Translated's Research Center

Fellows

Nikita Agarwal

Nikita Agarwal

DIRECTOR AT MILESTONE LOCALIZATION

Nikita Agarwal heads Milestone Localization, a language company based out of Bangalore, India that works with businesses around the world to help them communicate across cultures. She started the company when she was 24 after spending three years travelling to Europe and China for business meetings where she worked with translators and interpreters and got introduced to the localization industry. Nikita speaks Hindi, Kannada and English and writes articles on entrepreneurship, marketing, languages and localization.

Guglielmo Maccario

Guglielmo Maccario

Contract Professor in Development Studies at UNINT University

Guglielmo Maccario is a Contract Professor in Development Studies at UNINT University, where he earned his Ph.D. in International Management in 2022. Passionate about communication and languages, Guglielmo started his career in an advertising agency and then worked in UN specialized agencies in Rome. With a Bachelor’s degree in foreign languages, he lived in Beijing for two years, where he studied Chinese and worked in the Marketing sector.

Paolo Venturi

Paolo Venturi

Director of AICCON and The FundRaising School

Paolo Venturi is the director of AICCON and The FundRaising School. Professor in social entrepreneurship and social innovation at the University of Bologna. He is member of the Scientific Committee of the Symbola Foundation, of Corriere Buone Notizie and of the Social Impact Agenda for Italy. Member of the Social Cooperation Council of Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna. Co-Author with Flaviano Zandonai of numerous publications including “Neomutualism”, “DOVE. The dimension of place that recomposes business and society” and “Hybrid companies. Models of social innovation to regenerate values” published by Egea. He collaborates with numerous newspapers and blogs including Il Sole 24 Ore, Il Corriere della Sera and Vita Magazine.

Elena Taverna

Elena Taverna

Group Leader at the Neurogenomics Research Centre

Elena Taverna is a Group Leader at the Neurogenomics Research Centre. Elena obtained her degrees in Biology at the University of Milan and she completed her PhD in Pharmacology and Toxicology at the CNR’s Neuroscience Institute in Milan. From 2006 to 2015, she worked as post-doc researcher in the group of Wieland Huttner at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, studying neural stem cells and brain development. From 2016 to March 2021 she was a Senior Staff Scientist and Project Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, working in the team lead by Svante Pääbo. At the MPI-EVA Elena studied the evolution of neuron structure and function in apes and humans. Following up on her previous work, she also developed a robot for the high throughput analysis of single neural stem cells in tissue. At the HT, Elena uses advanced robotics combined with multimodal analysis paradigm to understand brain development and evolution at the single cell level.

Nereo Kalebic

Nereo Kalebic

Group Leader at the Centre for Neurogenomics

Nereo Kalebic is a Group Leader at the Centre for Neurogenomics. He obtained his degree in Molecular Biology at the University of Zagreb in Croatia in 2007. In 2012, he completed his PhD in Molecular Biology at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and Heidelberg University. During his PhD, Nereo studied the role of microtubule post-translational modifications in the development and function of the nervous system. From 2013 to 2019, he carried out post-doctoral research in Wieland Huttner’s group at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, studying the development and evolution of the human neocortex. Nereo’s current research focuses on the molecular and cellular biological mechanisms underlying human neocortex development and their implications for human evolution and neurodevelopmental disorders.

Valentina Rava

Valentina Rava

Internship at Human Technopole

Valentina Rava is an undergraduate student, she is doing her internship at Human Technopole. She has a bachelor’s degree in Medical Biotechnology, She is about to take a master’s degree in Medical Biotechnology and Molecular Medicine. At the moment, her research is mainly centered around studying neuronal maturation in non-human primates and humans.

Carlotta Barelli

Carlotta Barelli

PhD student investigating glioblastoma stem cell biology at Human Technopole, Milan

Carlotta Barelli is a PhD student investigating glioblastoma stem cell biology at Human Technopole, Milan. Sha has graduated in neuroscience at King’s College London, where she focused on the neuroimmunology of the human fetal brain. She is also highly passionate about brain-body interactions and the use of yoga and breathwork as tools to access this connection.

Daniel Pimienta

Daniel Pimienta

Responsible at the Observatory of Linguistic & Cultural Diversity on the Internet.

