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Nearly every industry today is undergoing significant digital transformation with AI — is it still okay to talk about it? — being leveraged for efficiency, personalization, and decision-making across sectors. Beyond AI, industries are focusing on tailored experiences and services, environmental sustainability, and social impact.

Due to technological changes, cybersecurity, data protection, and workforce development are crucial across sectors. Industries are navigating complex and evolving regulatory landscapes, with ethical use of technology and responsible business practices becoming more important. Companies are looking at global markets for growth while adjusting to post-pandemic hybrid work models.

Many businesses are building more flexible and resilient operations and forming strategic partnerships to innovate and compete. There seems to be a focus on core competencies, with many companies emphasizing their unique strengths while outsourcing or automating other aspects. At the same time, AI is now helping businesses perform tasks in-house that have traditionally been outsourced, like software development, content creation, and translation.

In 2017, I realized that the language industry was stuck in its ways of working; with it, I was getting stuck in my career. So, I went to study business to find a way out. This high-level view of what is happening in the business world today is what every professor at my business school was already envisioning six or seven years ago.

Back then, many business leaders perceived the term “digital transformation” as overused, a bit like “AI” is viewed today by pretty much anyone in the language industry. The biggest question for everyone in our sector is, “What’s next for our industry?”

“AI reached its tipping point in 2023,” says PwC, yet it seems to have caught many language industry players by surprise and clouded their leaders’ judgment. While some language service agencies who feel late to the party are hiring innovation managers to help them implement AI (because their clients are asking them to do something with it), some translation technology companies now claim that helping businesses implement AI is essentially what they do.

In the meantime, the best copywriters and transcreation specialists that I know had to start searching for clients for the first time in their careers, suspecting that AI is the cause. More and more often, I meet freelance translators who are considering becoming localization managers. Localization managers who I was interviewing for Head of Localization roles a couple of years ago are changing careers and moving into product and UX.

Where is the language industry heading? What value will it create, for whom, and how? It all looks very gloomy and uncertain, to say the least…if we stay inside the language industry bubble. How about taking a look outside to get unstuck?

What are top-of-mind challenges across industries?

TECHNOLOGY: Complying with evolving regulations is an old challenge for the tech sector, but AI regulation is new and pressing, along with ethical concerns about this technology. Major players are establishing AI ethics boards and policies to ensure responsible innovation, fairness, reliability, privacy, and inclusiveness. While some tech companies are implementing protocols to deal with other imminent problems like increasingly sophisticated cyber-attacks and data breaches, others are looking ahead and investing in quantum-resistant encryption to prepare for potential threats from quantum computing. This emerging technology could soon enable computers and computer-based applications, including AI, to perform far more complex operations than conventional solutions, so it’s worth considering its impact already.

FINANCE: Adapting to evolving regulations and balancing digital transformation with traditional operating models are also top-of-mind challenges for the finance sector. Industry players are developing robust crypto policies and leveraging AI for predictive analytics to deal with evergreen issues such as fraud prevention. Governments and central banks worldwide are looking into how central bank digital currencies can be introduced into existing monetary systems to cater to changes in a payment landscape where physical money is used less often. Other major trends include decentralized finance facilitated by blockchain integration, which can be leveraged for increased security, transparency, more efficient cross-border payments, and sustainable investing.

ENERGY: The energy sector is not new to the issue of sustainability, but the energy security problem is growing. This is why the industry is accelerating its transition to renewable sources by investing in green technologies, exploring energy storage solutions, and expanding carbon capture initiatives to reduce emissions while maintaining energy production. However, according to one of my friends in this space, the green hydrogen sector has passed the peak of inflated expectations in the Gartner hype cycle terms and is going towards the trough of disillusionment. (By the way, we seem to be almost there with AI, both generative and “everyday”.)

AGRICULTURE: Security and sustainability are also top-of-mind in agriculture. Industry players are working on improving soil health, carbon sequestration, and access to locally-grown produce in urban areas. What’s new is the need to adapt to climate change, driving the development of AI-driven equipment that can adapt to changing weather conditions, IoT-enabled precision farming that can maximize crop yields while minimizing resources, and the use of gene editing technologies for the development of drought-resistant crop varieties. (This is a lot more innovation and tech change than the language industry.)

