go to $1,006,600 funding around which valley them at $36 billion. Uh, you know, I don’t deserve this. So we’ve been using strike for five years and I love it. I remember when I n Road when we just got Slater off the ground I was still in. It was still kind of enclosed better or something. I had to apply, and it took two weeks to, you know, let me in. But now you know they’re well on their way, of course, 30 things building. That’s a lot of money, a lot of valuation. So the study was entitled The State of European Checkouts. In 2020 more than half of the customer checkouts had at least three basic errors. I mean, there was stuff like auto verified a cart number as it was entered and did not confirm the card pipe when the card number was entered. So you know, you type in for whatever and then automatically says it’s a visa card, etcetera. But again, the most common errors. With that 74% of the checkouts did not have a local language translation when quote customers located elsewhere in Europe tried to make a purchase and it failed to offer the most relevant payment options for international customers. And the laggard here wass the Spanish checkouts stripe analysed Ah, none of the Spanish checkouts that striped analysed had, ah, local language in here to cheque out experience. So you know that’s it. The Spaniards. I think that the Dutch, the Dutch ones, were the most ah localised ones. So and we head over to the article and cheque it out Pun intended Moving on to Slater content. Slater Condron load So I’ll talk a bit about some of the other things I that’s stood out to me. But first, maybe, Can you get started with Stuart?

Speaker 2 (05 : 43)

Yes. Say yeah. Stuart Green from zoo. We’ve actually had him as a speaker before in one of our London conference is just very great. Very good to have you back. Speaking again s just a bit about zoo. They obviously are media localizer. They do subtitling dubbing. There’s quite a heavy emphasis now on the cloud cloud coming in particular on DH said he spoke about how traditional doubling has been impacted a bit. Well, quite a lot during cove. It particularly because people were unable to go into the studio. So a lot of recordings just didn’t happen. So he was telling us I’m kind of about Jews set up, really? Which they’ve been doing long before postage and operating. A remote clouds are being set up where the voice artists are working from home. Makes it convenient for for voice actors. So he’s telling us. Yeah, but what about their operations? For example? They have certain microphones that they’ve white listed for the voice talent to use just to make sure that they’re over setting quality for the recordings. Um, on DH? Yeah. I mean, it was interesting to hear an update ready from from somebody who’s been doing cloud dubbing or remote dubbing. How have you wanna call it foot for quite a while on long before kind of covert hit. So yeah.

Speaker 1 (07 : 07)

Yeah, Just to jump in here. I actually just had to mute myself because there is, you know, I moved up in the new office, as people can see. You watch it on YouTube. Got a nice background, got everything set up, but some, um, a little bit of a sound proofing equipment here that makes sure that the quality is better. And they decided right before the podcast, we’re going to start drilling over in kind of opening up the road over there. So I’m haunted by construction noise wherever I go, and that’s actually living there following. And that’s something that Stewart said as well. I mean, for if you want to do remote w home, you need to have a proper studio and this is not a Z Z, um, as it kind of at first glance, right? I mean, you know, I’m personally struggling with finding,

Speaker 2 (07 : 52)

Finding, finding that out,

Speaker 1 (07 : 54)

To do a treasure

Speaker 2 (07 : 55)

In our

Speaker 1 (07 : 56)

Yeah, But I mean, if you want, if you want to adopt a you know, a professional or whatever feature movie or anything like that, you need to have a very proper set up. So it’s one of the challenges. And he also said that the yeah, with the mikes s o that Mike’s got a lot better. I mean, I think we’re finding this out is well, maybe 20 years ago would have been really expensive. These the’s office equipment has gotten better so for And then we moved them Tio shoulder from Valley for Capital, a private equity firm. You know, we’re not gonna go to lunch into deal. People can cheque it out. Those who registered, there’s a recording available. We’re going to write about it, but generally is very bullish on on the industry. He points out some of the high. What I find interesting is that he you know, he points out the things like a fragmentation, the market content explosion, cross border trade. That’s one of the reasons why they like to space. And they invested in it.