Daniel Pimienta is a board member and former Exec. Sec. of the World Network for Linguistic Diversity (MAAYA). He manages the Observatory of languages and cultures on the Internet since 1989 being a pioneer in cyber-metrics and the measure of the space of languages in the Internet. He was given, in 2008, the Namur Award for his comprehensive actions in the perspective of a positive social impact of ICT.

Sam Wukui Bao

Sam Wukui Bao

ENGLISH – SIMPLIFIED CHINESE TRANSLATOR

Once a student in architecture, Sam Wukui Bao later discovered his passion for language and culture. He pursued translation studies at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies and Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, while actively engaging in translation projects with various social and cultural institutions. Having obtained his master’s degrees, Sam Bao further honed his skills through an internship at the Chinese Translation Service, United Nations Secretariat, assisting in translating summary records of U.N. conferences and provisional agenda items of the 74th General Assembly. Since then, he has been working in the gaming industry, providing simplified Chinese translation for high-profile products.

Paulina Zguda

Paulina Zguda

PhD candidate in philosophy at the Doctoral School in Humanities at Jagiellonian University

Paulina Zguda is a cognitive scientist and currently a PhD candidate in philosophy at the Doctoral School in Humanities at Jagiellonian University. Her main research interest is how people react to social robots, and in particular, how their aesthetics – design, movement and additional factors (e.g. possible clothing) – determine people’s perceptions of these artificial agents.

Rachmadhina Insan Widyapianissa

Rachmadhina Insan Widyapianissa

Freelance copywriter

Rachmadhina Insan Widyapianissa is currently living her life as a freelance copywriter by dawn and tarot reader by dusk while roaming around here and there.

Winnie Ngimor

Winnie Ngimor

Winnie Ngimor was born and raised in the Western part of Kenya, in Africa. She is a translator by profession and is also a writer, something she does during her free time. She considers her family to be most important to her. If she isn’t spending time with her friends and family, you can almost always find her reading.

Sheriff Issaka

Sheriff Issaka

King-Morgridge scholar graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Sheriff Issaka is a King-Morgridge scholar graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he majored in Computer Science with minors in Entrepreneurship and African Studies. He is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) researcher, enthusiast, alarmist, and most interested in the intersection of cutting-edge AI technologies and society. His AI research includes analysis of the state of AI in Africa, AI optimization solutions in Midwest dairy farms, utilization of predictive and assessment models to improve operations in multinational banks, and the use of generative adversarial networks for realistic image reconstruction. As part of Sheriff’s own African Languages Lab (All Lab) initiative, he works with teams around the world to build text-to-text translations, speech recognition, and conversational chatbots for low-resourced African languages.

Marion Jõepera

Marion Jõepera

Travel writer, tour guide and copywriter

Marion Jõepera is a travel writer, tour guide and copywriter. She has spent the last 20 years creating (user) journeys on screen, paper and mountain trails, and can often be found participating in projects that bring us closer to experiencing the world as directly as possible. When not enhancing user experience or guiding in the remote wilderness, she is collaborating with theatre directors, climbing mountains or helping post-grad students pursue their fervent academic goals.

Renato Beninatto

Renato Beninatto

CEO Nimdzi Insights

Renato Beninatto is the co-author of The General Theory of the Translation Company and leads Nimdzi Insights, a think-tank and consulting company that focuses on growth strategies for localization leaders. A former executive in some of the leading companies in the industry, Renato is also the co-host of The Global Podcast.

Question of the year
Maria Casadei

Maria Casadei

RESEARCHER OF SOUTH ASIAN CULTURES AND LANGUAGES

Maria Casadei is a passionate young researcher of South Asian cultures and languages. She graduated in Languages, Cultures and Societies of Asia and Mediterranean Africa at the University of Venice, Italy. She pursued her studies at the University of Naples, with a specialization in Hindi and Urdu language. In 2021, Maria completed a three year course in Telugu language and literature at INALCO, Paris. Currently she is a PhD student at the Jagiellonian University, investigating the relationship between language, culture and Internet.

