A New Phase of Growth
If you could localize every piece of content into any language, where would you start? Until recently, this question had no real meaning. AI has suddenly made it a hot topic. As organizations incorporate AI into their localization processes, new opportunities arise. With the latest advancements in quality and language breadth in Lara, Translated is empowering businesses to pursue growth that was previously out of reach due to volume or turnaround times that exceeded human capacity.
The Engine of Successful Businesses
Most content today is never translated because of subpar quality, slow turnaround times, or prohibitive costs. This is what we call latent demand in translation. When these frictions disappear, demand will expand far beyond expectations.
This is what happened when Airbnb launched. Analysts once considered short-term home rentals a zero market. Once the friction behind finding and easily renting short-term rentals dropped, it became a global business. Uber has a similar story. On-demand personal drivers were traditionally a niche service due to the cost and challenges of 24/7 coverage. When Uber solved the problem, a mass market appeared. Nike has shown this repeatedly by identifying new needs and designing products that meet these needs with precision, from performance wear for everyday athletes to personalized gear.
It’s no coincidence that Airbnb, Uber, and Nike are among our customers: we’ve always known the real value of AI in localization lies in reaching audiences previously not engaged. When content becomes local-sounding, instantly available, and reliable, user engagement always grows.
Unlocking the latent demand in translation
With Lara now available in over 200 languages, we’ve put in place the technical foundation to unlock the latent demand for translation. We now empower companies to reach over 80 percent of the world’s population in their official languages. Unique features such as contextual understanding, reasoning, and adaptive AI enable companies to continuously improve content quality and audience reach while reducing turnaround times.
In addition, with the introduction of Lara Think during our November event, we made it possible to translate content that had previously remained untranslated in contexts where volumes or turnaround times are beyond human capabilities.
When TranslationOS and Lara are used together, they give translators full context and stronger control over meaning, tone, and intent, reinforcing their strategic role in AI-first workflows. From this accountability comes purpose. When purpose returns, creativity follows. And that is how quality can scale with AI.
A Look at 2026
2026 will favor organizations that adopt AI-first localization and act on the latent demand waiting for their products and services. The companies that move now will shape the markets that emerge next. If you see untapped opportunities ahead and need a partner to tackle them, especially those deemed “impossible,” we are eager to help.
Lara in 200 languages
Our translation AI now supports contextual understanding, custom instructions, adaptation, and glossaries even for low-resource languages, with an average 25% improvement in translation quality over the most recent state-of-the-art commercial systems. This update strengthens organizations' ability to operate in underrepresented yet fast-growing markets. New languages include:
Lara Think
Our new reasoning model allows enterprises to increase go-to-market speed by 50%. It reduces errors by 50–60%, achieving an average grade in human evaluations that is 40% higher than the baseline model. Lara Think delivers translations in under 10 seconds and at a cost similar to professional translations, providing a viable solution for contexts with a latent demand for high-quality content delivered at a pace that exceeds human capabilities.
Lara for CAT tools and translation platforms
In addition to Matecat and TranslationOS, Lara is now available for widely used CAT tools, including Trados Studio, Wordfast, and memoQ, as well as localization and content platforms, including Blackbird.io, Locize, Crowdin, Drupal, and CustomMT, ensuring seamless deployment within existing workflows.
Adobe Globalization Conference Highlighted the Need to Shift To Cultural Translation
By Kirti Vashee
The Adobe Globalization Conference, held in India last month, showcased some of the industry's most sophisticated AI deployments, particularly highlighting the rise of AI agents and human-on-the-loop workflows, where trust, reliability, and low latency are critical. The Global South perspective contrasted sharply with typical US and EU events, focusing on:
The conference advocated a significant shift in localization, moving beyond simple text translation toward "cultural translation" informed by extensive contextual data. Ultimately, the re-envisioned localization scenarios presented demonstrated that evolving the practice requires new competencies, especially in AI skills. This repositioning highlights globalization as a specialized discipline focused on enhancing worldwide engagement.
Redefining Language Intelligence as a Tool for Creating Business Value
By Kirti Vashee
Held at the Austrian Parliament in Vienna, the conference addressed a European audience facing significant industry pressure from technological shifts and the commoditization of translation services. The event expanded the definition of "Language Intelligence," moving beyond simple efficiency and cost containment to focus on demonstrated business value. Success here is defined as coming from cross-functional alliances: it requires collaboration with product, marketing, and finance teams to build value-focused alliances.
Internal Advocacy also plays a crucial role. Localization teams must prioritize internal marketing to demonstrate their contribution to global customer experience initiatives. Rather than just a way to get translation done, teams must position themselves as experts who provide deep competence to measure, enhance, and improve the global customer experience.
The Younger Generations as Architects of Language
What happens when the world’s youngest generations grow up speaking in memes, mixed languages, and emotions? 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗱𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗴𝘂𝗮𝗴𝗲 — 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗿𝗲𝗶𝗻𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗶𝘁. Words are design elements. Language is flexible and alive, a playground where identity, culture, and creativity merge. From the way younger generations describe feelings to how they celebrate community or confidence, each new phrase becomes a cultural fingerprint. This isn’t a loss of linguistic structure — it’s a reawakening of linguistic meaning. It shows how humanity finds 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗰𝘁, even in the noise of the digital age. Understanding this evolution isn’t about decoding slang; it’s about noticing the values behind it: belonging, authenticity, emotion, and self-expression. In her study, our Brand and Creative VP Patrizia Boglione explores how language becomes culture, and how culture turns into communication. Read the full article on Imminent.
Mind Captioning: The Science of Translating Thoughts Into Text
Imagine watching a video — or simply remembering one — and a computer turning your silent thoughts into fluid, descriptive text. That’s the promise of a new “mind captioning” technique that translates brain activity into language without relying on the brain’s language network. By aligning fMRI signals with deep-model semantic features, researchers generated vivid reconstructions of what people saw and recalled, hinting at a future where even unspoken thoughts can find a voice. Read the full article on Science Advances.
How AI Could Enable Global Collaboration in Cardiology
At Imminent, we sat down with Prof. Sandy Engelhardt - Full Professor and Director of the Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Cardiovascular Medicine at Heidelberg University Hospital and the Medical Faculty of Heidelberg University - to discuss how federated learning enables international collaboration in cardiology, protecting patient privacy while reshaping the future of healthcare. This interview is part of Imminent’s broader journey within the DVPS project, delving into Physical AI — where machines learn from and interact with the real world in real time. Read the full article on Imminent.