Speaker 2 (08 : 53)

Said he’s coming from a private private equity background, right?

Speaker 1 (08 : 56)

Yeah, they’re private equity for a private equity firm. They invested in Suma Lingua, the Polish L S P. And so, you know, on the tech side and empty side, it says, look positive could be cussed reduction like you’re you’re making your supply chain more efficient. On the negative side, you know, there’s always this risk of commoditise in the business generally, yeah, we’ll go into into much more detail in our follow up coverage, of course, but it was it was really good to have an investor also on the panel There are on, you know, on the on the speaker roster Quill Ed Bussi from Quill. Yeah, so quite interesting. They They’re much more on the content origination trend Trance creation site, right? I think they mentioned that translation is very rare. 5% less. Yeah, inside the volume said so. But it was interesting how to categorise it, right? Translate localise, sir. You translate Localised trance creating originate. So yeah, Very interesting presentation. How they how they scale this. Do you have any thoughts on that? What he said there,

Speaker 2 (10 : 08)

Yeah. I mean, definitely sort of said segmenting it. Or I suppose differentiating between those service levels, I think is is helpful for customers, in particular for customers who maybe are not super mature. And the localisation model, Um and I think origination Yeah, e I think he was sort of saying that you don’t necessarily fit for origination, which creating original content, for example, you don’t necessarily need a source. Text don’t always need a source text, but they do need to remember how words he used to phrase it. But he was sort of saying we have to agree. What true and accurate is, I think, with the client. So you really need to provide them with data or detailed brief or something which allows then quill The linguists to go often create this copy, which is goingto kind of match. You’re browned, etcetera.

Speaker 1 (11 : 00)

Yeah. Remember a rumour that he said, Like, sometimes you just gotta spread. She’d Sometimes we get a brief, but obviously it needs to be quiet quite on point for people go off and write something. No.

Speaker 2 (11 : 11)

Yeah, that. So that was one thing I think the origination, which I think is something that I’ve had a few people in the industry talk up, but not really on a wide scale on DH. Then I think, talking about e commerce more generally, so they are. Quill is specifically interested at this point in what they call performance content. So this is this is kind of the critical content that helps people online right before they make a purchase. So you might also call it conversion content. Uh, and he was He was also saying that with it within, eat those things like, um, product descriptions, buying guides, optimisation for marketplace and things like that. And he was saying, Well, with any commerce that generally for localisation, the awareness level awareness raising for customers is pretty well served. Teo. Things like ads and TV content is is really well served, I think, with within the localisation space, but really within conversion level that there’s kind of less attention been paid to that. So I think that’s where they’re kind of niche. Focus is at this point,

Speaker 1 (12 : 16)

Very good. Yeah, exactly. It’s that tailored it very nicely. So way should go back to the presentation.

Speaker 2 (12 : 27)

They actually we featured Quill within our Traveller retail report published last year. So we did sort of includes some of this kind of, um yeah, some of these ideas within their as well on the way out for next, when we

Speaker 1 (12 : 41)

