TRSB CEO Mary Kazamias on Leading Canada’s Largest Language Service Provider

Mary Kazamias, CEO of TRSB, joins SlatorPod to talk about her journey starting as a translator and transitioning through various roles to leading Canada’s largest language service provider (LSP).

The podcast explores the balance between government and private sector clients in Canada, with Mary noting that while the government produces more content, TRSB serves more customers in the private sector.

Mary highlights the importance of understanding cultural nuances in translation, particularly in bilingual regions like Quebec. She also touches on the impact of regulatory requirements on language services demand in Canada, such as the Official Languages Act, Bill 96, and provincial laws.

The podcast shifts to talent challenges in the language industry, with Mary highlighting the launch of TRSB Academy which offers a structured mentoring program to equip new translators with the practical skills needed to excel alongside technological advancements.

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Mary acknowledges the hype surrounding AI, but sees the role of LSPs as system integrators, adapting to incorporate AI technologies while maintaining a human-centric approach to providing language services.

When it comes to M&A strategy, Mary stresses the significance of cultural fit and careful post-merger integration for successful acquisitions. 

Looking ahead, Mary underscores the need for the industry to recognize and promote its diverse capabilities beyond traditional translation, embracing innovation and evolving business processes. 

Transcript

Florian: Today on the podcast, we welcome Mary Kazamias. Mary is the CEO of TRSB. TRSB is actually Canada’s largest language service provider, according to our 2024 Language Service Provider Index. Just tell us a little bit more about your background and how you became the CEO of Canada’s largest LSP.

Mary: Honestly, I started off as a translator. I did some internships, government, and at a company called Alpnet, which is now RWS. After my last internship, they asked me to stay on for a couple of special projects, not translation, but to coordinate and project manage. I found out that I really enjoyed it. It was a lot of hustling, a lot of learning, a lot of figuring things out and working with a wide variety of people. Eventually, they offered me the job. I started off, I guess you can call it project management, but it was a lot of everything. Learned how to water the plants. I also was really fortunate to have contact with all of our freelancers, as well as our internal people, our gang of lovable misfits. I learned a tremendous amount because I also had an Operations Director and the President at the time who really mentored me and basically groomed me, I could say, in a most positive way and were including me in the challenges, including me in even in the most difficult moments and meetings and whatnot. It was the best school, to be honest. That really paved the way for what I really wanted to do, which is understand how an LSP can provide a solution, not just a transactional service, but a solution to a customer. I was working with sales reps, I was working with internal teams, I was working with customers, and how all of those things tied together. That’s essentially what I brought to TRSB when I arrived in 2005. Essentially was, I guess you can call it a poop disturber. Am I allowed to say that? I kept saying, we can do this. How come we’re not doing this? Have you thought of this? And slowly but surely, my official title was business development, but what it really ended up being was strategy. My passion is really solving a problem, solving a problem for a customer, finding better ways to do things for the company, for our team members, and obviously for the customer. That’s really what paved the way for my, I guess you can call it transformation from pure sales to CEO. I love it because I got such a well-rounded view of how an LSP works, its challenges, the different customer relationships, and how those impact the business. And really understand what we can do to make our customers happy, and I guess you can call it sticky, but really grow with them.

Florian: That’s incredible. I mean, tick almost all of the boxes, linguist, project manager, some operations, then sales, and now executive. That’s pretty much an LSP in a nutshell. Speaking of nutshells, can you tell us a bit more about TRSB, core clients, sectors, expertise, geography, probably mostly Canada at this point?

Mary: We’re located in Canada. We’re based out of Montreal, and the bulk of our customers are themselves in Canada, whether they’re part of a larger global presence or Canadian enterprise. I guess you can say that the bulk of the work that we do are for regulated industries, so finance, banking, pharma, or life sciences, insurance, that kind of thing, but more and more retail because our customers are realizing that translation is not just a necessary evil. It’s really something that you need not only to capture market share, but really connect with your customers. Whether the industry is regulated or a B2C type of industry, the objective of translation is really to bridge two groups of people via content that’s either written or multimedia. It’s difficult to really encapsulate all of that because we’ve been in business since 1987. When I started in 2005, we were less than 30 people, and we’re about 300 now. Size matters, and it doesn’t because what’s really important is that we’ve had customers for 10, 15, 20 years and more. That’s the thing that we’re the most proud of. I’m very, very proud of that because there’s no survey, there’s no Net Promoter Score. All of those things things fall by the wayside when you know that you’ve been able to service a client, to serve a client, and really grow with them for years and years. I think that’s just a testament to our dedication.

