Understanding in which areas AI is really powerful, and the ones that a human professional is superior is critical nowadays to maximize our impact and possibilities to stay relevant in the generative content world we are living in nowadays
If we want to treat localization like a product, we need to measure it like one. Traditional metrics like cost per word and delivery time still matter, but they don’t capture the full picture. In this post, I share four categories of product-style metrics: adoption, automation impact, strategic influence, and internal visibility that they can help you track the real value your localization team is creating across the company.
Localization as a Product means building solutions that make it easier for others to work with localization by turning our expertise into systems that are scalable and reusable.This shift doesn’t replace the service mindset. It builds on it.
We still support teams but we also design tools, workflows, and automations that reduce repetitive work and increase impact. Instead of translating on request, we enable content flows.
Instead of fixing the same problems again and again, we build systems that prevent them. This is how localization grows from being reactive support to becoming part of how the company builds and scales globally.
Just like the flywheel on a spinning bike, it’s hard to get going at first , there’s resistance. But once you build speed, it gets easier to keep the momentum.
In Globalization, it works the same way. You can enter at any point quality, user feedback, tooling, content…. and that push will start turning the wheel.
Each action builds on the next, and little by little, it helps the company move faster toward market expansion.
Consistently posting about our accomplishments on platforms like LinkedIn can quickly become tiresome for others. At the same time, not giving visibility to what we do or achieve can cause our work to go unnoticed, causing us to miss out on certain professional opportunities to advance our careers further.
Over the years, I’ve noticed that localization buyers, like the emotions in Inside Out, are often driven by one dominant need. Some are in survival mode, juggling too much. Others are just getting started and need guidance. Some care about speed, others about cost, and some are laser-focused on how things feel in-market.
What if AI could help us make localization more accessible without losing the human touch?
In this post, I share some ideas on how AI can support the work we already do to make digital products easier to use and understand. From simplifying source content to spotting UI risks and improving inclusive language. Because in the end, I truly believe that together might be better.
Localization isn’t just a side task focused on adapting content. It actually plays a key role in accessibility. This is not only because it makes content available in other languages (that’s the part we’re best known for) but also because what we do, just to name two examples, helps to improve readability and understandability
We often think that showing up at the right time, explaining localization’s value, and communicating clearly will be enough. And while that helps, it’s not a guarantee.
For busy product teams, localization is often just one more item in a long list of priorities.
When that’s the case, we can either feel frustrated or shift our mindset, protect our mental health, and keep refining how we advocate for localization.
“Welcome to my blog. The space where I document my passion about Localization, Project Management and Leadership”
Glossaries in the translation industry are essential to create consistency, to create a brand image; and mistakes in the creation and maintenance of the glossary have many negative connotations! Join me this week to cover the power of consistency and why having a process in place for glossary management is a great idea!
Sometimes knowing what to measure in the G-localization industry can be a complex task, and in some ways overwhelming. I hope that after reading this post you could feel a little less overwhelmed ☺
Knowing what to do and when to do, it is one of the most unknown areas in the world of G-localization ... for that reason, I encouraged myself this week to write a post about guidelines to take into account to craft an effective localization and scheduling process … hope this is helpful!
I consider myself a tolerant person, with patience and with a good predisposition to dialogue. Now, if you want to piss me off a quite effective technique is to tell me that Localization is a cost center; in my weekly post I reflect on this and about some hidden cost we might incur in our Globalisation world when tackling the complex art of translation ….
Cultural Intelligence is among the most valuable skills for the coming years. Our ability to obtain results in a different environment, different cultures and different countries is crucial to thriving nowadays. And there is no other industry in the world so culturally diverse as the Globalization industry … let’s have a look about how we can position ourselves as cultural intelligence super g-localizers!
