Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Hello, welcome to Localization Today. This is where we explore how language, technology and community converge to unlock ideas for everyone everywhere. I'm Eddie Arrieto, CEO here at Multilingual Media. Today's episode centers on how localization or the delocalization industry and its technologies are evolving under new world real pressures from AI scale and enterprise expectations. Our guest brings a fresh executive perspective from across the broader enterprise software world. We're joined by Lorcan Malone, CEO of XTM International. With more than two decades of leadership in high growth technology companies, Lorcan has helped global enterprises navigate transformation across content, data and customer experience.
Since joining XTM in 2025, he's been focused on how language technology must evolve to meet the needs of modern AI enabled organizations. Lorcan, welcome and thank you for being here.
[00:01:14] Speaker B: Eddie, great to meet you and thanks for having me.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: That is great.
Lorgan. You know, as we were talking of the recording, my question has to be, Lorcan, if you were to describe me what you do and who you are, how would you describe yourself?
[00:01:35] Speaker B: Yes, so I'm a CEO of xtm. Obviously I've been in that position since October last year and I've worked in technology companies for a long time, eddie. Well over 25 years, all around the world. So I'm based close to Dublin in Ireland.
Today our XTM team are very international.
A lot of our staff are in Poland and Greece and Canada and the UK and Germany. And so I travel a lot and in my career I've lived and worked in various places around the world, including Arizona, San Francisco, the Middle east and I've done a lot of work all over Europe.
So I would say quite international in my outlook and very excited to be in this industry and CEO of XTM Lorcam.
[00:02:29] Speaker A: And you're welcome to the industry. I was very surprised when I first came into the industry, seeing the level of collective intelligence and the level of interconnectivity and cross pollinization. I think it's is something to be considered and to be understood and studied. Probably, maybe someone will do it. Someone probably is already doing it. And Lorcan, from that experience that you've had, you've come and you've had some time and from your perspective, what do you see as the most significant shifts, the ones that you are seeing in localization and language or the language technology landscape right now?
[00:03:11] Speaker B: Yeah, and it is, it's such an interesting industry, Eddie. You know, been relatively new to us.
I've had the experience of participating in techcom over in Germany.
Talking to many customers. And a lot of our customers are industry leaders in localization and have been in IT for years. And we have a lot of people in XGM that have led this industry. And I've been in IT for years, so I have a lot to learn. I've learned a good bit in the last three months. But the common thing when I talk to anybody in the industry, whether it's an enterprise customer, an LSP or people within XTM and our competitors, is the amount of change that's going on right now. It feels like the industry is at this inflection point mainly driven by AI. And I don't think localization is unique there.
But AI is having a profound effect on this industry and each dimension is impacted by it. And I can see that happening right in front of me.
[00:04:17] Speaker A: And it becomes very real in the conversation.
And given all these many changes, how do you think localization technology would need to evolve to support today's enterprises?
[00:04:31] Speaker B: Yeah, so if we come back to the AI element at a board level, in any of the big enterprises, there's pressure from a board down to adopt these new technologies. And of course, localization has used AI for years. It's really a type of pioneer in the use of AI, particularly things like machine translation. So it's been knee deep in IT for years.
But I think what you see now with the advance of LLM is even higher expectation and things like workflow, automation.
Obviously the translation element is becoming even more democratized than it was before.
Anybody can go onto an LLM right now and do translations and then the quality aspects and the post editing work has changed dramatically.
So I think AI is changing everything on the supply chain and it's opening up localization to more parts of the ecosystem within an enterprise.
And I think what that is doing is heightening expectations in terms of getting stuff done quicker, but at the risk of a diminishing quality. And I think enterprises are trying to grapple with that.
[00:05:47] Speaker A: And that's very interesting because it also sounds then that as there were enterprises or smaller companies to be enterprises that couldn't access certain services, now they have access to those services. It seems that within the enterprises then these services were a luxury to some very specific team. And now other teams are like, maybe the use of this can help us do what we do better.
[00:06:18] Speaker B: Exactly. And in our mission statement we talk about turning language into an opportunity rather than a barrier.
And with the advent of this technology, it certainly lowers the bar in terms of being able to internationalize your business and to be able to meet your end customer in their language.
So whether you've been English only and want to get and go multilingual or you've had a defined 1020 language set, now you're thinking 50, 100 languages.
So I think it's much easier now for organizations to internationalize and globalize their business.
