Our Analysts' Insights

It Depends As your organization pivots toward integrating generative AI (GenAI) into more of its business processes, you may be wondering if it’s time to engage GenAI talent to join your staff. The answer depends on several factors.

In October 2023, we argued that the future of AI would be in “focused large language models” (FLLMs). These are purpose-built language models that target a specific industry, set of languages, or task and that are correspondingly smaller than the large language models (LLMs) being created by OpenAI, Google, Meta, and others. Those massive models – GPT-4o has over 175 billion parameters – are like Swiss Army knives: They are prepared to handle almost any task, from creating a haiku to drawing...

The topic of automation has taken the interpreting industry by storm. On the one hand, enthusiasts believe in artificial intelligence as a way to broaden language access at an affordable cost. On the other hand, skeptics worry about all the things that could go wrong in the implementation. But where does it all settle when it comes to organization-level implementations?

Back in the day when I first began working in localization, we didn’t have a translation management system (TMS) – they didn’t exist – and our LSP was refusing to use translation memory because it created “too much overhead” for the first venture into producing a customer care website in more than one language. Knowing that the advent of the internet was likely to produce masses of new content in – hopefully – all the languages in which the company operated, we took a huge risk. We found...

When friends and family hear what I’m working on these days, they typically ask: 1) won’t AI eliminate the need for translators and interpreters? and 2) won’t that eradication of the language sector do away with your job, too? The first question has taken the air out of the room in a lot of discussions over the last couple of years, especially given media coverage of humans in the loop that amounts to job descriptions that are little more than janitors cleaning up after bad MT outcomes.

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 ...