Localization Engineering Manager Thomas Mosley represented ITC at the GALA 2024 conference, hosted April 21-23 in Valencia, Spain. Read on for his insights on how generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is impacting the globalization and localization industry.
The GALA 2024 conference was inspiring and informative. I gained valuable perspectives from industry leaders, tech providers, and other language service providers, while also stepping back and reflecting on where the language industry stands and where we are heading. Here are a few of my key takeaways.
First, I noticed some confusion over what “AI” encompasses. Even the pre-conference survey about AI usage did not clearly distinguish between AI in the broader sense (which includes traditional neural machine translation) and generative AI (GenAI, the new wave of AI based on large language models, or LLMs), so the survey results were hard to interpret.
Typically, language service providers who market AI-based services are using neural machine translation (NMT). This innovation was introduced in the late 1980s and it is still the most powerful and reliable technology for translation and localization. It is different from GenAI, which is designed to understand and generate original content that mimics human creativity, such as text, audio, video, and images.
GALA speakers announced mixed findings on quality and reliability when testing LLM-based translation, which is related to a resource gap. There is lots of hype around GenAI, but progress to achieve the necessary quality, speed and cost-efficiency will take years and require significant investments. This was reflected in the lack of major announcements about GenAI-based features from leading Translation Management System (TMS) providers.
Emerging tech companies are currently driving innovation in this field. The platforms they are designing and testing offer an exciting glimpse into how GenAI might soon empower translators and post-editors rather than reduce their importance, blending the best of technology and human expertise to offer clients new service options for translation, localization and more.
At ITC, we value clear communication with our clients. We own our technology choices, explaining when and why GenAI is not the best fit. We stay at the forefront of industry trends, continually testing new platforms and innovations. We focus on adopting solutions that truly benefit our clients, ensuring that any technological advancements we embrace are secure, effective, and add value to our services without diminishing the importance of the humans working behind the scenes.
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