Florian: I’m intrigued by the sales to executive leadership transition. Then how do you still do a lot of executive selling? You talked about existing clients, making sure they’re happy and they don’t leave, but language industry is super competitive. You have to have that sales engine running. How much are you involved in actual sales still at the C-suite? Then how do you lead a sales org in this industry?

Mary: It’s not as simple as maybe it sounds, but at the end of the day, I was never really a salesperson. My DNA is, I want to understand what the pain point that the customer has. Sometimes they don’t even know it. I love finding a way to meet that need for the customer. Yes, we do have a sales team. Yes, we actually have a Chief Revenue Officer as well who really heads the sales team. I was all alone in 2005 doing a little bit of everything. But as a CEO, my job is to make sure that we have all of the right resources, but also to support in many ways our sales team and our ops team so that the customer understands and is getting what they need. I don’t want our sales teams to basically try and force something upon a customer. I don’t like that as a customer. I never want to be told, you need to have this. I want as a customer to have my salesperson listen to me and give me advice and support me. And that, I think, is what creates a successful sales process and a successful relationship. So my way of supporting the team is just stepping in if there’s anything more complex or any challenges and offering advice. And a lot of our customers, like I said, have been around for so long. Some are friends. At the end of the day, they know that they have directors, they have customer success managers, they have sales reps they can turn to, but they know that they can always turn to me.

Florian: You mentioned regulatory as being a big part of the business. Tell me specifically a little bit about Canada’s regulatory environment and how that influences demand. We keep picking up some of the stories from Canada that various regulations and laws are being enforced that drive language services demand. Tell me a bit more about that.

Mary: When I mentioned regulatory, I really meant the industries themselves. Finance has certain obligations. Life sciences have, obviously, their own obligations and regulatory boards that are associated with those industries. But in general, Canada is officially a bilingual country. There are national laws and there are provincial laws. When you’re a company that wants to do business in Canada, depending on the type of industry you’re in, there are different types of disclosures that are required. If you have offices located in Quebec, there are rules that apply. Everyone talks about or has been talking about Bill 96, which came into law, which is actually Law 14, not Bill 96 anymore. And the essence of that is really just enhancing the position of French, the primacy of French in the Canadian landscape and ensuring that businesses are compliant. I think a lot of people got upset or nervous when that bill came about. But at the end of the day, if you understand that Quebec is a French-speaking province, primarily, it’s a question of respect. It’s really just a question of respect when you’re communicating with your customers, with your employees, when you’re even posting a job posting, you want to make sure that French is first and foremost. A lot of businesses were already compliant. It was just more an adjustment in some of the smaller details of the law.

Florian: Maybe for those of us in Europe, tell us more about how bilingual people are in Quebec. Is everybody bilingual or is there just a certain percentage of the population or how fluent are people generally in the other language?

Mary: I guess it depends who you ask and how you define bilingual. But if we take Montreal as an example, very multicultural city. Yes, the official language is French. Yes, there are so many different cultural groups represented. But at the end of the day, the way we communicate, whether it’s on the street, in a business, or in a shop when you walk in, French is first, but everyone can understand each other. I think it’s a wonderful thing. The more languages you speak, the better it is, as you can probably attest.

Florian: My French is terrible. That’s why when I meet somebody from Geneva who doesn’t speak English, we actually have to resort to English, which is super sad. Does Canadian French present any specific challenge to an LSP when you’re sourcing linguists, translators?

Mary: I think that fundamentally, what outsiders need to understand, meaning people outside of Quebec, outside of Canada, is that, yes, the French language is at its core the same, but it’s a cultural thing as well. Especially when you’re translating content that’s B2C content, when you’re really trying to capture a market, you need to understand what those cultural nuances are. Even from English-speaking Canada to French-speaking Quebec, there’s a difference. When we source or when we hire, we hire Quebec French speakers for native French speakers to translate from English to French. That’s really, really important to us.

Florian: I also want to talk about, you mentioned before, government and the regulation and Bill 96, which is another bill now. But generally, let’s talk about government versus private sector in Canada. I remember in my previous company, CLS, we acquired a Canadian LSP as well. Government was a big part of their portfolio. They had the Fisheries Department and there’s some defense contracts. How’s the split? How do you look at government versus private sector in Canada? Then where does the bulk of the private sector demand come from in Canada?

