AI is excellent at writing and translating. Does this mean translators are becoming obsolete?

Research shows that writing and translating are among the tasks with the highest AI applicability scores, meaning AI performs extremely well in these areas. This raises a fair concern: will AI outperform translators and writers? Are we already there? Should leaders rely more (or less) on AI?

For many leaders, the pressure is real: use AI to cut costs, increase efficiency, and somehow deliver more with less.

At our recent Customer Advisory Board, one message was loud and clear: Quality is non-negotiable. Customers want AI, but they also want humans actively involved to ensure accuracy and brand reliability.

The challenge is that three priorities constantly pull against each other:

• Quality

• Speed

• Cost

If quality didn’t matter, businesses would machine-translate everything. If speed and cost didn’t matter, humans could do it all. But content volume keeps growing, and review teams can’t keep up.

The bottleneck is human review.

As one customer put it: “Human validators are overloaded; we need automation to reduce workload and accelerate go-live.”

This suggests that translators and writers are not becoming obsolete, but rather that their role is changing. Automation is allowing companies to translate more than ever before; leaving translators with a growing workload within review and validation.

Guiding human effort where it matters

When we localised our own website this summer, the workload was intense, but manageable because we reviewed only what demanded human attention. High-value content received full creative translation and review. Other content types didn’t require the same scrutiny.

That’s the real lesson: Quality shouldn’t be a fixed concept.

Over-investing in low-value content wastes resources. Under-investing in high-value content introduces risk.

The question organisations should be asking is: What level of quality does each content type really need within the constraints of budget and time?

Get this right, and you free up human expertise to focus where it has the biggest impact.

Translators are more valuable than ever

Translators are not becoming obsolete. Their roles are evolving. They may spend less time translating and more time reviewing, but their input is more valuable than ever. Not only is this the logical conclusion when we look at the quality requirements of companies that produce multilingual content: It is also what we see happening on the ground with our own clients.

The key is intentionality. Leaders must decide where AI adds efficiency and where human talent must step in to ensure accuracy, compliance, and brand alignment.

The real opportunity lies in choosing the right level of quality for each type of content. Organisations that find this balance will ease pressure on teams and budgets while still delivering content that works.

Want more insights like this?

This article was adapted from our quarterly newsletter. If you’d like more practical perspectives on AI, localisation, and language, sign up to our newsletter and get expert insights straight to your inbox.