04 July 2025
Improve your localization strategy with AI and data analytics
The world of localization technology has been undergoing a profound transformation over the past few years. The arrival of widely accessible large language models (LLMs) has enabled teams to develop new tools, revolutionizing workflows through automated language quality evaluation and enhanced machine translation output. Yet the question remains – is your localization strategy solely focused on using these tools to cut costs and expedite processes? Or are you leveraging the potential of these new tools to adopt new approaches to localization and customer engagement?
Localization models have typically followed a linear process, one in which content is created in a source language, then translated, reviewed, and published. Yet many of today’s most localization-forward organizations are embracing AI-driven experimentation alongside data analytics to incorporate multilingual content at a much more foundational level of their global content strategy. This is a reframing of the classic approach to tech implementation in workflows; where once the focus was just on efficiency improvements, it’s now about unlocking creativity, agility, and measurable impact at a scale that was never possible before.
Let’s start by looking at the traditional approach to localization. Historically, we’ve seen localization teams work with a fixed set of content, relying on human translators and reviewers to adapt messaging for each market. While this approach ensured linguistic accuracy, it often lacked agility. There was little room for experimentation with tone, style, or format, and performance feedback was slow and anecdotal.
Yet this process had already begun to change years ago, with the arrival of high-quality machine translation. At that point, we saw a boom in the amount of machine translation and post-editing (MTPE). Potential efficiency gains were all the rage, even as linguists pointed out that those gains would depend on the actual output quality of the machine translation. Underneath it all, however, the core model remained the same for many: create, translate, edit and review, then publish.
In today’s digital landscape, where consumer preferences evolve rapidly and competition is fierce, leveraging technology needs to be about more than just fast-tracking the content-to-market pipeline. Instead, brands need to use those gains to begin testing, learning, and iterating.
Modern AI models, whether powered by neural machine translation (NMT) or LLM, can generate multiple localized variants of the same content in much shorter turnaround times than previously expected. These variants can be differentiated across formality, style, or inclusion of local cultural references. They can even be customized to emulate your tone of voice through LLM fine-tuning or customized MT engine training.
By leveraging this capability correctly, businesses can deploy the same level of experimentation in localized content as they would with the source. Just think of the possibilities:
Of course, here we see AI not as the whole value-add, but as part of a wider network that can unlock the real power of your localization processes. That’s where data analytics come in.
Any marketer will understand the value of metrics. They are the evidence that takes experimentation from anecdotal opinions to actionable results. By systematically tracking and analyzing the right data, organizations can optimize content for each market, maximize ROI, and continuously refine their global strategy.
Here are some metrics that we’d recommend looking at when evaluating your localized content strategy.
The immediately obvious one, these metrics provide insights into how your audiences interact with your content, providing early signals of resonance and relevance. That said, there is a risk in over-reliance on engagement metrics, such as impressions or likes, which some would call ‘vanity metrics’. For example:
As we begin to shift the view of localization as a cost centre into an opportunity for real returns, conversion metrics are becoming increasingly important. Set out several localized variants to your markets and begin measuring these to see which options have the most noticeable effect on your bottom line. For example:
Incorporating more experimentation into your programme will also help improve your localization strategy. Quality and satisfaction metrics allow deeper insights into the long-term effects of your localization efforts, such as exploring whether translated content is improving customer stickiness or not. For example:
By systematically measuring performance, organizations can move beyond intuition, break down the walls that typically separate localization and marketing, and make evidence-based decisions about which tones, messages, or formats resonate best in each locale.
While AI and automation will enable more testing than ever before, it’s important to understand how they work in conjunction with human expertise. We envision a future in which agentic AI takes on the challenges of speed, scale, and the raw content output required for extensive experimentation. This will then empower people to focus on the areas that require their specific expertise. This could mean, for example, AI translation site-wide, with human linguists evaluating and improving content that becomes popular with your audience, ready for it to move into a more visible location. For example:
Adopting this approach to localization results in a continuous improvement loop:
This approach is already being adopted by global leaders in e-commerce, entertainment, and tech, who are seeing:
The convergence of AI, data analytics, and human expertise is redefining what’s possible in localization. Brands that embrace this new paradigm can move beyond static translation, engaging global audiences with content that is linguistically accurate, dynamically tailored, culturally relevant, and relentlessly optimized for impact.
The future of localization is not about choosing between AI and humans – it’s about harnessing the strengths of both to create a smarter, more agile, and more effective global content strategy.
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