HEALTHCARE: Healthcare is another sector that sees emerging applications of AI and gene editing (obviously). We are entering the era of gene writing two decades after scientists learned how to read the human genome. (Sounds a bit like the transition from MT to LLMs, doesn’t it?) Despite significant technological advancements such as gene-editing therapies, AI-assisted diagnostics, and integration of virtual reality in mental health treatments, the sector is still adapting to post-pandemic healthcare models while dealing with rising costs and accessibility issues, managing data privacy and security, and addressing healthcare worker burnout. (Does this sound like the language industry again?)

RETAIL: Similar to the healthcare sector, where telemedicine and virtual care are becoming the norm, balancing an online and physical presence post-pandemic is still challenging in retail. While some retailers are starting to use physical locations for both in-store shopping and online order fulfillment, others are transforming their stores into automated fulfillment centers to serve online shoppers better. (A bit like offering MT in addition to human translation vs. focusing on MT to serve more price-sensitive convenience-driven buyers.) The need for personalization and better customer experience still exists, and omnichannel strategies are still relevant. Major brands allow customers to design their own products and use AI-powered tools to provide personalized product recommendations both online and in-store.

EDUCATION: Physical and online experiences are also becoming more interconnected in education. Born-digital industry players are partnering with their old-school counterparts, such as schools and universities, to tackle the industry’s ongoing challenge of educational inequality by providing personalized learning programs and more accessible online degrees. The former is also being done by leveraging, you’ve guessed what, AI. Other technologies known by two-letter acronyms — AR and VR — are slowly but finally gaining traction to provide immersive educational experiences.

AUTOMOTIVE: The automotive industry is transitioning to electric and autonomous vehicles to address the persistent challenge of reducing emissions and to enable our cars to automatically stop at red lights and stop signs. Car manufacturers are investing in battery technology and charging infrastructure to do the former. They are investing in industry challengers and partnerships with technology firms to accelerate the latter.

MANUFACTURING: Like the automotive industry, the broader manufacturing sector is developing supply chain resilience, which for many players means diversifying suppliers – through reshoring or localization (as in producing in China for China) — and implementing AI and blockchain into their supply chain management systems. Like the technology sector, the industry is figuring out how to effectively implement AI and robots while managing workforce displacement, addressing the challenge by upskilling employees to work alongside these tools.

What does this mean for the language industry?

As these other sectors are reimagining their roles in a rapidly evolving landscape, we too must redefine our value proposition. The era of simply translating words is behind us, and digital transformation isn’t just about adopting AI. The language industry needs to reimagine its entire approach to language services and redefine the value it offers.

The finance sector didn’t just digitize existing processes — it created entirely new paradigms like cryptocurrency and decentralized finance. What’s our industry’s equivalent? Could we be pioneering new forms of cross-cultural communication that we haven’t even imagined yet?

The manufacturing and automotive industries are not just adapting to new technologies but actively reshaping their workforces and supply chains. In the language industry, this might mean investing heavily in upskilling translators.

While we’ve been debating whether AI will replace translators, history is repeating itself right before our eyes. “Computers” used to be humans who performed calculations by hand. When electrical computers emerged, these professionals became the first generation of computer programmers. Translators are standing at a similar crossroads today.

Who will they become? AI prompt engineers and cross-cultural UX consultants already sound old-school and don’t add a great deal of value. I don’t think the choice is between purveyors of cultural intelligence, facilitators of global communication strategies, and guardians of ethical, multilingual AI implementation either.

The retail and education sectors are blurring the lines between physical and digital experiences. Should we imagine multisensory communication designers creating experiences that go beyond words, incorporating cultural nuances, non-verbal cues, and context into AI-powered communication tools?

Like other industries, we can innovate and compete by forming strategic alliances. Who are our potential partners? Tech companies? Neuroscientists? Global policy think tanks?

As other industries focus on sustainability and social impact, should we consider how we can contribute to these global priorities? Could we facilitate cross-border collaboration on environmental initiatives? Or help ensure diverse voices are heard in the development of new technologies?

We must stop seeing ourselves as just a service industry and start thinking of ourselves as innovation drivers, like the first generation of computer programmers who were pivotal in shaping the digital age. Yes, AI is disrupting our traditional business models. But if we look beyond our industry bubble, we’ll see that disruption is just another word for opportunity.