What 300 localization leaders told us about throughput, QA coverage, and automation budgets as they plan 2025 launches.
We combined product telemetry with survey responses from in-house localization leads, LSP partners, and freelance reviewers across 37 industries.
Jump straight to the insights that will calibrate your localization roadmap.
Translix gathered quantitative telemetry from 21 million localized words and paired it with qualitative responses from 312 localization stakeholders. Respondents represented B2B SaaS, gaming, fintech, marketplaces, and public sector teams shipping in 12+ locales.
We weighted responses by company size to ensure emerging teams and global enterprises carried equal influence. Every benchmark shared below reflects the median performance of teams with at least one dedicated reviewer per language.
42% in-house, 38% hybrid, 20% outsourced
18 languages (median)
Faster releases, consistent tone, spend visibility
Three themes surfaced as consistent differentiators between the top quartile of teams and the rest of the sample.
High-performing teams maintain a 1:6 reviewer-to-locale ratio, compared with 1:11 for laggards. They report 31% fewer post-launch fixes and faster feedback loops.
When a locale drops below the 1:8 threshold, churn in revision cycles spikes within two releases.
Teams using AI-assisted drafting process 2.4x more strings per sprint while keeping reviewer edit rates below 9%. Manual-only programs plateau near 0.9x growth.
The winning pattern: machine drafts, human reviewers, and automated QA checks before engineering handoff.
58% of leaders increased spend on workflow orchestration tools while reducing vendor-only budgets by 14%. The top investments were reviewer enablement, workflow automation, and analytics.
Teams cite visibility into throughput and quality trends as the justification for renewed budget.
Median release cadence: 18 days • Average locales: 8 • Edit rate: 13%
Median release cadence: 11 days • Average locales: 16 • Edit rate: 10%
Median release cadence: 7 days • Average locales: 28 • Edit rate: 7%
Even teams with sophisticated pipelines flagged three blockers that keep human reviewers indispensable.
71% of respondents rely on reviewers to catch tone misfires in culturally sensitive campaigns. Automated sentiment checks still miss idioms, wordplay, and subtle politeness levels.
Teams that supply reviewers with persona briefs reduce these escalations by 22%.
Compliance-heavy locales (DACH, JP, BR) demand human oversight for claims and disclaimers. Only 19% of teams trust automated QA alone for legally sensitive copy.
Successful teams pair automation with reviewer checklists mapped to policy owners.
Fragmented glossaries and screenshot debt drive 28% of revision churn. Automated extraction tools help, but reviewers still reconcile conflicts across product, marketing, and support strings.
Teams with centralized reference hubs cut reviewer turnaround time by 35%.
Use these plays to turn the benchmarks into momentum for your localization program.
We can ingest your localization history, benchmark it against peers, and recommend the automations that will close your biggest gaps in under a week.
Book a workflow consult