Mary: I believe some of the statistics are that government does produce more content than the private sector in terms of translation. But ss an organization, we have more customers in the private sector than in the public sector. I’m just speaking for myself, but I do know that the CLS, the Canadian division, had more customers in the public sector. At least that’s how they started off. But to be honest, when you look at the private enterprises, and this could be a bank, which is technically a regulated business, a telecom business, a pharmaceutical business, but as well a retail business, a construction business, you have to consider all the different types of content, the stuff that you see on the street, the stuff you see in the shop, the stuff that you get by email, the contracts that you need to sign with them. There’s training. There’s so much content out there. So in the private sector, they may not be or they may not all have the same rules that apply as with, let’s say, a federally chartered bank or a Crown Corporation. But nonetheless, there is a lot of content that comes from the private sector, specifically because of language laws, but also because, as I mentioned, it’s a question of ensuring that your customer base, your employees, that all of those people really understand each other.

Florian: What about language other than French? I think Toronto is probably one of the most international cities on Earth, right? Do you have some other demands there?

Mary: Yeah, we do. In fact, when I first started off, it was very little content that we did other than English and French. But over time, we saw that a lot of our customers, even though they were based in Canada, in various parts of Canada, recognized the need to communicate with their customers in various languages as well as with their stakeholders or staff that could be based in different parts of the world. I would say there’s a sizable proportion that we also do in a wide variety of languages today and different regional dialects or versions of those languages.

Florian: Is there something equivalent to the US language access legislation? Where basically, it’s hard for me to summarize the US language access legislation in a couple of sentences, but is there something equivalent?

Mary: We have the Official Languages Act that is a law and that trickles down to certain types of organizations and their need to communicate and make content available in the language of preference. We’ll see that in government space. As I mentioned, also, there are provincial rules, and Quebec being a French-speaking province, those rules are very specific.

Florian: But the language of preference would not be Vietnamese or Cantonese or Spanish. It’s going to be either French or English.

Mary: And there are dispensations for people who require services in languages other than French in Quebec. There are accessibility clauses for those people. So, yes, that exists, but again, there’s provincial and then there’s federal laws.

Florian: I want to change topic for a bit. You launched something called TRSB Academy. I want to talk a bit about the talent question or the talent challenge, because, for example, in Switzerland, it’s actually quite hard to educate now the next generation of translators, linguists, interpreters, because the whole AI hype, buzz, boom, what have you. It’s just getting very challenging to structure some of this curriculum. Is that something that you’re also seeing in Canada? And does it impact your hiring and recruiting efforts?

Mary: It’s all about talent, right? And attracting the right talent and retaining the right talent. The Academy, which was something we actually thought of a long time ago, and we tried different variations on that. We decided to give it a reboot, a refresh not too long ago so that we could help support people coming out of school, starting off in the industry and really give them a more structured mentoring program. We already have coaching and mentoring. We already do a whole lot of training and types of lunch and learn, online training, you name it. We do a lot of that. But with the Academy, it’s almost structured like school, but in a fun way to allow our linguists to really hone in on a specific area and then take that and then apply that to their everyday. Because at the end of the day, we always need to be learning. And I think that it’s not just about someone who’s fresh out of school, because our education programs, our translation programs are fantastic here. I don’t think that that’s an issue in any way, shape, or form. But it’s just taking the theory and learning how you apply it in your day to day. AI or no AI, it’s really a question of what in your brain, that expertise, taking that and really honing it.

Florian: AI almost makes it, well, not almost, makes even more pressing to have fantastic linguists because the AI does so much of the initial job and to actually get that last mile requires you to be an excellent translator, linguist or interpreter, right? TRSB is owned by a private equity fund and runs what’s out there called a buy and build strategy. Also something that I had to learn in my prior life with CLS Communications, same private equity and then they started buying LSPs. Generally, tell me a bit more about your thoughts on M&A, mergers and acquisition in the language industry as a growth strategy and how you execute that in particular at TRSB.