Had our and Carlisle from the ah charted instead of linguists and she was really making the case for also certifying you’re skills a zoo linguist as a translator and and also kind of valuing the human component in translation. Of course, because, you know, we’ve also said that, you know, as an empty gets better and better, actually, the expertise level of a translator and linguist needs to actually become, you know, higher and higher and higher as well. Cause to iron out those those remaining issues takes a lot of expertise. I think she made that case is Well, then we had a lot from Easy ling. A web proxy localisation solution. Interesting. I didn’t know that 95% of our clients are l s p So he must have had a great conference yesterday. They were you know, we had over 300. Ah, lot of empires. But also of course Ah, you know, probably 152 100 l s p people. So it was It was great for him. I think I’m a little not I’m not technical enough to out at this point. Walk, walk people through. But it’s basically, you know, it’s it’s a web proxy solution for you two relatively easily host multi lingual websites or display Multilingual website. So it’s also going to the e commerce side of things. Ah, we also had a game localisation panel with, you know, e a and and Frontier Developments to game publishers moderated by Daniel from low aquatics, eh consultancy firm for the game lock space. So also there Let’s wait for the right up. Lots of good insights on that side. And then finally, let’s close on David Edwards from Pipe Drive, a cr M kind of sales SAS solution. I don’t leader raised about $90 million so far. They have their base in Estonia, so, you know, kind of a country that has a very techie reputation. Building up the lock team of five lakh team members to internal translators were Portuguese and German, which, apparently, are there help? Two languages. They’re doing about two million words. Ah, year now, 40 languages Thie out soars. Um, Now, what I found fascinating is just 11 key point here that I’d like to share is they used vendors. L S P s from outside of Estonia, like global lenders are in other areas, and it just didn’t work well, like the communication was not great. Glands of communication is what he said. So actually chose a vendor from Estonia, and, you know, I think to me we made this point before It really drives home the point that this industry, despite its Supercross board of virtual nature, actually sometimes really comes down to having you know, your your vendor in the geography in the country that urine. And then you’re very culturally close, you know, for for a solution like Piper, I’ve You wouldn’t assume that like you need particular local Estonian knowledge. I mean, I would assume that they’re Estonian. Sales are very small, but still you you want to have your men. They’re very close. You want to maybe meet with them? You want to make sure that the lines of communications are very much open. So I find it fascinating. A company like this tech Ah, SAS still chooses a vendor That’s from that country they’re based in. You know, for what it’s worth, I think it’s it’s an interesting It’s an interesting point. Moving on Media localisation Deluxe. What happened there?

Speaker 2 (16 : 12)

Yeah, but again, Teo Media localisation s a deluxe is a is wass. I did a long time major global player in media localisation but also on post production and distribution sides of a U. S. Based on part of their business, now has just been sold. Er is being sold, I think to private equity on that includes the localisation part. So the part that’s being sold is the localisation. So the subtitling and dubbing part along with a digital cinema, home entertainment and fulfilment operations, they’ve said, but not the creative part of business.

Speaker 1 (16 : 51)

So they said was there is why is that?

Speaker 2 (16 : 54)

Well, because it’s being chopped up, isn’t it? So but if you can refer to it in the present

Speaker 1 (16 : 59)

Yeah. I mean, yeah. Okay, because the bankruptcy, right. So they chapter 11

Speaker 2 (17 : 04)

Awesome. Yeah. Don’t say the part that’s not being sold is gonna be renamed

Speaker 1 (17 : 08)

Is gonna be renamed. Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (17 : 10)

Yeah. Presumably the deluxe name will continue with the part that has been sold. But I don’t know about that. Um, yeah, hits

Speaker 1 (17 : 19)

Him. They had a new low. I mean, I checked it out on when I researched it. I think they had, but I think it’s called. Let me just pull this up here. I think it’s called. Where is it? Yeah, it’s this called. It’s called the Lux Localisation like to have a new logo and everything, but I think that it really is again a sub part of the part that was sold off. Yeah, So

Speaker 2 (17 : 46)

It sounds like deluxe wall. They will keep that part of business will keep the doc’s name. Um, yeah. So they were sold to Platinum equity and California based private equity firm. No financial terms. What is closed? Um, so yeah. I mean, you mentioned the chapter 11 bankruptcy. So what happened was last year 2019. I think around his insight. September over Time Deluxe filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. So, I mean, businesses are obviously sort of hit some rocky times at that point, no unusual for people for companies that were focusing on sort of the traditional Hollywood studios and the lead in a TV and the sort of physical distribution

Speaker 1 (18 : 27)

Channels going to mention the physical distribution DVD. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (18 : 31)

Yeah, we’re speaking about that. I think many times before, off the sort of difficulty for a lot of traditional vendors in that space to really adapt Teo the O T. T landscape. You know, the streaming giants like Netflix, It set from the demands that challenges that that has brought on the supply landscape. Just

Speaker 1 (18 : 49)

Brief it into O t T. I. Understanding means over the top, but actually, I gotta be honest. I have no idea why. Why what is over to talk.

