At a New Year’s Eve dinner with my family, I saw a familiar situation play out: someone speaking with strong confidence about something they only partly understood. In Spain, we call this el efecto cuñado. What I didn’t realize for a long time is that this behavior has a name in psychology too. It’s the Dunning–Kruger effect, and it shows up just as often in localization and AI conversations as it does at Christmas dinner tables.
This feels like a pivotal moment. Localization teams are being asked to support more markets, move faster, use AI responsibly, and show impact, not just output. Expectations are higher than ever, but many teams are still trained mainly for execution. We are strong at delivering localization work, yet we often struggle to move from output to outcome and to clearly explain the impact of what we do.
AI isn’t just changing tools, it’s changing expectations
Three years into working with AI in localization, I’ve seen the pressure build: automate faster, scale more, do it now.
But the real challenge isn’t the tech itself. It’s the gap between hype and reality , and what happens when teams are expected to act like everything’s already working.
In this post, I break down five common challenges that keep showing up, and what we can actually do about them.
Words have the power to shape perceptions and influence actions, which is why reframing is such a powerful tool. In localization, we can reframe our role from simply translating to driving alignment across the company. By ensuring content is consistent, culturally relevant, and strategically aligned with business goals, localization professionals play a key role in helping businesses grow globally. This post explores how we create that alignment and why our work is much more than just translation.
Choosing between a single-vendor or multi-vendor localization model is not only about price. The real difference shows up in the day-to-day metrics: turnaround time, quality stability, cost control, and how much coordination your teams need to do. In this post, I walk through the core metrics that tend to improve with a single-vendor setup, and how they can help you understand which model fits your localization strategy right now
Even when localization teams aren’t directly affected by a company reorg, everything around them can change fast sponsors move, teams merge, budgets shift.
That’s when weak governance shows its cracks.
This post explores how strong localization governance keeps programs stable, visible, and credible no matter how often the org chart moves.
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.
Most localization discussions stop at per-word rates. However, what appears inexpensive on paper can often turn into costly delays, rework, and frustrated teams.
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) provides a more comprehensive view, one that encompasses engineering fixes, QA cycles, support tickets, and brand impact.
When procurement and leadership focus only on price, localization becomes a cost center. When they consider TCO, it becomes a key driver of quality and efficiency. And this post explains how to approach that
Many teams treat localization vendors as interchangeable compare rates, sign the contract, move on. But every switch comes with invisible costs: lost context, quality dips, and team fatigue. In this latest post, I unpack what really happens behind a vendor change ( and how to prepare for it like a continuity project, not a quick fix)
“Welcome to my blog. The space where I document my passion about Localization, Project Management and Leadership”
According to the Oxford dictionary commodity is a raw material or primary agricultural product that can be bought and sold, such as copper or coffee. Does the Translation industry fit in that definition? for some buyers it is .. and that’s a risky thought! let’s explain why ….
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 :)
Localization professionals often focus on translation quality and best practices, but decision-makers care about customer impact and revenue. If we frame localization as a cost, it risks being deprioritized. Instead, we must highlight its value driving engagement, trust, and business growth.