Looking Back at 2024

Another year is over, and it has been yet another tumultuous and uncertain year for our industry. At the same time, though, it has also been a year full of exciting new developments, business milestones and new discoveries. At this point in time, I’m feeling cautiously optimistic about the future – we’re all learning how to work better with some of the changes and new technologies that have defined the last few years, and I think we’re finally starting to glimpse a brighter future over the horizon.

In this post, I’m going to take a look back at some of the most important developments over the year and share my reflections ahead of 2025. Continue reading for my round-up of 2024.

Copenhagen Office Opens New Doors

One of the biggest changes to our business model recently has been the opening of our Denmark office in central Copenhagen in 2023. The office is headed up by our Regional Manager for the Nordics, Ellinor Johansson Milei , and this year it has really helped us open a lot of new doors. Besides the fact that Ellinor has been able to hold many exciting and productive meetings with clients (both old and new) in the area, it has also added a new international angle to the way we do business.

I have made many trips to Copenhagen this year, and we’ve held meetings and workshops in the office with colleagues, team members and vendors who are based in the Nordic Region, like our In-House Danish Translator and SEO Manager Natascha Pustelnik , who lives and works in Norway these days. The office has also been a great springboard for participation in conferences held up north, such as the Nordic Translation & Interpretation Forum (NTIF AB) , which we attended in Malm? in November, and the Nordic Game conference for video game developers in the region, which Ellinor attended back in May. And of course, I also have to mention LocWorld51, where we had a fantastic time in Dublin in June.

In 2025, I anticipate many more visits to the office, both in connection with conferences and with client meetings, and I hope that it will allow us to further solidify our presence in the region going forward.

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New CAT Tools and More AI

Perhaps the single most defining characteristic of 2024 is that it was a year in which we dedicated a lot of time to deepening out knowledge about AI and implementing it in our workflows. This was a hot topic at all of the different gatherings we attended over the year, and especially at the ELIA Networking Days in Berlin and at the BP Conference in Seville, which chose the topic of Brain Power as its theme.

One of the most complicated things about the industry at the minute is simply that there are so many different tools out there and so many ways to work with AI – some of them good, some of them not so good, and some of them potentially disastrous.

But after some experimentation, we finally found a new tool this year which we think integrates AI in a very useful way. Rather than giving generative AI too much control or insisting on AI pre-translations as default, it allows our human linguists to remain in the driver’s seat while simultaneously deploying a number of AI features that can help speed them up and boost the quality of their output.

For example, one of the stand-out functionalities provides AI analyses of segments, identifying phrasings that might sound unnatural and highlighting differences between the source and the target. This can help our linguists to discover ways they can refine their translations, but without ever overruling them or handing over too much control to the AI. The suggestions don’t always hit the mark, and so it’s important that they are taken as just that – suggestions – and not as instructions, and this is one thing I think this tool gets completely right.

This year, we look forward to working more with this tool and continuing to discover and experiment with new ways to leverage the benefits of AI – always in a sensible, considered and quality-conscious way.

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Won An Exciting RFP

Another achievement in 2024 that I am very proud of is that we came out on top in a very competitive and difficult procurement process to begin collaborating with a great new client – Automation Anywhere. Based in San Jose, California, Automation Anywhere is an American global software company that?develops robotic process automation (RPA) software. They are at the cutting edge of automation technologies and their rapid growth has meant a considerable need for top-notch localisation services within a range of different languages.

Our partnership with Automation Anywhere is going very well so far and both sides are very happy with what we have managed to achieve in the first few months of our collaboration. I think this is in large part down to our shared values, as we are both companies that value technology and always pursue a high-tech approach, but without forgetting the importance of human expertise and input. This client represents a healthy step forward for Comunica and signals that we are always continuing to grow, adapt and move with the times.

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FairLoc Launched

?Another defining moment in 2024 was the launch of FairLoc – a certification scheme for human-led translations that I developed in collaboration with my colleague Ellinor Johansson, and with a lot of input and support from our freelance content creator and social media manager Michael Purvis . It took us a long time to develop, refine and fine-tune the FairLoc concept, and so it was great to finally launch the website and see the response from within the localisation industry on LinkedIn and social media.

I was inspired to launch FairLoc after experiencing some of the more negative consequences of automation in our industry. It’s no secret that parts of the industry are pushing automation in cases where it is not suitable, and this excessive reliance on MT and AI is harming quality and damaging the industry’s reputation. It is also having severely negative consequences on the vendors who form the backbone of the sector. Many are seeing their work dry up and some of the most talented linguists have already left for greener pastures in other domains. FairLoc seeks to remedy all of this by promoting fair practices and a nuanced approach to our use of automation.

Since launching, we’ve learned some valuable lessons about what works and what doesn’t, and we will be making some tweaks to the concept in the first half of 2025. At the same time, we’ve also initiated some very exciting conversations with agencies that share FairLoc’s values, and we are very excited to see where this initiative might take us over the next twelve months.

?And so that was 2024! A year that taught us lots of lessons that I am now feeling ready to carry with me into 2025. So, here’s to another exciting and productive year, full of new discoveries and developments and, of course, lots more meetings with our industry colleagues and great moments together as a team, both in Spain and in Denmark. Be sure to connect with me on LinkedIn to follow along on this next chapter in our journey!