Speaker 2 (18 : 58)

So So as I understand it, it’s because it goes over the top off like TV channels. So it bypasses like the Kate. That kind of network cables. Okay, so it’s like a you don’t you need, like, a yeah, TV or TV licence, or we shall invest again. I did used to have a good answer for this, and I did think about it recently, but I’ve actually forgotten the kind of Yeah, the logic behind it is something to do that goes by is basically direct to customer, and you bypass the original. So the traditional setup of a TV wiring and things like that.

Speaker 1 (19 : 39)

Okay, it makes sense because you can watch It doesn’t matter if I consume it on the phone, the laptop or or Well, plug it into the TV, right? Yeah, because there’s so many acronyms were throwing around and d o t t Sometimes I’m not even sure about, so Okay, now learn something.

Speaker 2 (19 : 53)

Yeah. Um, yeah, but anyway, back to the chapter 11. I mean, so that that formed bankruptcy is used, Really? One cut when companies want to continue operating allows businesses to keep operating, while they also work out how Teo, for example, reorganise their debt and assets. And so we kind of knew that something was on the cards when they filed for bankruptcy. But obviously, now it’s emerged that it has been sold off to Patton Equity God and okay.

Speaker 1 (20 : 24)

All right, let’s move to a very different topic today. We’re kind of going through a bunch of topics with, anyway, let’s let’s do that. Let’s go to another area of the language. Well, it’s up the industry’s academia, so Ah, as we mentioned the A c L association of computational linguistics. Yeah, that’s correct. Wow. I got that right. Is having their conference right now. It’s virtually July 60th originally was scheduled to be in Seattle, Washington, right. Moved online because, like everything else moves online. So, yeah, there was that they had a tonne of submissions, and now it just it selected the top three papers. So one paper involving empty was runner up, right?

Speaker 2 (21 : 10)

Yes. So they say this is an honourable mention. That one. Yeah. How many submissions? Sorry. How many submissions? Yeah, they had over 3000 submissions over a wall, but then no, all of them were accepted. So the way it works, he submit a paper, and then you have to have it accepted

Speaker 1 (21 : 29)

Okay. It’s like 700 or something. We’re except that maybe less.

Speaker 2 (21 : 34)

With the long and short papers together just over 1/4. Where would it? Yeah, on DH then. Yet from there, then obviously the panel. The committee decided on the best overall paper and two honourable mention. So we’ll talk about one of those honourable mentions you a cz you mentioned wass, a paper that was focused on machine translation and specifically blue, so tangled up in blue, reevaluating the evaluation off. Automatic machine translation evaluation metrics is a lot of a lot of a lot of evaluation evaluating eyes that I’m actually

Speaker 1 (22 : 15)

Reading this now this is that

Speaker 2 (22 : 16)

Yeah, instead of they’ve done it on purpose. Yeah, I’ve been noticing a lot of these papers now have, like, slightly kind of, like, snappier or like, titles that there’s some kind of, like, amusing twist, like it’s clear, the one that had its click that thing, the other one that the other one had an honourable mention was called Started Don’t stop pre training. I don’t stop believing and the other one and the other one is kind of like pretty straight laced displays.

