Gráinne Maycock on Localization Today: The Human-Centric approach behind Lia 

The conversation addressed both opportunities and challenges in the industry and outlined Acolad’s forward-looking vision, with a highlight on Lia's role in sparking an evolution in the AI conversation, showcasing its potential to be a game changer not only for Acolad but for the language services sector as a whole.

The role of AI at Acolad 

Describing how Acolad's AI journey started with NMT many years ago like for most companies in the language services space, Gráinne Maycock talked about how this journey accelerated significantly over the past year, with AI now woven into every aspect of Acolad’s operations. Lia, she mentioned, is not a culmination of that journey, but instead represents the beginning of a new phase of AI empowerment for Acolad’s teams, customers and the overall industry. 

When asked about Lia, Acolad’s CRO described it as an umbrella, an entry way into into a suite of AI solutions, which enable companies to integrate and advance machine translation, AI, content solutions, multimedia, interpreting, and more across their organizations. Ultimately, she explained, Lia is the AI-empowered evolution of traditional solutions, a dynamic and expanding suite, with additional capabilities coming soon.

What are customers saying 

Many buyers face mounting pressure to rapidly adopt AI, with expectations for swift results in the form of faster turnaround times, cost savings, and leaner teams. However, many are unprepared to optimize their AI journey alone and appreciate that Acolad offers guidance tailored to their unique needs—eschewing a one-size-fits-all approach. 

By guiding clients through pilot programs and practical projects that yield measurable results, Acolad demonstrates both the possibilities and limitations of AI in a transparent manner, taking into account each client’s context and starting point. This support positions Acolad as a trusted partner, helping clients navigate their AI adoption journey confidently. As Maycock explained, Lia serves as a continuous suite of solutions that illustrates AI’s potential across their organization, empowering teams and aligning executive leaders on the transformative impact AI can bring.

Balancing AI and Humans

Acolad’s CRO emphasized that linguists are among the most specialized professionals in our industry—a truth that held in the era of machine translation and continues in the age of AI. 

She highlighted the vital role of the group’s 200+ in-house linguists across all verticals and how their roles are naturally evolving. Today, they contribute as prompt engineers, domain experts, and even brand ambassadors for marketing-focused projects. Acolad’s “fit-for-purpose” approach optimizes resources, strategically deploying talent where it is most valuable. This approach reduces human intervention in lower-sensitivity projects, while enhancing it where AI alone is insufficient, ensuring quality and precision across diverse projects.

“The magic of AI when it is applied properly, responsibly, ethically and with business goals in mind is you know where humans can add value and mitigate risk.” - Gráinne Maycock, CRO

Is demand changing?

Maycock affirmed that there’s been a marked increase in demand for machine translation (MT) acceleration and AI-powered solutions for interpreting and multimedia, alongside a visible decline in traditional services. However, this isn’t due to a drop in volume—on the contrary, volume has grown exponentially. Instead, it reflects companies’ expectations around AI’s cost-saving potential, leading to budget reductions in localization. This shift poses a significant challenge for language service providers (LSPs) as they work to achieve sustainable growth and meet evolving client needs. 

Demand for adjacent services has also surged, now accounting for 25% of Acolad’s revenue. As more mature buyers seek data-related offerings like translation memory (TM) cleaning, AI-driven savings in traditional services are enabling clients to invest more in quality control. This is especially valuable as trust in AI-generated outputs remains below full confidence.

Our vision of the future

“One of the easy things to overlook in a disruption phase of our industry is that the basics still need to be covered. The basics of understanding the business goals of a company, (…) the painpoints, (…) if content will hit the business goals for international expansion. AI isn't the silver bullet for everything, but AI empowered, guided solutions help companies achieve their goals.” - Gráinne Maycock, CRO 

As she spoke about what the future looks like for Acolad, Maycock highlighted how Lia is positioned as a guide for customers. With the clear advantage of not having been built with only translation in mind, but as an end-to-end solution suite, Lia can help customers analyze content, decide where AI assistance is most beneficial, measure results, and optimize the “magic triangle” of time, cost, and quality. 

Acolad envisions continued growth for Lia by integrating traditional services that can now be enhanced with AI, while keeping human expertise central to every workflow. From quality validation and compliance to project management and strategic planning, humans remain essential, especially as AI streamlines resource-intensive tasks and enables more efficient processes. 

“Humans are the strategists, the architects, the visionaries, the communicators. AI just happens to be a powerful tool.” - Gráinne Maycock, CRO

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