Mary: First and foremost, I think that buy and build strategy needs to be well-planned, well-thought-out, and it needs to make sense for the businesses now and later. The fit needs to be right. So many times you look at something on paper and it looks magical, but scratch the surface and you realize, maybe it’s not the right fit. And by fit, I don’t just mean the numbers. I don’t just mean the potential that that business or this or our business, how those two play together, because you don’t want to ever Frankenstein a business together and say, I want to jump into this sector, and it’s completely out of your wheelhouse. So how do you make those two businesses fit? I think a big piece also that’s really important when you’re looking to make an acquisition is cultural fit. And as far as I’ve read or seen, whether it’s in the LSP business or otherwise, that’s something that a lot of businesses do not take into consideration. And the integration, which is really the heavy lifting, bringing the two companies together, that piece can flop or be very, very disappointing in terms of value if you don’t take the cultural fit into consideration. When we did an acquisition a couple of years ago, we were really fortunate, aside from the fact that I was a really big fan of the owner, and he’s actually the leader of our TRSB Academy. He’s a wonderful speaker, wonderful, very passionate about languages. I think for us, it was important to find what would be complementary to our business, what could be a no-brainer in terms of fit, and how can the two companies benefit from each other? It’s not just one-sided. I don’t have all the answers. A buy and sell strategy is tricky, and you need to really think things through before you just go and hit the market and just start buying, buying, buying. We see a lot of organizations that have done that, and it’s a challenge. At some point, you have to realize, is this really where my business is going, what it needs to do, and do these acquisitions really make sense?

Florian: Now, assuming there’s cultural fit and you go through with the acquisition, what would be some of the steps? How would you prioritize the steps in the post-merger integration? Would you maybe do tech first or leave them separate? Or just initially, usually people like to combine the freelancer pools and things like that. Just walk us through some of the prioritization there.

Mary: It kind of depends the type of business you’re acquiring, how they’re structured, what their platforms, their processes are. But I really think that before you change anything, really try to understand how that company is working, and then do a gap analysis between yours and theirs. Just because you have two different sets of technologies, one isn’t necessarily better than the other. So you need to be able to do a really, really deep dive into that. And I don’t believe in rushing into any type of transition. I think that if you do it gradually, not only are you going to set yourself up for success, but you’re also going to ensure that the transition for the individuals, the humans, so important that that piece will flow more easily. One thing we learned during that transition is we really took our time in doing that is making sure that the communication is open. Obviously, you learn things when you do an acquisition and you know how to do it better the next time. I would highly recommend that just keeping the lines of communication open between the two teams and making sure that the people are updated and know where the businesses are going during that whole time. We did this during the pandemic, the height of the pandemic, so I have to say that was a challenge for us.

Florian: Pandemic, integration, and then getting everybody on the same page. Very tricky. Let’s briefly talk about AI. Everybody talks about AI. I saw some crazy, from the Google I/O conference, I think a couple of days ago, somebody clipped together every single instance when they said AI, and it was like a five-minute video, so like a thousand times they said AI. Anyway, we also have to talk about AI because all these new language AI technologies are out there. How do you navigate this? Clients come to you to say, hey, there’s ChatGPT, there’s these 50 other tools that are out there, and you are the language services specialist. What do you tell them?

Mary: First, I listen. I think that’s the important part. What do they know? What do they not know? You’d be surprised. Actually, I’m not surprised. But there’s so much misinformation. There’s so much confusion. I think that there’s first and foremost, an education process that’s important. Really understanding what’s the end goal for the client. AI or no AI, I think that approach is the best one. What is the end goal? What are you looking to achieve and what do you need us to help you with? And then we can structure that. Do you need help with your workflows? Do you need a more integrated environment? Do you need just faster turnaround time for low-risk content, and talking to them about what their business objectives are, and then making sure that there’s a fit there. I don’t know if it’s just AI, it’s really understanding where your customer is going and what problem that you need to solve for them.

Florian: So LSPs are evolving to almost like system integrators, they’ve usually historically been that as well, but now also, of course, adding all of these new language AI technologies in there. What about the next couple of years? What are you looking at? What are some of the initiatives that you have in store?

Mary: I don’t have a crystal ball, but certainly, I think that AI doing the heavy lifting and then the human at the core of all of that using critical thinking, critical judgment, and providing a slew of services that are complementary to what we’re already doing is really the future for our industry as a whole. We have a collective amount of expertise, be that in a specific subject matter, a specific industry, but also technologies of various types, how those pieces play together, and business processes or workflows. If we take all of that, we harness all of that, I think that there’s a real future, a real potential for our industry. But we need to take a step back and really collectively think, okay, what are we good at? We’re not just transferring words from one page to the other. That’s not the case. It hasn’t been for so long. We’ve done all of these amazing, incredible things as LSPs, and I think we’ve been shy to say those things. We’ve been too timid or we haven’t acknowledged that, so let’s acknowledge that and maybe promote that a little bit louder.