The making of our Thanksgiving video was a journey that reminded us of the unique value human creativity brings to our work.

In a world where AI tools are rapidly evolving, we see AI not as competition but as an opportunity to reflect on the qualities that set us apart.

Our process—rooted in collaboration, thoughtfulness, and emotional nuance—is a testament to the irreplaceable role of the human touch in crafting meaningful connections.

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, we decided to create a heartfelt greeting video to thank everyone—our clients, coworkers, and friends. Through our combined team efforts, we were able to make a video that sets us apart from AI. Here’s our process on how we made this year’s video special.

We gathered photos of our team members in action—focused, collaborating, and working wisely. These images were the perfect way to showcase the dedication and effort we put into every project. Each picture highlighted a different aspect of our work, whether in the office, in meetings, or working remotely.

We also gathered photos of our team celebrating Thanksgiving together. Whether we were sharing a toast, giving thanks, or simply enjoying each other’s company. These images added a joyful, festival touch to the video. It was important for us to show not only our professional side but also the warmth we share as a team.

To step it up a notch, we reached out to Layla and asked her to write a poem that would capture the team, dedication, and the spirit of Thanksgiving. Layla’s words were both thoughtful and inspiring. The poem beautifully expressed our gratitude and teamwork.

In praise of work partners

Integrity, merit, jubilation
Honorably, you display

Collaborative endeavors and dynamic talents
Significant affiliation creates

Vigorous diligence and wise resolutions
Remarkable admiration cultivates

Our heartfelt gratitude we proclaim to you
A bountiful Thanksgiving we wish for you

We carefully selected the best visuals to match each part of the poem, ensuring the transitions felt seamless and natural. We also added more Thanksgiving elements to make the video warmer and more festive.  We show Layla’s poem in its entirety at the end, but have stanzas of her poem alternate with our wishes and pictures of our staff. The result is a very interesting video that will make the viewer feel the warm greetings from Monterey Language Services while making sure that our thanks are conveyed.

One important thing we did in this video was feature our clients. It’s important to show that we’re all more than just a faceless company, but a team of people who are all working toward a common goal. It helps to show harmony, joy, and peace. This is something that we did last year as well, and something that we will continue to do each year.

We made sure that the transitions were consistent across the entire video and had a method where we would have the text fly in, and then when the next slide had pictures, we’d do a door opening effect. The door opening effect was used for all the pictures, but for text-to-text transitions, we had a slide effect. This was all very intentionally engineered to make a very smooth and comforting feel for the viewer as they watched the video.

From start to finish, we made sure every element of the video reflected the gratitude we feel for our clients, coworkers, and friends. It’s not just about the work we do; it’s about the connections we build and the community we’re part of.

Once completed, we were proud to share the final product—a video that not only conveyed our thanks but also celebrated teamwork, dedication, and joy. It was a reminder that the work we do is about more than just business; it’s about the people we collaborate with, and the relationships we build along the way. It has truly been a joy to work with all our clients and we look forward to our continued collaboration!

When people ask us if Chat GPT or AI is a threat to us, we will proudly answer no. We take a higher road that involves beauty, nuances, and uniqueness that only humans work together as a team can create!  AI produced work is plain and predictable. In our opinion, AI in fact has a long way to go in the language industry!

Video link: https://youtu.be/dATBteNQ-zY?si=bgPDXw-3FblyfnaW

Picking up where we left off on our previous behind the scenes diversity blog, we are certain that there is one thing that AI has yet to really accomplish. AI’s inability to generate something unique in music and in interpretation is something interesting to explore.

We have started to show the video, Interpreter and Music, to our closer circle of colleagues and friends in order to gather feedback. One colleague sent us a video from Kuban Music on YouTube about AI singing a Chinese song. Our initial reaction was of surprise at how impressive it is that an AI was able to sing like that. Our director of translation Mei-Ling thinks it’s so cool that she started to learn the song from the AI. But the more we listen to it, the more we begin to realize that there’s something lacking in its composition and performance. After repeated listening, Mei-Ling, who is not even close to be called a singer, feels the urge to record herself to challenge the AI singer. She said it was a therapeutic experience, because she feels that she has something unique that the AI is lacking — heart and liveliness. There is something special from hearing a human singing that an AI voice couldn’t produce. For comparison, please see both the AI and the human samples below. We are sure if we were to invite 100 humans to sing, they will come out all differently with their own individual uniqueness, while AI variations will most likely be limited.

Everyone knows that AI is a result of big data, “aggregating” from others to generate its materials. It’s trained in a way to mimic humans. Notice that’s humans, plural. This is because it’s not trained to mimic individual people, but a general populace. It essentially crowdsources behavior from the resources it’s trained on, and becomes not just one person, but many. Though the programmers may have the AI come up with clever phrases, such as AI shedding tears, to make it sound like its own person, it isn’t nearly as unique and diverse as humans. It’s inherently impossible for that to happen because of the origin of the AI’s nature.

On the contrary to that, with our interpreter and music video, individuality is one thing that we really wanted to express. 15 individual contributions from around the world bring in incredibly vast diversity and inclusion, yet no interpreters were instructed on what exactly to be contributed. Every piece comes out of interpreter’s individuality with each interpreter’s own language, culture, thoughts, feelings, circumstances and education that leads to how they act. In this sense, everyone is as unique as a fingerprint—there really is nobody like each one of them in the world.

For music, it’s always about expressing oneself with human emotions and energy, and AI may be struggling to do that because it doesn’t have a sense of self. The ability to have your emotions flow out is something that AI is not able to replicate, at least not in present times. AI is always searching for the “right” answer, but there isn’t one with creative media like music or abstract concepts like human energy.

AI is unable to think outside of the box and improvise like humans can. They’re trained to think on pre-existing thoughts and opinions. Anything outside of that scope is not something that they are able to even perceive. That’s why, for example, AI will never truly be able to replicate jazz. Jazz is a collaborative performance where innovation and creativity are key elements. At any given minute, the tempo and melody can change to something entirely different, and it’s up to the musicians to keep up and complement each other so that it doesn’t sound like complete chaos. AI is very exciting technology, but there’s nothing quite as thrilling as watching jazz musicians collaborate or excellent interpreters work.

More often than not, interpretation is similar to Jazz where interpreters often need to improvise and come up with creative solutions to their on-the-spot translation. AI is able to follow patterns to come up with solutions that others have thought of and have done before, but they’re not able to come up with these types of originality their own. AI singing or interpreting at the current stage may serve as a gist of ideas, a prototype, or a machine for learning a song. Still, it will be important for humans to intervene, and add the kind of individuality or human touch that will help it sparkle and make it shine and standout as a piece of unique individual work.

In the future, the methodology used to create AI may change. Is it possible that AI will get closer to having more individuality and uniqueness? We’d love to hear our colleague’s thoughts on the topic because everyone brings their own unique perspective. There are multiple answers to this question and we’re happy to start the discussion and see where it leads us since this is such an important topic in this day and age!

AI singing sample: (Listen Here)

Human singing sample: (Listen Here)

How does AI apply to the language industry? AI has always been a constant question mark in the back of our minds especially regarding automatic translations. Now that AI can do so much, is it time for translators to become worried?

Today, translators use machine translation programs such as Trados or MemoQ to give them a baseline to work from, so called post-editing machine translation (PEMT). PEMT can greatly improve translation times especially for longer translations. For translators, it has been recognized as a valid strategy and working method. However as we all know, the translations that machine translation programs produce aren’t perfect. They are often more than not flawed. But what happens if you begin using AI such as Chat GPT which is designed to produce fluent and natural sounding language? Would a translator have a more powerful tool? Or would you have a competitor?

Translators will find that the answer is the same as it always has, ever since machine translation was introduced into the world. A machine will most certainly not remove the need for a translator. Language is always so fluid, full of nuance and possibilities that it’s almost impossible for a machine to pick up on every last detail. On the flip side though, translators may find a new ally with AI as it can cut their work time, allowing them to work on more projects. For example, translators can enter questions into Chat GPT, maybe have it check for fluency or suggest different ways of phrasing things, or even come up with new ideas.

If you’re an interpreter, you probably have even less to worry about. Though AIs such as Google Assistant are popular for quick and easy phrases, it still runs into the same problems as it is pulling from Google Translate. Interpretation especially is a field where accuracy and nuance is important and a lot of that is easily lost with AI translations.

Overall, in the language field, whether the advancement of AI would replace the role of human translators and interpreters is nothing to be concerned about, at least not in our life time. If anything, we should be excited about it. As the technology advances, translators and interpreters may find a powerful ally that will help them advance their work efficiently.