Our Analysts' Insights

Some people feel that using artificial intelligence (AI) to interpret human speech is a curse because individuals using the service could suffer harm due to mistranslations or because interpreters might lose their livelihood. Others embrace AI for all the possibilities it creates, first and foremost the ability to offer language access on a much greater scale and at a reduced cost. So which camp is right? Like so many techno-ethical questions, there is no right or wrong. It really depends on th...

Whether or not product managers have direct responsibility for the international success of their products, they still want them to do well worldwide and are often held responsible for international revenue numbers. But what if they have little or no international experience, don’t understand how to build the multilingual training data required by their product, or simply lack the resources to research international markets, analyze product functionality, and beta test properly?

In the streaming adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation sci-fi novels, Synnax became a water planet due to overmining of its volcanic vents. In Waterworld, the melting of the polar ice caps submerged most of planet Earth. In both cases, as sea levels rose, dry land came to be in ever shorter supply – as were food, potable water, biodiversity, and economic activity other than subsistence fishing and piracy. People migrated in search of life essentials or safer havens. Language, culture, and li...

Are you an expert project manager or interpreting scheduler? We need to talk! Project management – the shepherding of work from request to delivery, ensuring all the correct criteria are met, and in a timely manner – is not specific to the localization industry. In every area of work, from construction to international shipping, a project manager (PM) plays a leading role in satisfying customers, whether in daily personal contact or acting behind the scenes. These individuals – and the projec...

A common worry about generative AI (GenAI) is that the content that it creates may be subject to copyright claims. Our recent survey of freelance linguists reflected this concern: Copyright issues are their second most important concern with GenAI, with 74% viewing the technology negatively or strongly negatively in this regard. However, an examination of claims about copyright and how GenAI works reveals a different picture. This blog post covers details about how the technology works with its ...

Are you already fielding multiple requests related to switching from machine translation (MT) to generative AI (GenAI) to reduce costs? Or maybe an executive or two has asked about your plans to integrate artificial intelligence to increase team efficiency? If not, your time is coming. Here are six ways to prepare to handle these queries, based on a recent full-day symposium on generative AI (GenAI) for the Global Leadership Council facilitated by CSA Research.

During our research into multimedia localization – and all the new AI-enhanced tools that are sprouting up like toadstools after summer rain – we found many new offerings, some good or excellent, and many not-so. Startup companies with an excellent product may struggle with business processes and strategies; some are already leaders in a brand new field, unimagined a year ago; but too many others are aiming to get-rich-quick based on a worldwide appetite for tools that make everything possible...

Will GenAI enable LSPS to become strategic global content service providers (GCSPs)? We first described the evolution of GCSPs in “The Language Services Market: 2017” report and introduced it to our CEO Leadership Council members at the Boston Summit in 2018. In this blog we discuss the journey that some of our clients have been taking toward this new role despite the obstacle of procurement departments commoditizing their value to the price per word. One critical question remains – will tech...

It is incredible to think that, less than eight years after the first publicly available neural machine translation (NMT) systems appeared on the scene, some media coverage already sees NMT as so 2015. As generative AI (GenAI) really exploded into public view in 2022, it wasn’t surprising that an overactive tech press’ imagination would see it as the be-all and end-all of technology. Our recent survey with freelance linguists certainly reflects this view, with many language workers expressing ...

We’ve all been entertained by spells going wrong in the Harry Potter books and movies. What does any of it have to do with generative AI? If you think of artificial intelligence as the magic, then the prompt is the spell you use to invoke the magic. And not all spells – or prompts – are created equal.