There Will Be More Collaboration Amongst African Language LSPs – Oluwatobi J. Oladipo
The language industry in Africa is full of untapped opportunities. Kabod has ventured on a journey of identifying, documenting, and highlighting inspiring stories and innovative projects from entrepreneurs, researchers, and freelancers in the Translation, Interpretation, and Natural Language Processing (NLP) communities. The final goal is to celebrate African professionals in the language industry and facilitate knowledge and experience sharing. Mr. Oluwatobi J. Oladipo is the co-founder of iVoiceAfrica, he is a voice-over artist and a translator in Nigeria. His love and devotion to the development of African languages are unmatched. Kabod: What attracts you to the language industry? I have had the opportunity to live in different cities around the world and to interact with different people that didn’t necessarily speak the languages that I’m fluent in. When I saw that I got to a point in my life or to some places where I could not particularly communicate with the next person, I began to think of possible solutions. How about a solution where, although not a solution necessary that we all speak the same language, but a solution where you can have an understanding of what I am saying, irrespective of when we speak two different languages? And that, for me, was the one thing that attracted me to the language industry to see how humans can actually communicate irrespective of the language differences that they have. Kabod: What does translation mean to you? So this would also be a continuation of the last question because translation for me is beyond the text-to-text representation of what is trying to be said or what is trying to be expressed. I believe that translation also embodies mannerisms and using the right tones and the right principles of that language to communicate. Furthermore, I also believe that the reason why we do translation work as individuals or companies is because we are trying to actually speak to a certain audience or we are trying to speak to an actual person. It would only just be right if I spoke to you in a way that you would understand and that, again, is the basis of communication. I need to ensure that you understand and you can put into context what I’m saying to you. Kabod: How did the idea of creating iVoiceAfrica come up? On this question, iVoiceAfrica, the name is special to me because it was a name that I never thought about. It was a name that just came to me when I started my career as an independent voiceover artist. I returned back to Nigeria full-time in 2017. While I was in Nigeria, I started freelancing for broadcast agencies, I meant to say, and radio stations and ad agencies. I remember at the time I was working with a company in Barcelona, one of the requirements that they needed from me was a website of my own. I took a week off and I created a website on my own from scratch. I remember when I wanted to purchase the domain, the only name or the only thing that came to my head was iVoiceAfrica because I was already a voiceover artist. I used to do voiceovers in French and English and sometimes in Pidgin, with my unique African accent. I think why I chose that name because I wanted people to know that you are unique despite being an African and even having a distinct African accent. I wanted people to know that you’re unique and be proud to show it off to the world that this is what you do and what you’re about. That was why I believe that the name came to my head. But most significantly, I knew that I wanted to express this feeling to every African that was coming in as a voiceover artist. Even if you’re a content creator, I wanted to be able to extend this to everybody saying, irrespective of what accent you have or what language that you speak, it is special and unique. Most importantly, people need it. That became the new business model of iVoiceAfrica when I decided to transition from being just a voiceover artist. Kabod: How did you become a co-founder? When we started working, that is when we started creating localization work for our clients in terms of translations, voiceovers, and interpretations; we got accepted to Microsoft for startups in 2022, the first quarter of 2022. One of the requirements that we had at the time was that we needed to create a tech-enabled company. So at that time, we had one of our friends, who used to be a consultant for us on technology and business development and strategy. Hence, she joined us full-time as a co-founder and the technical co-founder and we began to develop new business models and new business cases for how we can transition to be a tech-enabled company. Although that is still a work in progress, we are very sure that sometime this year, 2023, we will be able to announce to the world what we are trying to do next as a company. Kabod: What are some challenges you encountered during your career? For some of the challenges that we encountered in our career, I’m going to answer this from the perspective of iVoiceAfrica, not myself as a voiceover artist, although they still go hand in hand. I think the biggest challenge that we face in localization, particularly from Africa, is that we have lots of languages. We have over 2,000 languages and 7,000 dialects in Africa. In addition to that, finding professional resources that are able to deliver quality in these languages is also very hard. We always have to go the extra mile, do the extra marketing, and do the extra sales. The fact that I speak multiple African languages also helps. For instance, when I’m speaking to people in places or countries like Congo, Guinea Bissau, and so on, I communicate effectively with them. In some regards, that could also be
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