Save Time and Increase Productivity with Automation and AI in Localization
Automation is transforming the localization industry. Taking advantage of the right MT and AI tools can improve accuracy and consistency while saving your team valuable time and resources. Learn how to implement automation workflows and how to spot the most common risks in this article.
People want authentic conversations. They want to hear brands address them in their language. Localizing content into their native tongue is one of the ways to achieve this level of clear and compelling communication.
74% of customers say that they would be more likely to buy from a business for a second time if they received customer support in their native language. ?? Localized customer support and a generally personalized experience are achievable if you use a well-researched localization strategy and automation. Automation not only keeps your workflow pipelines free, but it also makes your teams more productive.
Here at Localazy, we make automation easy to implement with our features. Developers, managers, and translators alike can benefit from automation to speed up their work processes while they focus on tasks that deserve their attention. Today, we’re talking about automation and productivity from the lens of localization. But first, let’s focus on the localization part.
?? The Growing Need for l10n In 2024??
Every business wanting to expand globally learns in the process that localization is a must. That’s why the need for it keeps increasing: the global localization services market size is projected to go from USD $4.9M in 2022 to $11.2M in 2033, pointing at a compound annual growth rate of 7.2% from 2023 to 2033.
When you consider expanding to new markets, you should know that you’re about to approach people who share different cultures, backgrounds, and languages. Most importantly, you’re communicating with people who share different perspectives about what you consider the best products, best branding elements, and best marketing practices.
With localization, you take into account every aspect of expanding into a new market, from cultural distinctions to customer habits, and natives’ buying psychology. It means you’ll adapt everything, from your website and/or mobile app to software and multimedia content, so it resonates with local audiences.
When you prioritize localization, you're on your way to crossing all language barriers and connecting with customers on a deeper level, nurturing these relationships and turning them into loyal customers. ??
When it's time to expand to new markets, keep in mind that you're communicating with people who share different perspectives about products, branding elements and best marketing practices
To win the hearts of customers, you need a localization-first expansion approach, and companies that devote time and resources to it are better poised to thrive. However, we must mention that localization is time-consuming, but automating processes and tasks can shorten it without depleting your team’s productivity.
?? How Automation Increases Productivity??
Digital product teams are slowly learning to integrate automation into their processes to be more efficient and productive. Your team can benefit from it too. Automation helps in various aspects of the localization process, minimizing time-consuming manual tasks and freeing up time for strategic decision-making and creative work.
With automation-powered tools, your teams can:
In localization, automation can be applied in multiple stages of localization including the content extraction phase and file conversions. For example, tools powered by AI can scan and identify translatable text within digital products.???
If done manually, localization takes a lot of work, which often delays launches in new markets. Now, by combining machine translation, artificial intelligence (AI), and natural language processing (NLP) technologies, localization teams can reach a satisfactory level of automation that helps them lower time-to-market for multilingual updates.
?? Top 5 Benefits of Automation Tools for Localization Teams??
Automation tools are transforming localization by removing bottlenecks, improving output, and enabling scalability. Both Translation Management Systems (TMSs) and Computer-Aided Translation (CAT) help automate tasks of the localization process to speed up launches to new markets.
Based on our experience driving localization wins for brands worldwide, here are five major benefits automation brings to the table:
1. Reduces localization errors??
Manual processes invite slipups with incorrectly formatted or positioned text that garbles messaging locally. Automation enforces consistent formatting across languages for clear and helpful end-user experiences.
Automated translation tools can identify common grammar and spelling errors to further prevent blunders before publishing. This is a solid protection against undermining carefully crafted messaging and having it lost in translation.
2. Sets teams for maximum productivity??
Cloud-based TMS platforms like Localazy centralize translations in one location, supporting you throughout the process by enabling notifications, comments, and instant project updates. This keeps all team members and stakeholders connected. ?
The result? Your team can collaborate on meaningful tasks without worrying about technical and administrative chores while avoiding disorganization and chaos. You’re able to browse through translations, version changes, and order translations fast.
