Artificial Intelligence (AI) has exploded in popularity. Seemingly overnight, chatbots, image generators, and AI videos are now ubiquitous. They’re being used to write content, integrated into search engines, and adopted by countless companies. Some breakthroughs in AI generation technology have enabled capabilities that were once thought impossible. Could it prove incremental in boosting your content localization strategy?
AI has proven to be a massive win for businesses. Many companies are already using AI content tools, with 79% reporting better quality as a result. Interestingly, in 2017, 63% of consumers who believed they weren’t using AI were actually interacting with AI-driven virtual assistants without realizing it.
Artificial intelligence is doing amazing things for businesses and consumers. Its capabilities and use cases are so extensive now that many companies may not even be aware of the full range of benefits AI can offer.
Let’s explore what content localization entails, why it matters, and some of the many ways AI can help you achieve your localization goals.
What Is Localization?
Localization is the process of adapting your content to a new market by aligning it with local languages, idioms, humor, and cultural norms. This includes, but is not limited to, text, images, and website elements and layout.
Localization is so much more than just translating your website. While translation converts text from one language to another, localization ensures that all aspects of the content, including terms, visuals, ideas, and cultural references, are tailored to the target audience. It’s a critical component of global success.
Why Is Localization Important?
You could lose 90% of non-English-speaking consumers worldwide if you don’t translate your content correctly. They will only look at a product if the information is in their language. By 2030, nearly five billion middle-class and wealthy individuals will fall into that category globally.
So, why do you have to localize your content rather than just translate it? Language is nuanced. Even just different dialects of English have very different meanings for the same word (think chips and biscuits). However, when you’re dealing with two completely different languages, it gets infinitely more complicated.
Many symbols, gestures, and design elements commonplace in one culture may be considered strange or offensive elsewhere. You are likely to optimize your web design for English speakers, but will the layout still make sense for users who read from right to left?
You risk alienating, offending, or confusing potential customers without proper localization.
How Can Artificial Intelligence (AI) Advance Your Localization Strategy?
AI can do things much faster than a human could. It also has access to huge data sets and can analyze and generate almost anything. These abilities enable automating tasks and creating media faster than ever.
Here’s how AI can streamline and enhance your content localization strategy:
1. Quickly Translate Your Webpages
The first step in localization is translation. AI can translate large volumes of text almost instantly. However, AI does more than just provide basic translations. It can produce accurate translations that consider both sentence complexity and context when trained correctly.
AI can detect when a sentence is too complex to translate accurately into the local dialect and automatically simplify it to improve the translation.
Words can have different meanings depending on the context, particularly industry-specific terms. AI takes this into consideration and translates based on the context.
One example is the word «theory.» In everyday use, a theory refers to an educated guess, but in a scientific context, a theory is a well-substantiated explanation supported by evidence and predictive power
It’s important to remember AI serves as a first-pass tool, human experts should review and refine its output to ensure accuracy.
2. Use AI Content Analysis to Ensure Accurate Localization
Localization involves more than translation—it must account for local customs, cultural norms, and demographics. Different regions have unique idioms, humor, and social standards that proper localization must respect.
AI can perform demographic analysis to personalize each customer’s experience based on these factors. It can sift through massive data sets to identify which trends align with specific behaviors and preferences, enabling you to tailor content to meet your audience’s wants and needs.
Imagine you are a food company that wants to expand into Asian markets; AI could tailor your content to omit references to beef for audiences in India and remove pork products for targeted customers in Turkey. This level of personalization is powerful, as companies that prioritize personalization technology tend to sell 30% more than their competitors.
3. Automatically Localize Non-Text Media
Text content is just one part of localization—but what about the rest? AI can handle all types of media. For example, your images may contain text; infographics are a prime example. Content teams can also use AI to translate and partially localize PDFs. With the right AI tools, you can recreate audio and video files in any language, tailoring them to resonate with your target market.
4. Automate Multilingual Customer Service Interactions
Many companies already use AI chatbots to field customer questions and provide company information. The adoption of this technology has been widespread and practical. Experts expect AI to take over almost all (95%) customer interactions by 2025. Many consumers prefer dealing with AI chatbots to contacting a customer support representative.
Extending this practice to multiple languages can yield significant cost savings. Well-developed AI chatbots can accurately understand and respond to questions in any language and dialect, even considering cultural nuances humans might miss.
Content Localization Made Easy
Artificial intelligence can accelerate the localization process, but it isn’t without its flaws. While AI can handle much of the heavy lifting, it’s essential to have humans review the results to ensure accuracy. It’s far quicker for a human to proofread than to translate and localize everything from scratch.
Like any tool, AI is at its best when it’s effectively used along with human expertise, not left to its own devices. At Vistatec, our seasoned professionals can help you implement AI tools effectively and provide support for successfully localizing your content across global markets.
Contact us today to advance your content localization strategy.