GALA 2022 San Diego: The Industry's In-Person Gathering Returns in Full

In late April 2022, the Globalization and Localization Association (GALA) held its annual conference in San Diego, USA — GALA's first large-scale in-person annual conference since the pandemic. Hundreds of LSP executives, enterprise localization leaders and technology vendors reunited face to face, with attendance exceeding the organizer's expectations.

The agenda reflected the industry's "post-pandemic program": organizational integration after M&A, scaling MT post-editing operations, performance management for remote teams, and recruiting and retaining linguist talent. Compared with virtual events, the value of an in-person conference shows in corridors and at dinner tables — deal intentions, partnership talks and talent moves all happen off-program.

Notably, the conversation about "AI and machine translation" at this conference shifted from "whether to use it" to "how to use it well": how to productize MT quality evaluation, post-editing pricing and human-machine division of labor became the core exchange among providers.

The full return of industry conferences is good news for the conference interpreting market as well. The events recovery of 2022 is turning from signal into reality.