What Are the AI Wins and Losses for Localization?

AI continues to change the shape of the world. It's streamlining many processes and making it easier to handle potentially repetitive tasks. When it comes to localization, AI has many crucial benefits. At the same time, however, using AI rather than humans to handle your localization can offer some drawbacks. Whether you're trying to translate content into a different language or ensure that your content focuses on the needs of your entire audience, AI may need more time to be ready to work alone. 

By 2022, around half of businesses used AI for at least one of their essential tasks. Increasingly, that includes tasks like localization and translation. Before deciding if it's the right solution for your brand, it's critical to understand both the potential advantages of working with AI and the potential drawbacks. 

AI for Localization: The Wins

AI offers plenty of advantages when it comes to localization. When you're localizing your content for a global audience, you often need to generate multiple versions of that content to ensure it meets the needs of your unique audiences. AI is often a highly effective strategy for meeting those key goals. 

Win #1: AI Is Fast

When you've got a job that needs completion quickly, AI can be your best bet for localizing content. Unlike a human translator or localization specialist, AI can rapidly produce large quantities of content. That generation power can help you meet deadlines or roll out a localized solution for a new audience faster. 

Win #2: AI Is Great for Repetitive Content

When localizing to a broad audience, you often must review the same content multiple times. This repetitive content can quickly go frustrating for human specialists. They may need to walk away or engage with something else to stay on top of all the content they need to handle. It's also good at dealing with relatively simple content, like content descriptions, which you may need to produce and localize in bulk. 

Win #3: AI Is Always Available

AI is available 24/7. It’s accessible when you need it most, no matter what else you might have going on or who wants to use the platform. If you have human workers to provide essential inputs, AI can keep churning out the content you need. This process allows you to handle your localization tasks in the timeframe that works for you. You won't have to juggle time zones or worry about workers' schedules. Instead, you can simply pull up the platform when you need it. 

Win #4: AI Is Cost-Effective

When you need to localize large quantities of content for multiple users across a wide geographic range, cost-effectiveness can make a huge difference in your ability to plan the project. You may have a limited budget for localization tasks, especially if you have to localize for a broad audience. AI is often more cost-effective than working with a localization specialist, who may charge a premium fee for those services. Using a mixed service that utilizes AI and human intervention can also help cut costs. 

AI for Localization: The Losses

While AI offers many potential advantages, there are some considerable downsides. Using AI to take on tasks requiring a human is risky. Even as the technology continues to grow, it has some notable weaknesses. Consider these problems when deciding how you want to handle your localization efforts. 

Loss #1: AI Can Mistranslate Content

AI is typically programmed with a strong base level of language comprehension. However, it can miss many nuances that human translators can pick up on. Mistranslations can quickly find their way into the content, creating a sense of dissonance for those users. In some cases, mistranslations can cause customers to misunderstand your products and services. They may even create potential legal challenges, especially in cases where you need to localize legal content or where a mistranslation leads the user to a very different understanding of what your product offers or what services you can provide. 

In addition to translation errors, the translation may not make sense. As a result, you can miss out on the advantages of localization. Unfortunately, that can prove challenging to check if you do not have a human localization specialist looking over the content and ensuring it contains everything needed. 

Loss #2: AI Does Not Understand Local Culture

AI can localize content by providing translations, but it may offer a different hyper-localized experience than you can get from human localization specialists. After all, specialists understand the local culture and the complexities of the language. 

Localization is about much more than translation alone. It also incorporates a great deal of information about the local culture, like:

• What the streets look like

• Popular signs and symbols

• Even the way the information should be presented or organized in an app or on the website

Localization experts can also ensure that there are no cultural misunderstandings and that things translate well from one set of expectations to another. 

Loss #3: AI Lacks Creativity

While AI can put together translations or content based on what you have already put into the system, it cannot develop creative solutions or options for your content. In most cases, it will handle localization by simply translating the content you have already provided. Though it can offer insight into different cultures or geographic areas, it will prove unlikely to come up with creative ideas and solutions for any challenges you may face while localizing your content. As a result, you may have content that is only translated into other languages. It might need more content genuinely localized to each region you focus on. Creative content is essential to your localization efforts.

Loss #4: AI Is Harder to Adjust

While you can quickly edit your AI content as needed, you may need human oversight to make the minor adaptations that make your content shine. In many cases, asking AI for small changes can cause it to regenerate the content or repeat something already said completely. It can quickly regenerate new content, but you may find that its content needs to be revised to meet your needs. 

Bridging the Gap: AI and Human Services Combined

AI has several benefits, among them its speed. But it also has potential drawbacks that can decrease your results and lead to subpar content that simply fails to reflect your needs. Often, using a combined AI and human service provider can ensure you get the results you want for your localization efforts. A human translator and localization expert can review the content to ensure it genuinely reflects your intent. They can also ensure that it covers all of your needs. Starting with AI-generated content can streamline the process. 

Ultimately, whether to use AI-generated content, including localization services, remains a serious question in many industries. As AI use increases, many businesses must decide what best fits their needs and how to ensure they deliver the high standard of quality their customers expect and deserve.