As 2022 comes to an end, new translation and localization trends are set to dominate the industry in 2023, and results and data from this past year surveys and studies are starting to be revealed.
Let’s have a look at some of the trends that will dominate the industry for this new year ahead.
TREND #1: INNOVATIONS IN AI
According to Smartcat’s Translation Industry Report 2022, the focus for this 2023 will continue to be put on new and exciting innovations in AI — one example could be lip-dubbing in videos, where algorithms change the speaker’s mouth movements to appear as if they’re speaking the language (as opposed to traditional dubbing). This advancements could be reflected in the industry not more than one or two years from now.
On the other hand, machine translation will continue to be a trend, focusing more on understanding how much needs to be post-edited, depending on the nature of the audience or content type, but still considering it freelancer's best tool to turn out translations faster.
TREND #2: MORE LOCALIZED CONTENT
According to the same report made by Smartcat, the localization business has become an “increasingly strategy, data, and innovation-driven sphere with comparable advancements to those in Software Development or Marketing”. Now more than ever, enterprises are aware that engaging customers in their local language not only matters, it converts.
As the study shows, “many enterprises will continue to work more directly with both translators agencies to produce even more localized content that audiences have come to expect”, as they will continue to understand just how important localization is in driving international business goals.
TREND #3: MORE INVESTMENT IN CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGIES
According to the 2022 survey made by Unbabel, where they collected data and insights from more than 1,600 marketers, it was discovered that 84% of respondents had a moderately positive or extremely positive impact on revenue growth by localizing content. Not only that, but 89% said they are planning on translating into additional languages within the next year, plus 75% of participants confirmed their translation spend has been trending upwards or is roughly stable.
With all this data, there is no doubt marketers around the world need to deliver on-brand content at speed and scale across more channels than ever before, while international brands will continue to adapt their marketing materials for foreign markets.