Localization Today

By Mimi Moore

The Olympic Games are one of the largest multilingual communication operations on earth. The author offers a perspective that most spectators never see, with insights from Leandro Colautti, Language Services Senior Manager for the Fondazione Milano Cortina 2026, and Alexandre Ponomarev, the Games’ Chief Interpreter.

A conference interpreter invites his replacement to dinner
By Ewandro Magalhães

It’s the question on every interpreter’s mind: Is AI going to take my job? Well, why not sit down to dinner with Anthropic’s large language model Claude and ask it face-to-interface?

Africa is home to extraordinary linguistic diversity and one of the world's fastest-growing digital economies, yet its language industry remains widely overlooked. In this episode of Localization Today, Eddie Arrieta speaks with Johan Botha and Ady Namaran Coulibaly, founding leaders of the Association of Language Companies in Africa (ALCA), about the organization's mission, the findings of its 2026 industry report, the opportunities and challenges facing language service providers across the continent, the growing impact of AI, and why collaboration, professionalization, and stronger regional partnerships are helping shape the future of localization in Africa.

Is the term "localization" actually holding the industry back? In this episode, Georg Ell, CEO of Phrase, discusses the company’s massive repositioning from a traditional localization platform to a "Language Intelligence Platform."

He explains why talking to executives about "translation quality" usually loses the room and why the industry must shift its focus toward "Intent Proximity"—ensuring that multilingual content actually achieves its underlying business goal. Discover why Phrase is moving beyond translation, how headless distribution is changing the way business units interact with language tools, and why treating AI agents as true colleagues is the ultimate competitive advantage.

By Serge Gladkoff

Scientists recently documented the breakdown of a chimpanzee community into warring factions following the decline of internal interaction. The discovery is a dark reminder that when agents of connection — like translators and interpreters — disappear, humans are all too capable of the same social disintegration.

By Christine Clay

Human input is vital for the quality of AI-driven localization, shifting its role from post-editing to system design. The author details ways to improve consistency and accuracy, refine performance, and help a system scale by using structured feedback loops, translation memory, and style guides.

By Gabriela Kouahla 

Not all language tasks are created equal. Depending on the intended outcome, each project requires a different rationale to achieve the best result at the right cost.

By Ana Catarina Lopes, Ana Sofia Correia, Mariana Teixeira, and Patrícia Paes de Sousa

There’s strength in numbers, and that applies to freelancers, too. Despite its individualistic and independent nature, freelancing can still benefit from a collaborative partnership to find work, share skills, boost revenue, and foster community.

By Ema Dantas 

With the emergence of AI platforms, data sovereignty has become a new buzzword. But for language service providers to emerge stronger from this transitional era, they have to understand their technology and preserve the fundamentals of quality work.

Interview by Cameron Rasmusson

RWS, one of the world’s biggest language companies, stands at a crossroads like much of the industry. With technological change rewriting marketplace rules, how does recently appointed CEO Benjamin Faes plan to guide the business through a pivotal era?