Silvia Currò

Silvia Currò

Translator and Interpreter

Silvia Currò has been a professional English/German to Italian translator for over 30 years. Native to Italy, she graduated with a degree in Foreign Languages and Literatures, lived in different countries in Europe and overseas, and finally moved back to her hometown, Genoa, where she started working as a freelancer in technical translation and language localization, after a career as a product manager in the pet food industry. For many years now her main focus is medical translation. New technologies and Artificial Intelligence are among her many interests. That is why her web space is called Translation Log.

The job of the freelance technical translator: an opportunity for inspiration and self-development.
Giordano De Marzo

Giordano De Marzo

PHD CANDIDATE IN PHYSICS AT SAPIENZA UNIVERSITY

Giordano De Marzo is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Physics of Sapienza University of Rome and at the Enrico Fermi Research Center. He is also Junior Data Scientist at the Complexity Science Hub of Wien, student of Sapienza School for Advanced Studies and external consultant of UNU-MERIT and ILO. He received his master’s degree in theoretical physics at Sapienza University of Rome. Giordano’s research interests cover different topics of complex systems, such as social dynamics, economic complexity, neural networks, scaling laws and networks theory.

The value of languages
Arianna Dagnino

Arianna Dagnino

Published Author

Born in Genoa, Italy, she studied in London, Moscow, and Boston before becoming an international reporter, which led her to spend several years in Southern Africa and Australia, where she was awarded her PhD in Comparative Literature. Arianna teaches as part of the Italian Studies program at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and is the Cultural Events Coordinator for the Dante Alighieri Society of BC.​She is a member of the Writers' Union of Canada and the Literary Translators' Association of Canada. She holds Canadian, Australian, and Italian citizenship. She is the author of several books in Italian and in English, including the novel “The Afrikaner”, a penetrating story whose narrative describes the sociocultural context of post-apartheid South Africa, and “Il Quintetto di Istanbul”, a fascinating work that takes us inside the minds of five transcultural authors.

Transculturality in today’s world
Michele Gazzola

Michele Gazzola

Lecturer in Public Policy and Administration at the School of Applied Social and Policy Sciences at Ulster University, UK.

Michele Gazzola holds a PhD in Multilingual communication management (University of Geneva), a MSc in Economics (University of York, UK), and a degree in Public administration and international institutions management (University “L. Bocconi”, Milan). His research areas include public policy, language policy and planning, the economics of languages, and multilingualism as a social phenomenon. He is editor of the academic journal Language Problems & Language Planning.

No taxation without translation
Marco Gervasi

Marco Gervasi

Leading expert in the E-commerce, Internet of Things and Smart Manufacturing sectors in China

Marco Gervasi was the founder and managing director of Red Synergy Shanghai, a company that provides legal and strategic assistance in the Chinese market. Marco has over fifteen years of experience in China, where he assists industrial companies, investment funds, venture capital and Internet companies in their investment strategies.

E-commerce strategies in China
Josh Goldsmith

Josh Goldsmith

Co-Founder and Chief Educational Officer of Techforword

Josh Goldsmith is a UN and EU accredited translator and interpreter working from Spanish, French, Italian and Catalan into English. He splits his time between interpreting, translating, and working as a trainer and researcher focusing on the intersection between interpreting, technology and education. As Co-Founder and Chief Educational Officer of techforword, Josh shares tips about technology, translation and interpreting in conferences and workshops, academic articles, and on Twitter.

Question of the year
Jan Hinrichs

Jan Hinrichs

Founder and CEO of Beluga

Jan Hinrichs is the founder and CEO of Beluga, a translation company helping fast-moving companies run efficient localisation programs and positively engage with their global audiences. In the past 15 years, Jan has been deeply involved in the emerging market of web-service and mobile app localisation and the supportive software infrastructure of online TMS to guarantee smooth and continuous translation workflows. In early 2019 he started the global LocLunch movement. With more than 500 events worldwide, LocLunch has added a new layer of communication to the translation and localisation industry.

Question of the year
Priya Mani

Priya Mani

DESIGN AND RESEARCH AT LEAPCRAFT

Priya Mani is a Copenhagen based designer and cultural researcher working to create gastronomical experiences.Mani grew up in India and studied at the National Institute of Design. In her career, over the past 20 years, she has pursued the craft of culture, through textiles, technology and food. She is particularly interested in the human factor and has worked for over a decade in the area of design and innovation across industries. She explores and writes on how people use everyday technology, migration and food and digital democracy in emerging economies.