[00:06:56] Speaker A: I agree with that statement. I'd say it's also very interesting what you mentioned about turning language into an opportunity and for the enterprises that you're working with, the clients that you're working with.
When we talk about an opportunity, and I personally even consider NASA as a magazine, we are also thinking about when economic opportunities happen, which is like the economic value that's in there. What are you seeing out there as opportunities that enterprises are taking advantage of?
[00:07:33] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a few things driving enterprises, like some of the biggest companies in the world are customers. So there's a productivity element. There always has been in enterprises what you see. And I use productivity rather than cost saving. I think with the advantage of some of these technologies, it now is much, much cheaper to translate and do quality control. But you have to go the other side of that is the huge proliferation of content. You know, Adobe talk about 5x content.
So you know, we see the ability now to have a huge amount more content in many more languages for the same price as you were paying for localization a couple of years ago. So we absolutely see that. We see video really taking off.
We purchased a video solution last year.
So the ability now to produce localized videos is becoming vital for businesses.
And then we're seeing a bigger demand now for what you would consider nearly long tail languages or low resource languages. So companies, enterprises that we've worked with that have had a, have localized in many languages in the past are now extending that to even more languages because it's becoming economical to do that.
So they're the type of things we're seeing with our large enterprise customers.
[00:08:58] Speaker A: That is really great to know. Thank you for sharing. And there is also conversation that's very interesting when talking about enterprises and is this gap between what the organizations need and what the traditional localization platforms were designed to deliver, which of course is going to inform us about the transformations that you see in the future. Which would be the next question.
[00:09:24] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And you know, if you look like, look at xtm. XTM was built for enterprises.
So enterprises by their nature are very complex. And our type of motto is we have to embrace the complexity. There's a lot of solutions out there.
Point solutions, AI driven. That try to simplify us. But in large enterprises that complexity is not going away and our ecosystems are very sophisticated and we need to plug into that ecosystem.
Now XTM's job is in order to remain relevant to both bring the latest technologies to our enterprise customers. So we've always been vendor neutral, always top of bringing any machine translation engine you want to use, bring that to our customers. Now we're bringing any LLM engine they want to use so they can use that.
And we need to also. I think one of the big trends that you'll see over the next couple of years, and people are already talking about it a lot, is the agentic side. So to be able to allow enterprises do work at source, so marketers will trigger localization workflows from within their marketing solutions, whereas in the past they might have essentially outsourced us to the localization department.
So the ability to embed our solution right across an ecosystem is one of the key trends we see.
[00:10:55] Speaker A: That's a really interesting conversation to address.
And we've had conversations about the standalone solutions and the integration possibilities. And you mentioned having that seamless integration being something important. Of course, helps me ask you the next question, which is about that suite of things that the enterprises are looking into. We've had conversations here at Localization today where the enterprises would agree on having their own internal processes and systems and teams doing things, and then have other organizations basically outsource some of that work and then sort of agents or agencies in other places. And we'll talk in a little bit about agentic Lorcam, but what's your take on what the company suite kind of like looks like?
[00:11:56] Speaker B: So we need to be able to support all of those patterns. But the job of an xtm, of an enterprise TMS like us is to orchestrate, govern and control all of that.
So you might have multiple patterns of work from a very simple pump content through an LLM and it's low risk and you're happy with the quality to very, very regulated content where you need to always need a person in the loop. So our job is to orchestrate all of that workflow and arbitrate across it, to govern it and then always give the organization control. Because at a large enterprise, you know, terminology is important, translation memory is important. So the quality of your produce, of what you produce has to be controlled.
So although AI is becoming prevalent right across the supply chain, our philosophy is there's always a human in control, so somebody is able to manage that and control that entire process.
[00:12:59] Speaker A: And very interesting you mentioning Human is always in control.
Is that what makes the XTM approach unique? How does XTM's approach this, this challenge differently? What's, what's your. And of course we can infer from everything you've already explained.
[00:13:18] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So, so, so there's a couple of things that, that make us different. I think composability.
So we, we believe in living within your ecosystem, not having to rip stuff out in order to work with us. And, and even our own suite of solutions we, we believe in. You buy what you need from us, you don't have to buy a everything. So composability within your ecosystem is key.
The human in control is absolutely key. From a philosophy of how we're building our solutions and then this idea of the vendor independence that I mentioned already. So the ability to use the LLM that you want to use, the ability to use the machine translation that you want to use.
So again, at an enterprise level, you can't be cookie cutter. We are our customers, some of our customers are in a highly regulated space.
