Today's guest is Marco Trombetti!
Marco is the CEO and founder of Translated, one of the largest translation companies in the world, powering translations for the likes of Airbnb, Uber, and Skyscanner.
Translated is also an AI pioneer. It has developed its own models for more than 20 years and has recently released the most advanced translation LLM in the world.
With Marco, we talked about the future of AI; combining AI and human work, and the role of regulation. This is also the first interview we ever did in person! But as you will see and hear, I was recovering from a bad cough and had a bit of a low voice, hope you don't mind!
🎙️ Episode
You can watch the full episode on Youtube:
Or listen to it on Spotify, Apple, Overcast, or your podcast app of choice.
🥇 Interview Summary
If you are a 🔒 paid subscriber 🔒 you will find my own summary of the interview below.
It’s the 10-minute, handcrafted takeaways of what we talked about, with timestamps to the relevant video moments, for those who don’t have time to sit through the 1-hour chat.
Here is the agenda for today:
🚀 From Translation to AI Pioneer (03:52)
🤖 Evolution of Machine Translation (05:59)
🔬 Lara: Next-Gen Translation Model (12:39)
🤝 Human-AI Symbiosis (32:45)
⚠️ AI Risks & Regulation (45:22)
💡 Building AI Companies (56:19)
Let's dive in 👇
1) 🚀 From Translation to AI Pioneer (03:52)
Marco Trombetti is the CEO and co-founder of Translated, one of the largest professional translation companies globally, serving clients like Airbnb, Uber, and Skyscanner. Founded in 1999, Translated was among the first internet-based translation services.
"We started working on something called machine-human symbiosis, so interaction between human and machine. How can we use AI to try to help professional translators be faster?"
The company's journey reflects the evolution of AI in business:
🌐 Internet Pioneer — Started as one of the first online translation services
🤝 Human-First Approach — Initially focused on human translation when AI wasn't reliable.
🔄 Continuous Innovation — Early adoption of machine learning and neural networks for translation.
2) 🤖 Evolution of Machine Translation (05:59)
The translation industry has been at the forefront of AI development, experiencing all major technological shifts:
"In 2004, the first machine learning approach started... it was the first time you use data to train the model to learn the rules rather than typing the rules one after the other."
The progression of translation technology shows how rapidly AI has evolved:
