"It'll take me some time to get used to a different schedule" – A Farewell Interview with Peggy van der Kreeft

Hi Peggy. If I'm not mistaken, you started your career at the DW office in Brussels back in the 1990s,  years before DW Innovation even existed. How did it all come to pass, and how did you end up working as an HLT innovation manager for a team mostly based in Bonn and Berlin?

It's true, I originally didn't intend to work in Bonn and Berlin 🙂. And indeed, I started off in DW's Brussels Studio. Guido Baumhauer, now our Managing Director for Distribution, Marketing and Technology, was working in the Studio back then, in 1997, and he had acquired a first European research project for DW. The thing was called OPAL. So he put an ad in a local newspaper, looking for someone with experience in EU projects and solid English language skills. Through my previous work experience, I thought I could match those requirements. We met, I was hired, and this was the start of a 27-year-long journey. 

Young Guido B. in Belgium, earning his stripes and making a fantastic hire via a newspaper ad. 🙂 That's a nice story indeed. Please continue...

Well, Guido and I worked in the Brussels Studio for a couple of years, running several projects. During that time, Wilfried Runde and Jochen Spangenberg (now head and deputy head of DW Innovation) also joined the  project management work in Brussels. When Guido moved to DW HQ in Bonn to work directly with the Director General, the projects eventually also moved there. And that's how I ended up working for DW Innovation in Bonn and Berlin, which was a whole new experience for me.

You obtained your degree in applied linguistics/translations in... ...drum roll... 1980! As a young academic, what drew you to the field? And what kind of technology were you using back then?

I guess I liked working with languages and wanted to really learn to speak and write them well, so I opted for training as a translator/interpreter in Dutch, English, and Spanish. I obtained an M.A. in Translation. As the study is much wider than mere translation, it was later appropriately renamed to "B.A. in Applied Linguistics", with a subsequent "M.A. in Translation" specialization, hence the two names. At the time, i.e., in the early 1980s, we already got an introduction to automated translation, using the Systran Machine Translation system. I followed a post-graduate course at the University of Louvain to get more insights into this. Perhaps this was a preview of my work later on. About twenty years later, I also obtained a post-graduate teacher's degree, as education is also a major interest of mine.

That's impressive. So what made you take a job in digital media innovation after getting your first degrees?

Before I joined DW, I worked for the U.S. Embassy in Brussels, where I was hired right after graduation, mostly because of my language skills. I first worked in Human Resources, and then moved to a newly created Media Monitoring Unit, where I specialized as an online database expert, which got me into the digital media innovation world quite early. When that unit closed, I looked for an opportunity in the same branch – and ended up at the DW Brussels Studio for European research projects.

Their loss, our gain, I'd say. 🙂 Now looking back at almost 30 years in the business, what do you consider the best, most successful, or maybe most rewarding projects of your career?

I've seen many interesting projects over the years, covering several technologies. Personally, the most rewarding ones were the projects focusing on improving and applying language technologies. AXES was the first project we were involved in that experimented with a platform combining speech recognition, translation, object and face recognition and even event recognition (describing actions/movements). That was revealing and got us interested in more of the same. The SUMMA project, in which we collaborated with the University of Edinburgh and the BBC amongst others, was the start of what we now know as plain X. It took a few more years and projects before we got to the mature plain X platform, which we currently use for transcription, translation, subtitling and synthetic voice-over. That is definitely the project with the most successful outcome. The DW team has been instrumental in turning plain X into a functional, efficient platform in a media productive environment, in close collaboration with our Portuguese platform development partner Priberam. The integration of the online platform with other systems at DW, such as Premiere, Open Media, the CMS and Hive, have made it a very powerful and strong system, leading to its extended and extensive use at DW. By the way, other media organizations and companies have started using it as well, which makes it an even bigger success. It looks like we have a really sustainable platform here.

So what about the most difficult projects? Any spectacular failures? No need to go into details or name people and institutions...

We've had our share of difficulties, of course, our ups and downs. Luckily, I haven't been involved in any true failures, in the sense of projects that couldn't be completed or had to be rejected. The reviews organized by the European Commission were challenging at times, requiring flexibility and creativity, but we really always managed. The early projects focusing on telecommunication technologies, including 3G and 4G were technically the hardest for me, as I was not that deep into that kind of thing. And I was very happy to move into the linguistics projects after that. 🙂

What are your key take-aways in the field of digital media innovation? And what advice do you have for young people who want to pursue that line of work?

