Over the past two decades, the localization industry has experienced remarkable changes due to technological progress, rising market demand, and specialized services.

These changes have significantly improved localization and translation efficiency, accuracy, and speed. As a result, the industry has become more accessible and attractive for companies wishing to reach other audiences with different cultural backgrounds and languages. 

 

 

Globalization, specialization, and automation are just a few trends setting the course for translation professionals. The following are the most significant changes in the localization sector in the past 20 years:

 

 

The introduction of computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools has been a breakthrough for content translation. Machine translation has improved significantly and has become a valuable tool for translating massive amounts of content, especially in software and video game localization.
 

Cloud-based technology has made real-time collaboration possible and has enhanced efficiency in the localization process. Thanks to cloud computing, translators from around the world can collaborate on localization projects using the same resources, improving productivity and quality in general.
 

Globalization and the sustained growth in e-commerce have increased the demand for localization services worldwide. Companies strive to expand worldwide and must translate their content to reach international audiences.
 

Quality has become a critical factor in the industry. Clients want top-quality services and expect providers to meet high accuracy, style, and coherence standards.

 

 

Translations have become more specialized. Translation service providers have gained experience in specific areas, such as medical translation, software localization, and audiovisual translation.
 

Globalization has created the need to localize content as companies seek to expand to international markets. As a result, many companies have established in-house localization teams, and the demand for professionals in the industry has been increasing significantly. 
 

Artificial intelligence (AI) has transformed how localization and translation are addressed. AI is coming up fast in the localization industry for terminology extraction, project management, automatic translation, and quality automatic revision. IA-powered tools are also being developed for voice localization and real-time translation of intercultural communication.