Developing a videogame is more difficult than it seems, it is not a children's game, although for many people it seems that way! A video game is an entertainment product, visual and very complex. And adapting a video game from one language to another, is also a much more complex task than it seems. To translate a game from one language to another requires more steps than Google Translate and copy / paste 🙂
How can we make a game age well and get benefits for several years? LiveOps and Localization might help to achieve that! 🙂
Translating a video game is more complicated than it seems! and translating video games is different to translating software in general, you want to know why? so keep reading :)
Some services and some invoices are difficult to understand. Specially to understand how certain services are charged, and how they are explained. Sometimes we might have the feeling that we are being scammed ... have you ever had that feeling in our Globalization world? For example, in the area of Localization Engineering? If the answer is yes maybe this post is for you ...
Our app’s user experience it’s a complex mix of feelings and emotions, difficult to measure but it has a huge impact in the user satisfaction, and here globalisation best practices play an important role, and UX localization plays also an important role, but is that actually a thing? does UX localisation even exist?
The translation industry is one of the oldest industries in the world, for hundreds of years there have been needs to communicate messages from one language to another. During all these years the translators have had a fundamental role so that people of different languages understand each other. During all these years the translators have been adapting and changing their services, and even today, under the threatening look of MT, AI, NMT and BLA, BLA, BLA, they are pushing back this new reality, they re-invent themselves, and they find a way to remain relevant ... and that’s the reality, the translator is a difficult race to extinguish, they fight, they adapt, they evolve ... and hopefully they’ll continue doing it for many years!
Sometimes knowing the rules of behaviour and soft-skills that I must apply in certain environments is not enough to succeed. Being effective in a high-performance team in a multicultural environment requires something more.
Sometimes having the info and the answer only solves part of the problem of how to be effective across cultures. How do we solve the other part of the problem? How can we be effective in such a global and diverse world as is the localization industry?
That’s the topic I cover in my weekly post. Hope you like it and and please leave your comments with your international experiences on how you adapted to different environments! 🙂
Have a great week!
Miguel
The Project Post-Mortem is a Valuable Tool for Continuous Improvement in our Globalization/Localization projects. However, for different reasons we don’t take the time to perform them, or we are not sure how to drive them. If you recognize yourself in any of these situations maybe my post this week may be useful 🙂
What is the career plan professionals working in the globalization/localization industry might have? Can we become executives in our industry? Or better said, is it possible to increase our "executive presence"? And if so, how?
Doom creator John Carmack said years ago “Story in a game is like story in a porn movie: it’s expected to be there, but it’s not that important.”
This week while having tapas with a friend I had a deja-vú about John’ words ….
The world of Localization is a very multicultural industry. The professionals of this industry at some point in our lives have asked ourselves the following question: but why should I be the one who adapts to this environment? Why do not they adapt to me? :) That's what I cover this week in my post, I hope you like it!
Cultural Intelligence is like a super power that we can develop to lead teams in an effective way in this globalized world in which we live. And no, Emotional Intelligence and Cultural Intelligence is not the same. If you want to know why it is not the same, I invite you to read the post I created this week on my blog 🙂
This week I finish my article on TMS and CMS, the Twins of our Translation industry. In this second part I explain the workflow and integration of a CMS and a TMS. Where the key to success lies in a bit of code that we call API ....
There are some things that look alike, but they are not much the same. Arnold and DeVito are an example of this in the movie industry in the Twins movie, and a CMS and TMS are an example in our Globalization / Localization industry. In this post I talk about cinema and what’s a CMS / TMS and why they are not twin tools :)
This week I bring a special post. It is a summary of the presentation that Maria and I gave on the fascinating topic about culture intelligence.
And why is it a special post? Well…. this post is an eBook! there are so many things that I'm passionate about the world of cultural intelligence that everything I wanted to write did not fit in a single post, so I wrote an eBook 🙂
Here you have an eBook of what I consider to be the future of management ... the cultural intelligence.
Hope you like it! Please send me your comments so we can continue the discussions around this amazing world of the CQ!
Enjoy the journey!
Miguel
Much is said about AI's threat to professionals in the localization industry. But the truth is that the AI + human combo has a lot of potential. In this blog post, you can learn about the role of an internal Localization team in the AI era.