3. Achieves higher quality, accuracy, and consistency??
CAT tools play an important role in automating localization thanks to their translation memory, terminology management, glossaries, and style guides. They make it easier to keep consistent terminology, higher accuracy, and better translation quality. ?
Translators then can focus on creative localization tasks instead of repetitive ones, using context-based tools to uphold branding and stylistic consistency globally. The outcome? Accurate, culturally-adapted translations that make brands appear local. At the end of the day, successful and effective localization relies on details, such as using local language nuances, and automation makes time for it.
4. Frees up time and distributes resources better??
Automation in localization takes care of inefficient time-consuming tasks - from initial translation drafts to manual reviews. This leaves time and other resources to be distributed to impactful work. Especially when it comes to workflow management. Automated workflows get rid of the need for manual task distribution, prevent delays, and save manhours.
As a result, there will be more budget you can spend on professional translators, proofreaders, and developing your brand. ?? You can go from on-a-budget to resourceful, and save money for other aspects of your brand development so you can grow rapidly. All this is possible when you use the right tech with a high level of automation.
Automation workflows and context tools like glossaries, translation memories and style guides are a powerful duo that increase accuracy, reduce errors and allow team members to focus on creative localization tasks while ditching time-consuming repetitive chores
5. Makes scaling to new markets easier??
When we talk about localization, we’re talking about a tool that will help you get your brand loved by foreign markets. ?? We’re talking about powering your scaling efforts from day one so that you can add new languages to your products/services and enter new markets without much fuss as you grow.
The beauty of automated localization workflows lies in effortless scalability. ?? Need to expand your Spanish launch into Portuguese? Update site navigation labels from English straight into right-to-left Arabic? Chances are any changes and additions take just clicks rather than resource-draining manual work after you’ve set an automated localization workflow.
?? How Can Automation Improve Accuracy???
Accurate and consistent translations are vital for businesses that want to succeed in international markets. To achieve this, localization teams can turn to automation to improve translation accuracy and keep a consistent language across assets.
Here’s when TMSs come into play. They are equipped with:
- Error-flagging features ??
- Context-providing features ??
- Intelligent suggestive algorithms ??
- Backlogs to keep track of all translated versions ??
They make precise and error-free translations much easier to get. Automation-powered tools can efficiently handle repetitive and time-consuming tasks, making daily schedules much fun and productive. As a result, businesses can achieve faster time-to-market, and respond to updates and feedback quicker.
The power of AI-driven translation tech??
AI-driven translation tech is evolving fast. See, advanced Neural Machine Translation (NMT) has reached a professional level of development, serving as a time-saving partner for translators.
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Here are some obvious benefits it presents:
?? Fast translations
Ingesting large amounts of text trains advanced neural networks to map ideas between languages intuitively. Now AI translates in minutes what takes people hours. Increased processing speed means faster translations and major time and budget savings. While the produced translations might not have a satisfactory quality for you, the faster they’re produced, the faster your team can review and finish them.
?? Better and more accurate first drafts
AI models can deeply absorb the use of grammatical rules in target languages and produce first drafts of a higher quality. It’s worth noting that AI’s first drafts can be less awkward compared to human drafts. Not to mention that AI has no translator’s block.
?? Terminology consistency
Diligently referencing context and glossaries during drafting, AI consistently respects company terminology and brand voice. ?? This ensures uniform global messaging aligned with guidelines. No more inconsistencies undermining experiences.
But aren't automated translations low quality? Not if you keep the right balance. Much like autonomous vehicles still need human attention, AI translation excels with a person who keeps their hands on the wheel from time to time.
Company terminology and brand voice are kept consistent by AI. If we feed it with translators' insights, its output can be useful as an initial draft to be later polished by a human
AI produces better initial drafts when fed with insights from the translators. Otherwise, it’ll lead to generic and incorrect translations. When used correctly, it learns how we translate ideas between languages, and then it produces better translations.
Together, this augmented translation approach achieves accuracy and articulation that traditional methods can’t easily reach. Blending the translator's passion with the processing power of AI creates excellent localized assets.
?? Risks and Challenges of Automation & AI In Localization??
