Home > Featured-Content > For-LSPs > Industry-Data-and-Resources
CEO Transifex
Forces shaping 2024 are anchored in three pillars: human-quality content creation, localization hubs, and measured impact.
Human-quality content creation is crucial for globalizing at scale. Generative AI will enable personalized marketing strategies in local languages so companies can meet their customers where they are. TMSs and other language technology will be leveraged to create content that resonates deeply with diverse audiences. This approach not only heightens the efficiency of marketing campaigns but also significantly expands a company's global reach at scale.
Language technology will be at the heart of globalization strategies. Localization hubs will extend to supporting all content types—text, audio, video, images—across various organizational functions like marketing, product development, and customer success. By integrating third-party tools and automating workflows, hubs will provide a comprehensive solution that streamlines the entire localization process, making it seamless, efficient, and adaptable to any content or departmental need.
Lastly, localization will reach the C-suite. This will be aided by clearly measuring the impact of language technology and services. Providers must be committed to demonstrating the tangible business value of their solutions, aligning with the growth and global success of clients, thereby ensuring that their innovations directly contribute to clients’ market expansion and customer engagement.
In a word… rethink. It’s time for the industry to rethink the entire localization lifecycle—from content creation through the publishing of multilingual assets. And it’s time to rethink the value equation—who gets paid, how, and how much.
While some focus on AI as a means to machine translate content, there are myriad other opportunities such as source content assessment, glossary creation, TM maintenance, transcreation, quality estimation, task assignment, and even efficiency reporting. As an industry, we should focus on where our expertise adds the most value and not be concerned with AI replacing more mundane tasks. This leads to reimagining the economics of the industry by putting in place a utility-based system where end users pay based on the value of the translated content versus simply by word. Here, AI is used to unclog the backlog of content to be translated by performing more tasks in the pipeline for lower utility content, freeing up higher-value (and higher-cost) work for humans. I am bullish that the more we use AI as an industry, the more revenue we will generate… for both technology and human-led services.
2024 has been a pivotal year for the localization and language technology industry. With the rapid adoption of AI-driven tools, we’ve seen companies shift their focus from manual workflows to solutions that prioritize speed, scalability, and automation. The industry’s embrace of large language models (LLMs) has redefined what’s possible, enabling faster translation cycles and more nuanced understanding of context. However, this evolution has also highlighted the growing need for transparency and trust in AI-generated outputs, particularly in ensuring translation quality.
One major success has been the growing awareness that quality must be measured by “fitness for purpose” rather than unattainable perfection. Metrics like the MQM framework and AI-driven quality indices are becoming the standard, allowing businesses to align translation quality with their specific needs.
At the same time, the challenges are clear. Many organizations are grappling with how to integrate these advanced tools into existing workflows without creating complexity for their teams. Balancing automation with human oversight remains a delicate equation, especially as expectations for speed and cost efficiency rise.
As we look ahead, it’s crucial for the industry to continue focusing on workflows that enhance collaboration, provide transparency, and scale intelligently. At Transifex, we’ve embraced these principles, and we look forward to being part of the solutions that define the next chapter of localization innovation.