Here's my advice: Be flexible and keep an open mind, both in terms of technologies and management. It takes a team to come to good results and it's crucial to work with people, understand them, and steer them into the right direction. In media innovation, it's also important to get to know the technology that's available now and to look ahead. Our research projects always peak at least five years into the future–which is hard, because you don't really know what will happen, but it makes you think ahead. In any case, take the time and put effort into becoming an expert in your field. There are many people that know a little about a lot, but you can make a difference if you're really good at what you're doing. I believe that's the most rewarding approach.

Here's a somewhat tough question, but of course we're interested in your predictions: What kind of trends and developments are we likely to see in the field of natural language processing, AI, and multilingual media productions in the next couple of years?

I believe that in the coming years, subtitling will be very prominent.  And I'm glad to see that DW is assuming a major role here, as a pioneer in some ways, especially with its commitment to go to 100% subtitling in all languages for on-demand content, and also for doing successful live subtitling. We'll see subtitles for virtually all types of content, and I expect the quality will get better and better. That's the first and most obvious level of accessibility. I also hope to see advances in audio descriptions, a service that hasn't been automated yet, but probably will be in the not too distant future. There's also a fast moving trend towards using synthetic voices. The technology has advanced significantly in a very short time, it's now already usable in production. Of course, the quality depends on the language–a major factor to be taken into account for a world broadcaster. The main hurdles are now primarily in the area of ethics and strategic management: What kind of voice should we pick? Can we customize it? Do we have the rights to the voice? Etc. In terms of generative AI, I expect major developments in summarization and question-answer systems, which will open up new routes to using and improving language technologies. We're facing very exciting times. And I really hope DW Innovation will have the chance to work on all the challenges.

Thank you for those insights, Peggy. The next question addresses a less techy, more social aspect of your career: You were born in the Netherlands, became a Belgian citizen later on, spent the better part of your career working for a German organization, did most of your project work in English, and you seem to be very keen on speaking and teaching French. So... ...what do you consider your cultural identity? 🙂

Ah, that's a good question! I guess I could say I'm European in the first place. I live in Flanders, but have never ended up speaking Flemish, the regional variant of Dutch in Belgium. I speak neutral Dutch, neither typically Flemish nor typically Dutch. As dialects and regional variants tend to be spoken by fewer people over time, especially when it comes to the younger generation, that makes less of a difference nowadays. In any case, I feel culturally immersed in a mix of Belgian and Dutch habits. And I live in a country that has three official languages: Dutch, French and German. I've also been closely connected to the American and German communities. And I've worked and tutored in several languages, so I've been exposed to an even wider cultural world. The experiences and contacts here at DW have opened up a whole new world for me, one that I was not familiar with. It has been a pleasure working in such an international environment, and it's hard to find one that is more multilingual and multicultural.

I remember you as a very prolific colleague, always enthusiastic about R&D, always on the road, always close to a laptop. Now that you're officially retired, how are you going to fill your days?

It's true, I'm a very committed and busy person, and I was wondering about that myself. I've actually worked half time over the past year, which has helped me to detach a little bit and give others a chance to gradually take over responsibilities. In general,  I have a pretty wide variety of interests, so I won't be bored anytime soon. I guess I'll still keep my laptop or tablet – or mobile – close at hand. 

Sounds like the opposite of retirement to me... 🙂

Well, I want to remain active as a freelancer, but I'll try to keep this restricted, as my enthusiasm often leads to more work than intended. I'll keep an eye on developments in the field of language technology developments, and I'll continue to use and test a couple of platforms and experiment with AI.  I'm also an e-learning coach, mainly for English as a second language, something I've done on the side for about 20 years. I really like that, because it gives people a chance to study at their own pace and convenience. Apart from that, I like to keep in shape and do a lot of biking, including bikepacking, and water sports such as swimming and kayaking. Now that my husband and I have the time, we also want to travel regularly. Last year we did the Caribbean, this year we'll do the Emirates.  And of course, there are also many places nearby that we haven't visited yet. Europe, here we come! Oh, and a considerable part of my free time will go to my family, the grandkids in particular. I have two now, and it's great that I can take care of them now whenever needed. Time flies; it's so nice to just be with them and see them grow. I guess it'll take me some time to get used to a different schedule, but I know it's not bad to slow down. I also want to do and discover new things, without being rushed. 

Well, I hope you succeed in finding the right balance, Peggy. Is there anything else you'd like to share?

I'd like to thank everyone I've worked with, the Research and Cooperation Team in particular, but also all the others I got to know over the past 27 years – and Guido for hiring me in the first place! It's been a great adventure, with so many unexpected routes and experiences. Thanks for the marvelous opportunities.  I've met so many interesting people, at DW and beyond. If I had the chance to start over, I'd do it again, just like this, without a doubt.

Dear Peggy, thank you for the interview, thank you for your amazing work – and happy retirement!

Thank you!

The text has been slightly edited for clarity and readability.