Interview with Distinguished Speaker Iti Sahai

Published on 03.09.2022

We are very excited about your presentations at the ATA conference. Will you tell us more about your experience in the translation and localization industry?

I’m equally excited to be a part of this year’s ATA conference in Los Angeles. It’s a huge honor and I am grateful for the opportunity! I’ve been a part of the localization industry for over 15 years. I started out my career in film and television and that’s where I got introduced to adapting the content for the region where we were distributing these films and TV shows. After this initial experience I was very intrigued by localization and how it affected the world all around us, especially in the products and technology that can be interacted with on a day[1]to-day basis. I took the opportunity to work for a language service provider to learn the technology and process better and took those learnings to the client side by helping build globalization programs for various industries. Since my career started in the entertainment industry, I like to think of myself as a storyteller at heart. Now I tell the stories of mostly software products to different global audiences by way of localization. This continues to motivate and challenge the creative within me.

Will you give us a summary of your sessions “Leadership and Excellence” and “Product lifecycle and localization”?

Leadership and Excellence

This is something I get extremely excited about! This is purely a mindset topic and has to do with breaking one’s own limiting beliefs and overcoming them with excellence. This could be useful to everyone despite where they are in their career.

Product lifecycle and localization

I am assuming the majority of the audience at the conference will be translators and I believe they might benefit from understanding the complete product lifecycle and where and when the translations become important. I could explain the phases of product development and the ideal world where localization is brought in at the discovery stage (very early) to the project and the product is considered to be built for multiple geo-locations.

You currently work in localization and globalization. What do you like most about the type of work that you do?

I’m really inspired by the interactions I get to have on a daily basis with talented, curious and innovative people from all around the world. Be it a solutions architect helping me establish the right technology framework, project managers working around the clock, and most importantly the translators giving words a new life in a target language. It is truly a mix of art and science to bring any project to completion and I enjoy this collaboration the most about my work.

What inspired you to present at the ATA conference, and what is the most important takeaway from your presentations that you will want for attendees?

ATA is a very prestigious organization and with its reach to the member network, I see this as an opportunity where the audience can get an insight into some of my work on the client side but more importantly, I believe it is where I can learn from these localization professionals.

I really want the audience to attend my presentations with an open mind and hopefully the presentations are not close ended. I would love for the audience to think of my presentations as the beginning of a conversation that they can dive deeper into with their peers and colleagues and perhaps their clients as well.

About Iti Sahai: You can find out more about Iti Sahai on LinkedIn.