Joseph Mariani

Joseph Mariani

Research Director Emeritus at CNRS

Joseph Mariani is now Research Director Emeritus at CNRS. His research activities concern Spoken Language Processing, Human-Machine Communication and Human Language Resources and Technologies.

Question of the year
Sandeep Nulker

Sandeep Nulker

FOUNDER & CEO @ BITS & VERNAC LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGIES

Sandeep Nulkar is the Founder and CEO of one of India’s oldest translation companies, BITS Private Limited and the Co-founder of Vernac Language Technologies that developed India’s first crowdsourced translation platform. He was recently re-elected as the President of India’s language industry body, CITLoB. Sandeep is the first Asian to receive the Outstanding Contribution to the Language Industry Award at the ATC’s Annual Language Industry Summit in 2016 and is also a recipient of the Udyami Award for Entrepreneurship in 2017. Sandeep has served on the Advisory Board of the Rajya Marathi Vikas Sanstha, a body constituted by the Ministry of Education, Government of Maharashtra.

Annual question
Vidushi Kapoor

Vidushi Kapoor

CO-FOUNDER AT PROCESS NINE TECHNOLOGIES

Vidushi graduated from Delhi University with a degree in Economics. After working with Ernst & Young and Goldman Sachs, her deep interest in Indian languages combined with a passion to solve complex problems, led her to join hands with veterans in the language technology space to co-found Process9. Nine years into the industry, she has helped build products & solutions for the various challenges brought forth by Process9's clients, and has learnt to read and speak many new Indian languages along the way. She has spoken at forums hosted by FICCI, CITLoB and others.

Michaël Oustinoff

Michaël Oustinoff

Professor in Translation Studies

Michaël Oustinoff is associate Professor in Translation Studies at the Institute of the Anglophone World, University of Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle and currently on sabbatical leave at the ISCC, the Institute for Communication Sciences of the CNRS.

Question of the year
Vivekanand Pani

Vivekanand Pani

Co-founder & CTO, Reverie Language Technologies

Vivek is the Co-Founder and CTO of Reverie Language Technologies, a company specializing in text and speech technologies for Indian languages.  With more than 20 years of experience in Indian Language Computing, Vivek is one of the very few subject matter experts who are passionate and dedicated to making usage of Indian languages easy on digital platforms. Vivek began his Indian language journey at the Center for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC), Pune, in the year 1997. His journey spans across developing advanced multilingual tools for early computing devices and word processing software for computers to leading today’s state of the art AI-driven Indian language technologies like Automated Speech Recognition, Machine Translation, Text-to-Speech, Natural language.

Adebola Rayo

Adebola Rayo

Storyteller | Communications Professional

Adebola Rayo is a storyteller. She is the co-founder of Asterism, a communication company where she and her team work on projects that mix storytelling with other art forms. Her work has appeared in the Lagos Noir anthology, The Republic Journal, Quramo Report, and Saraba Literary Magazine amongst others. She is driven by a belief that nuanced stories have the power to build the future. She has an LL.B from the University of Lagos, Nigeria, and a master’s degree in Corporate and Marketing Communications from IE Business School, Spain.

Blessing Sibanda

Blessing Sibanda

Software developer

Blessing Sibanda is a Natural Language Processing researcher at Masakhane since its inception in 2019. He has been working on creating language datasets for tasks such as Named Entity Recognition, Part of Speech and machine translation for low resource African languages, specifically Shona, his native language from Zimbabwe. He is passionate about the involvement and empowerment of native language speakers to work on language technologies for their language.

Alifya Thingna

Alifya Thingna

Content Marketing | Brand Communication Lifecycle

Alifya started her career as a professional French-English translator in 2014 and quickly rose to becoming an integral part of the sales and marketing strategy team at BITS Private Limited and BITS International, as she proactively championed language industry initiatives and took on more challenging responsibilities. A passionate culture enthusiast and a strong advocate of women empowerment at heart, she also co-founded a language technology startup in 2019 (subsidiary of BITS) and took on a voluntary marketing role in the India chapter of Women in Localization. This year, she was invited to head a new division at BITS as the Chief Business Officer, where she will not only closely monitor the sales and marketing verticals, but will also look after the content strategy and the entire communication lifecycle for aspiring brands.

Jaap Van der Meer

Jaap Van der Meer

Founder and Director, TAUS

Jaap Van der Meer is a language industry pioneer and visionary, who started his first translation company in The Netherlands in 1980. In 2005, Jaap established the Translation Automation User Society (TAUS), along with founding members from most of the leading IT companies. TAUS has become the language data network offering the largest industry-shared repository of data, deep know-how in language engineering, and a network of Human Language Project workers around the globe. TAUS mission today is to empower global enterprises and their service and technology providers with data solutions that help them to communicate in all languages, faster, better, and more efficiently.

Question of the year
Guido Vetere

Guido Vetere

Ceo and co-founder at Isagog

Guido Vetere graduated in Philosophy of Language under the guidance of Prof. Tullio De Mauro at Rome Sapienza University, with a dissertation on computational linguistics. Then he spent most of his career at IBM Italia, where he has been leading the Center for Advanced Studies in Rome and Trento. He is now Adjunct Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the Faculty of Applied Sciences and Technologies of the University of Guglielmo Marconi in Italy and head of Isagog Srl, an Italian AI startup. His research interests range from logic, knowledge representation and automated reasoning to computational linguistic models and resources.

Textnology
Andy Way

Andy Way

Full Professor in Computing

Prof. Andy Way served as President of the European Association for Machine Translation from 2009-2015, and was President of the International Association for Machine Translation from 2011–13. He has been Editor of the Machine Translation journal since 2007. He is currently editing a series of six books for Springer in the area of Machine Translation, with two already published. Prof. Way’s research interests include all areas of machine translation: statistical MT, example-based MT, neural MT, rule-based MT, hybrid models of MT, MT evaluation, teaching MT.

Question of the year
Tess Whitty

Tess Whitty

English-Swedish freelance translator

Tess Whitty is English-Swedish freelance translator specializing in digital marketing, software and website localization. She has a Master of Science in Economics and a Master of Arts in marketing and previously worked as a marketing manager. She shares her knowledge and experience in marketing and business as an award-winning speaker, trainer, consultant, author, and podcaster.

Question of the year
Andrea Zaccaria

Andrea Zaccaria

POST-DOC RESEARCHER AT COMPLEX SYSTEMS INSTITUTE

Andrea Zaccaria is a researcher at the Institute for Complex Systems (ISC)-CNR and consultant at the International Finance Corporation (World Bank Group). He received his PhD in Physics at the “Sapienza” University of Rome, where he applied concepts and methods borrowed from statistical physics and the physics of complex systems to the study of financial markets. His present interests include the study of complex networks methodologies, algorithmic tools, machine learning, and their application to development economics.

The value of languages
Ersilia Vaudo

Ersilia Vaudo

Chief Diversity Officer and Special Advisor on Strategic Evolution at the European Space Agency

Ersilia Vaudo Scarpetta graduated from the Sapienza University of Rome with a degree in Astrophysics. For many years, she has been working for the European Space Agency, where she now holds the position of Chief Diversity Officer and Special Advisor on Strategic Evolution. Her professional journey has also taken her to Washington, where she spent 4 years managing ESA relations with NASA. She has received numerous accolades, including the Tecnovisionarie 2020 International Prize. In 2021, she was included in the InspiringFifty list, which recognizes the 50 most influential women in the field of science and technology in Italy. In 2022, she curated the 23rd International Exhibition of Triennale Milano, titled Unknown Unknowns. She is the president and co-founder of the association Il Cielo Itinerante (The Wandering Sky), which promotes STEM literacy by “taking the sky where it doesn’t reach”, to boys and girls in troubled areas affected by educational poverty.

Helga Nowotny

Helga Nowotny

Founding member and former President of the European Research Council

Helga Nowotny is Professor emerita of Science and Technology Studies, ETH Zurich, founding member and former President of the European Research Council. She has held teaching and research positions at universities and research institutions in several countries in Europe and continues to be actively engaged in research and innovation policy at European and international level. She received multiple honorary doctorates including from the University of Oxford and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. Her latest publication “In AI we Trust. Power, Illusion and Control of Predictive Algorithms” has been published by Polity Press in September 2021.