While AI has taken the tech industry by storm in what many might call a simple marketing trend, there has been a notable shift in AI translation recently.
The new rise of AI translation was documented via recent research by Lokalise, who followed the use of AI translation over the course of this past year.
For context, Lokalise is a business that provides translation services for mobile apps, video games, documentation, ecommerce, and software for companies such as Amazon, Yelp, and Virgin Mobile. They primarily do translation with their AI translation API tool that companies can integrate into their workflow.
As for their research, the company found a trend towards the increase in the usage of AI translation over that of manual translation done by humans. This rise specifically started towards the end of 2023, where before the company had an even mix that favored human intervention.
However for much of 2024, more use has come from their AI translation with even some points reaching 274% over that of human translation during the same time:
This could indicate a trend towards the use of automating translation and localization of other languages. For example, we reported last year of an indie developer using such AI translation to translate their game from Japanese to English in order to cut costs on hiring professionals.
In recent years, there has been fan backlash over the quality of translations of games, such as when coming from Japan to English speaking countries. These range from the grammatical quality all the way to strange changes made by localization.
Of course, while these numbers may be significant, it’s important to note that Lokalise provides a variety of services for their translations beyond translation of text for products towards consumers. So, to pinpoint a cause for this recent shift would be practically impossible.
Still, this may indicate a major change in the landscape of translation as companies continue to release products globally to audiences that speak many different languages.