Technology hasn’t yet evolved to the point where it can replace the role of the translators and a localization team totally, and as such, it comes with its challenges and risks. Three major ones are:
1. Quality issues??
Unlike human translators, who can revise and reflect on their work continuously, AI work often needs to be edited, proofread, and corrected by a professional. Someone with field expertise has to stay in control of the translator quality, which might deter overtime. Quality remains a considerable concern, especially when the text is of a technical nature, and requires a precise use of the right terminology.
2. Biased translations??
Algorithms lack human perspective. ?? Unlike a translator, who has a clear idea of the viewpoints they need to translate from and what perspectives to avoid, AI can adopt biased and politically incorrect viewpoints. Its outputs are based on the data it has been trained on, and in most cases, you don’t have control over it.
3. Complexity??
Machine Translations are based on mathematical computations, which makes the full understanding of perspectives and ideas and their simplification difficult. Breaking down complex topics into simpler ones, and using relatable examples to illustrate them, is not something that comes naturally to AI (unless you specifically train it for it). ?
But while these are considerable challenges that arise with the use of AI and automation in localization, there is another pressing one that can be more alarming than a bad translation: data security. ??
AI work often needs to be edited, proofread, and corrected by a professional. It can also adopt biased viewpoints, struggle breaking down complex topics and have problems with relatability
Remember that when using AI, you’re uploading your sensitive data to Big Tech’s clouds. You could be passing highly sensitive information to be translated, and in the case of data breaches and unauthorized access, that information could end up in the wrong hands and compromise your or your clients' reputation.
Digital product teams should adopt strong security measures and encryption protocols to protect user data and intellectual property. Compliance with privacy regulations and data protection laws in different markets is imperative to avoid legal repercussions. Furthermore, other measures might include:
By taking some of these measures, localization teams can have some level of protection when using automation and AI to improve translation quality and productivity in the localization process.
?? The Future of Automation In Localization??
AI empowers remarkable text translations today. However, studying cross-disciplinary leaps in voice recognition, computer vision, and generative AI, among others, hints at a future with localization solutions of a science-fiction level. Imagine:
And that just covers consumer translations. On the workflow side, we could have translation models’ retraining as new brand phraseology becomes popular. Monitoring systems will catch textual inconsistencies across markets in real time. ?
While game-changing today, enhancing interfaces cross-culturally will only get exponentially smarter as barriers between human and computer communication fall. Eventually, even experts may struggle to distinguish machine versus human-generated localization.
?? Recommended read: Translation Technology: Exploring the Pros and Cons of AI Translation
How to prepare your team for automation adoption??
The speed of adaptation says a lot about your business growth. And this is no different when it comes to automation and AI. You need to adapt your team slowly so that when change becomes mandatory, you don’t instantly shift to new tech within a day. Here are some things you can do to speed up this process.
?? Address their fears
Be honest about how AI helps do repetitive work, so they can pursue more creative, valuable tasks. Calm fears that jobs are at risk. Make it clear everyone stays crucial.
?? Involve them early on
Ask what inefficient tasks frustrate them the most. Show how new tools solve pain points so they buy into their benefits. Getting early peeks excites them too.
?? Hold training workshops
Hands-on guidance opens comfort levels fast. Walk everyone step-by-step on how automation saves them work in their roles.
?? Share real-life examples
Show examples of successful automation applications. Whether stats show quicker translations or reviews, before-and-after data convinces. Momentum removes uncertainty over positive impact.
?? Recognize their efforts
From trying updated processes to mastering new systems, reward cooperation openly. Reinforce willingness to evolve together towards efficiency. Appreciation fuels team spirit and triumphs over reluctance.
?? Final Thoughts??
With advancements in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and smart content management systems, the localization process will be more efficient, accurate, and integrated, allowing digital product teams to expand their reach and cater to diverse markets.
Localazy simplifies localization and collaboration. Our powerful TMS is completely web-based and has been used by large brands worldwide to expand into global markets. Coupled with our CLI and the Localazy API, speed and simplicity are guaranteed in all your l10n workflows while your content remains up-to-date. Sign up today and test it yourself for free. ?
Author: Gledjan Mu?o