The localization industry is no longer a service business.
It is becoming a software business with human expertise at its core.
In this episode of Localization Fireside Chat, I sat down with Anna Albinsson, CEO of Gridley, to explore what happens when SaaS thinking collides with the realities of language, culture, and translation.
Anna’s background is not traditional localization. She comes from fast-moving SaaS companies where speed, productization, and scale are everything. That perspective gives her a clear view of what is broken in the localization industry and what has to change.
When Anna joined Gridley, she immediately saw something most insiders take for granted.
Localization has always been solving software problems, just without software.
Product launches, content updates, UI changes, customer support, and compliance all depend on language. Yet the industry has historically tried to handle this through manual service layers instead of technology platforms.
That is why Gridley exists.
Anna explains that the future of localization is not choosing between humans and technology. It is about building systems where both are orchestrated together. AI can move content faster, but humans protect meaning, nuance, and brand integrity.
This becomes critical when you move beyond the world’s largest languages.
One of the most important points Anna raises is the risk of linguistic flattening. AI models are strongest in high resource languages. Smaller languages, regional variants, and culturally specific expressions are at risk of being diluted or misrepresented if technology is allowed to run without human governance.
That is why she talks about the emergence of a new role, the AI orchestrator.
This is not a translator.
This is not an engineer.
This is someone who understands language, workflows, and technology well enough to control how AI is deployed.
Without this layer, companies will get faster translations, but worse communication.
Anna also challenges the industry to stop obsessing over speed at the expense of quality. Speed is easy to buy. Quality is expensive to lose. Once brand voice, regulatory language, or customer trust is damaged, it is incredibly hard to recover.
Gridley is positioning itself around this reality. It is not just a translation tool. It is a system for managing how language flows through a modern product organization.
This is where localization is going.
From service to platform.
From files to workflows.
From translation to orchestration.
Anna’s leadership reflects the next generation of localization companies. Ones that understand that technology does not replace human expertise. It amplifies it when designed correctly.
That is the real future of language in the AI era.
Watch the full conversation
Localization Fireside Chat
Unscripted. Unbiased. Unfiltered.
https://www.l10nfiresidechat.com
Robin Ayoub 
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