Speaker 1 (22 : 45)

But that one you’re right yet tangled up in blue, reevaluating the evaluation of automatic machine translation evaluation that yeah, that they did that on purpose. So,

Speaker 2 (22 : 54)

Uh, way have

Speaker 1 (22 : 58)

Discussions before? I mean, I’m asked. My position has only hardened sense. You cannot mathematically evaluate language. E think I’m going out on a limb here. Especially now that we’ve reached a certain level. It just Well, I mean, yeah, show me

Speaker 2 (23 : 14)

Something They said They said much the same. Don’t they said much the same? I mean, I haven’t I didn’t write this piece. I haven’t read their paper and much detail a tool. But, I mean, they’ve They’ve said that the current methods for judging metrics are highly sensitive to the translations used for assessment, particularly the presence of outliers, which leads Teo often leads to falsely confident conclusions about metrics efficacy. So basically, outliers can sway. You know how how this thing is interrupted on. Basically, they I think they conclude it was time to retire. Blue on Day said there’s nothing better than human translation, human translators or human professional evaluate and sorry when it comes to evaluating machine translation.

Speaker 1 (23 : 57)

No kidding. Well, who else would It

Speaker 2 (24 : 00)

Was One thing I did pick up. It goes back to the discussion. I’ll just end on this, but yeah. Super expensive. Right to have humans evaluate machine translation Flug on a on a large scale.

Speaker 1 (24 : 14)

Probably even more expensive to have bad content put out there that, you know, I don’t know gets you into legal trouble or something. I don’t I just find it fascinating. I think we’ve reached that point where empty has gotten t I mean, you can’t mathematically evaluate this and they’re trying, and I mean, every paper I’m reading now they’re still using Blip. Whatever it is they’re using Blake. So,

Speaker 2 (24 : 35)

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (24 : 35)

There’s on the one hand, the academic community saying, You know, don’t use it anymore. It’s it’s it’s no longer relevant. On the other hand, every single paper I’m reading about them he uses

Speaker 2 (24 : 44)

The site itself. It’s self perpetuating, isn’t it, because you want to show that your model is better or how it’s improved on previous models. So if the previous models using blue, then you also have to use blood or somehow convert everything

Speaker 1 (24 : 56)

To a different metric. They’re stuck anyways moving on young curse, eh? You know, I think well known brand name in the language industry has a new CEO. That’s Ah still catch Weigert from this used to be from S t l. And they hired her. She joined late last year and she was chief revenue officer. And now she’s been appointed to CEO, talking about machine translation to have a a pretty sophisticated tool they’ve launched last year called World Words Online. And it’s also kind of interacting with with empty, high volume translation. So she mentioned that this was this was one of her focus in her thymus hero, but also now they’re really trying to push this. So new CEO at Yonkers were, I think, which is published the article a couple of minutes ago and then meme soars. Ah, we didn’t manage to publish our storey this week. We just got so much good. Um um well, not content. But we did two interviews with one with the Fernando Trick, the private equity partner that invested and then also with David Johnnic CC of meme source. So it’s a lot of material and we’re going through it and I hope we’re gonna be publishing it on Monday or Tuesday. Very exciting. I’m actually really excited about this piece. I thinkit’s not said, not a fully transformative acquisition, but it’s just it’s something that we haven’t seen for a while now that a T. M s system has been acquired or funded Teo to the level that meme source has. And in terms of evaluation, I think we can now more lifts confidently, say that somewhere between 40 and $50 million that this transaction values ministers at so 4 to 5 times revenue, and that’s that’s quite high. It’s quite quite high. What a high valuation. I mean, obviously, Sesto recurring subscription. So that’s what investors like, um, and ah again, watch out next week, we’re gonna be covering it in great detail, and I think we’ll be able to shed a lot of light on that transaction. Very exciting. So, yeah, that closes it for today. I think we’re gonna be able to announce their remote dates of the in the next couple of weeks. You know, for once, we don’t have todo with hotels and locations. Eso tech work. I mean, you know, we use Goto webinar

Speaker 2 (27 : 18)

As ready kids.

Speaker 1 (27 : 19)

It was okay. I mean, there’s, ah, 1,000,000 more advanced or kind of MME. Or not more advanced. But like I mean, Goto Webinars is kind of the traditional solution for that. But it worked very well. I mean, zero glitches, handovers for smooth. So I liked it using it again. That’s it. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2 (27 : 41)

Thanks. Bye.

Speaker 1 (27 : 49)

I do.