It’s a perfect storm. Just as companies’ localization and translation budgets decrease, the need to create global, multilingual content increases. Brands that want to stay competitive must find a way to reach customers worldwide. Not just in their language, but with their cultural norms and specific interests and demographics in mind. Meanwhile, many marketing and communications departments must also meet expectations to cut translation and localization costs. Some companies (wrongly) assume people speak “enough” English globally to skip translation. Some consider localization and translation unnecessary frills that get cut in a year of impending or current economic downturn. Some companies may even (wrongly) assume they can just feed their content into a public AI system to translate it. (This approach is risky, unrewarding, and often damaging.) Read on for three key ways (including innovative AI solutions) to dramatically slash localization and translation costs — and even reach more multilingual and global customers.

#1 Use AI-Powered Services to Cut Localization and Translation Costs

One of the most impactful ways to reduce costs for all your language services projects is to switch to GenAI language services. If your current vendor doesn’t offer them, switch to GenAI language providers. (The Lionbridge Aurora AI™ platform enhances content, apps, websites, etc., with robust, on-demand analytics for project status, recruiting, and task-creation customizability.) There are a few ways that AI services notably reduce the cost of localization and translation. The first is by automating all repetitive tasks, including:

• Formatting
• Context extraction
• Insertion

Automation reduces the need for human labor and intervention, both from the language service provider and customer. This frees up the customer and language services provider to complete even more translation or localization at a lower cost and faster pace.

The second reason to choose AI translation is that it can translate large volumes of text, images, and media exponentially faster than any human linguistics specialist. There may still be a need for Humans in the Loop (HITLs) to review very complicated, technical, or highly visible or important material, AI solutions can translate or localize big projects notably quickly for lower prices. Especially when a company has an AI trust framework to ensure their AI localization platform always performs in a reliable, optimal manner, AI-powered translation can be an excellent way to scale.

The third reason AI-powered language services cut costs is because they can often achieve a higher-quality product on earlier drafts. Companies can share brand guidelines, translation memories, and glossaries. The AI tool will confirm early drafts comply with all these standards, in addition to the usual quality assurance checks. All this AI review helps deliver the optimal version(s) of translated content, thus reducing revision and labor costs.