My career spans roles as a translator, researcher, academic, and project leader, each informing and enriching the others. I began translating in 1995, worked as an interpreter from 1998 to 2008, and have been subtitling since 2001.

Driven by curiosity and a tinkerer’s mindset, I moved from researching subtitling norms for my PhD thesis to initiating and coordinating EU-funded projects at the Computer Technology Institute (CTI), bridging engineers and academics to develop software and educational materials. This work has yielded numerous publications and led to frequent speaking engagements at international conferences.

Since 2006, I have been teaching at public universities (Hellenic Open University, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and Universitat Pompeu Fabra) and private institutions, focusing on audiovisual localization and Spanish language education. I have also developed self-paced online subtitling courses for both local and global audiences.

Volunteering is equally integral to my path. I serve as Vice President of the European Association of Studies in Screen Translation, co-founded the Women in Localization Greece Chapter, and served on the board of the Hellenic Society for Translation Studies.

At heart, I believe language and culture must be accessible to all, and that interdisciplinary teamwork is key to addressing complex challenges.

Alex Yoffe is the Product Manager at OOONA, a web-based localization platform for media content. Alex studied industrial engineering and management at the Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology. He has previously worked in media operations, IT, and built video transcoding solutions. He also tried his hand at translation and subtitling in a past life, and afterwards served as CTO of Trans Titles, Israel’s leading subtitling agency.

Today Alex is responsible for OOONA’s Timed Text Tools’ development and integration. He is thrilled to be traveling to new and familiar places, meeting with OOONA’s clients around the world.

Panayota (Yota) Georgakopoulou is a leading media localization expert, specializing in the application of language technologies in the creative industries. She is the owner of Athena Consultancy, which offers services to language service providers, software and technology companies, content owners and institutions around the world. Yota advises on strategy, business development, quality, tools, workflows, as well as talent sourcing, training and management.

With a PhD in translation and subtitling, and an early career in academia, Yota then spent almost 20 years in the industry in senior management roles at multinational language service providers and participated in multiple international research projects. She has published extensively, is on the steering committee of the Languages & The Media international conference, a member of the European Commission’s Language Industry (LIND) Expert Group, the founder of the Greece Chapter of Women in Localization, as well as a writer, speaker and influencer in the media localization space.