Global Ambitions 2026: Meaning-Making

In 2025, we spoke about an industry in motion, AI’s fingers all over it, destination uncertain, but hands firmly on the wheel. Evolving. Being revolutionized out of business or into new ways of thinking and doing.

The further we ventured into unfamiliar territory, trying new tools, failing, restarting, trying again, and succeeding in establishing AI as a permanent feature of the localization process, the more we kept running into a familiar question: What remains once there’s nothing more left to optimize?

And no, “there’s always something to optimize” doesn’t count.

What we do remains the same. It’s the how and the why that are morphing — and our jobs with them.

As we try to imagine what 2026 (and beyond) look like, the routes will likely begin answering the questions starting with “How” and “Why.”

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Twelve perspectives from across the industry, in 76 pages.
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Global Ambitions Live

Recorded live on September 10, this hour-long panel brings four of this year’s authors together with editor-in-chief Gabriel Karandyšovský to discuss what meaning-making looks like once the optimizing is done.

Meet the authors

We asked 12 experts from companies such as TikTok, DeepL, Coupa, Gitlab, McAfee, and others.

Their contexts may be unique, but there’s one common denominator: They all went down the rabbit hole. Perhaps they asked different questions. But, along the way, they all found meaning.

We bring you their perspectives in this year’s edition of Global Ambitions.

Portrait of Claudia Francesca Müller, contributor to Global Ambitions 2026

Claudia Francesca Müller

Head of Content Design and Localization at Trusted Shops

Claudia is a multilingual content and localization expert with over 15 years of experience. She blends language, culture, and design with strategy and innovation, viewing content as a holistic discipline that extends beyond mere words.

Portrait of Jérôme Selinger, contributor to Global Ambitions 2026

Jérôme Selinger

Senior Language Operations Manager

With over 25 years at the intersection of language and technology, Jérôme has made it his mission to turn content globalization into a competitive edge for tech companies. From AI-powered workflows to CI/CD pipelines and enterprise TMS deployments, he brings both strategic clarity and technical depth. A trusted partner to leadership teams, he aligns product, engineering, and operations to build scalable language models that accelerate international growth and drive lasting business impact.

Portrait of Libor Šafář, contributor to Global Ambitions 2026

Libor Šafář

VP of Growth at Argos Multilingual

Libor Safar is currently vice president of growth at Argos Multilingual. With a background in electrical engineering and business administration, his passion for languages and technologies led him to the translation industry in the mid-1990s. Since then, he’s worked various roles in translation, localization, quality management, operations, sales, and marketing before joining Argos in 2021.

Portrait of Jose Palomares, contributor to Global Ambitions 2026

Jose Palomares

Senior Director, Global Experiences at Coupa

Jose is Senior Director of Global Experiences at Coupa and Board Director at GALA. Former CTO of Venga and serial entrepreneur, he is an advocate for the responsible use of AI to amplify the work done by humans.

Portrait of Liz Dunn Marsi, contributor to Global Ambitions 2026

Liz Dunn Marsi

Marketing Director at Argos Data

Liz is Marketing Director at Argos Data, where she leads brand and marketing strategy for multilingual AI data services. With 20 years of experience in localization, she also serves on the leadership team of WeShape AI by Women in Localization and is the LocLunch NYC Ambassador.

Portrait of Anna N. Schlegel, contributor to Global Ambitions 2026

Anna N. Schlegel

Global Technology Executive, Board Member, Former Global General Manager at Procore Technologies, Co-Founder and President, Women in Localization

Anna is a global technology executive, board member, and former Vice President at NetApp and Global General Manager at Procore. She is President of Women in Localization and has spent over 35 years leading global technology transformation, AI, product, and international growth initiatives.

Portrait of Zhongjun Ge, contributor to Global Ambitions 2026

Zhongjun Ge

Head of Localization at TikTok

Zhongjun is the Head of Localization at TikTok, the Founder of Panda Translation Agency, and an expert member of the Translators Association of China. Now he and his team are redefining the role of localization in a tech company in the AI era.

Portrait of Morana Perić, contributor to Global Ambitions 2026

Morana Perić

Director of Transparency & Trust, Product, at DeepL

Morana is a Croatian-born, Berlin-based localization, product, and UX professional. She has spent 15 years as a manager and leader in tech, building localization, content, and UX teams and processes around lean, efficient workflows. She loves talking about why great user experience matters, what good localization really means, why storytelling is business’s most underrated skill, and how systems thinking drives growth and scale.

Portrait of Julia Díez López, contributor to Global Ambitions 2026

Julia Díez López

Software Engineer, Localization at McAfee

Linguist turned engineer, with a data science detour somewhere in between. Julia does localization at McAfee, used to do it at Apple, writes The AI-Ready Localizer, and builds tools. Language and tech, basically.

Portrait of Martina Russo, contributor to Global Ambitions 2026

Martina Russo

CEO and Founder at The Action Sports Translator

Martina Russo is the founder and CEO of The Action Sports Translator, the world’s first translation, content, and AI integration agency dedicated to the outdoor industry. Combining over 15 years of localization expertise with a lifelong involvement in outdoor and action sports, she leads an international team helping global brands scale through multilingual content and AI-powered localization strategies.

Portrait of Oleksandr Pysaryuk, contributor to Global Ambitions 2026

Oleksandr Pysaryuk

Senior Manager, Globalization Technology at GitLab

Oleksandr is a localization leader with 25 years in the industry, now building AI-powered internationalization infrastructure and agentic translation platforms at GitLab, following prior leadership roles spanning sports technologies, telecommunications, HR tech human capital management, and e-commerce organizations.

Portrait of Renée Desjardins, contributor to Global Ambitions 2026

Renée Desjardins, Ph.D.

Full professor, School of Translation, Université de Saint-Boniface (Manitoba, Canada)

Renée Desjardins is a full professor at the Université de Saint-Boniface (Treaty 1, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada) and an adjunct professor at McGill University. Her area of research expertise is multilingual digital communication, social media, and translation. She currently holds funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for a project that examines translation and multilingual digital communication in the creator economy.

Our editor-in-chief Gabriel Karandyšovský recently sat down with Eddie Arrieta, CEO of Multilingual Media, for an episode of the Localization Today podcast.

They discuss the journey from the 2025 (R)evolution in Motion edition to the 2026 Meaning-Making, as well as learnings from Jérôme’s and José’s articles.

Watch the Conversation

The Global Ambitions Library

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(R)Evolution in Motion

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