So things like data segregation, private cloud, et cetera are absolutely vital to them.
Others are less concerned about that and we need to cater for that as well.
So I think the flexibility to live within the ecosystem of our customer is really what makes XTM stand out.
[00:14:33] Speaker A: Absolutely, I can see that. And you're talking about the ability to integrate regardless of your vendor structure or your current state structure, which allows for a lot of variability and of course adds probably a layer that you are optimizing for the layer of received complexity to then somewhat streamline it to be able to add the value that you are mentioning. I assume the acquisitions that you've had have played a role in that direction.
Could we connect these dots with consultech and what happened last year with that acquisition?
[00:15:19] Speaker B: Yeah, consultec was a super acquisition for us. It's a fantastic team in Montreal.
A great product that we position as an enterprise tbms and it's fantastic at that. We already own xtrf, which is also a tbms. We're really focused at the LSP and provider market and we felt like we needed an enterprise tbms and it's very complementary with the rest of our solution set.
Again, it's a very open system and we will keep it that way. It works great with products like MemoQ and others, and that will continue.
And so that was very important to us. And the other thing that it gave us was a real hub in North America. So it's a fantastic team in Montreal. Really great people who really know the industry? Well, we have a lot of business in North America, but we didn't have a hub office, so we're building that hub around the Montreal team. So it's really our intention is to grow that significantly over the coming years.
[00:16:28] Speaker A: And thank you, Lorcan.
I'd like to dig a bit deeper also into the economic value that the customer, the enterprise, is perceiving. What do you see in that regard?
[00:16:43] Speaker B: Yeah, so for FlowFit, it comes back to control and orchestration.
So the great thing about FlowFit is it's very usable and very quick to implement, so you're in control of your entire suite of localization projects in a very short time.
So it comes back to control and orchestration, which we talked about earlier. And there's real value in that for enterprises.
And a real selling point of flowfit is rapid time to value.
[00:17:13] Speaker A: And perceiving it real quick seems to be a part also of the conversation. And then is scalability also a big benefit that you propose? I mean, you're also talking about being able to adapt to many places, which probably means that you can make really great leaps in adoption of the solutions that are available through xtm.
[00:17:38] Speaker B: Yeah, like, when I look at our customers, we have customers pumping hundreds of millions of words through true XTM and XTRF and Flowfit and Transifex as well. And the ability to have all of that in one place is critical to those customers. So scalability, when you buy something like an XTM is an expectation, and that's why you buy it. You want to be able to handle both the scale and the complexity that you have as an enterprise business.
[00:18:10] Speaker A: Lorcan. And thank you for sharing that. It's really interesting to see it from that perspective in terms of the companies that now have.
Through the advancements in artificial intelligence and productivity, you have access to many other things. Now, what sectors are you seeing? And you talked about regulated industries in particular, but which sectors are you seeing as the ones that could really benefit from adopting a system like xtm?
[00:18:42] Speaker B: Yeah, like, if I look at, say, our four big industries, regulated industries, I think, have always traditionally adopted a system like xtm.
Control is vital to those industries, and traceability and auditability, and that won't change. Even though we are seeing those customers adopt LLM technology and AI technology, they're looking to us to make sure we continue to control and govern all of that for them.
We're seeing a big change in software and the velocity of.
We have a huge amount of software customers across Transifex. And xtm and we're seeing them move faster. So embedding localization into the development stream, the, the tight integration with GitHub, with a product like Rigi that we have the ability to see side by side localization in real time. And then we come back to the video side with our VCC product, the ability to produce training videos, course videos straight from your documentation and release those in multi languages immediately.
So a huge amount of adoption of this new technology in the software industry. And as I suppose, as you expect, they are moving really fast.
But even traditional industries, we have a lot of manufacturing customers around the world and they are looking to adopt new technology. So we have a very traditional consumer goods customer that's adopting our video technology to roll out all of their manuals to video in real time. You know, so, so you know the, how to use their appliances and how to, how to train people on them.
So it's in those, what you would call traditional industries as well. They're also changing and adopting this new technology.
[00:20:43] Speaker A: And those are really, really great news. This, this of course for some is a great opportunity or we're in times of great opportunities. For others, the future struggle a little bit longer to figure that out.
We've talked about sectors, we've talked about certain types of companies, enterprise in particular.
You mentioned that you've also been in different regions of the world. And the Middle east of course, have gained significant attention. We are a multilingual event having an entire issue on Saudi Arabia. And soon this year we'll also be covering the Middle east as well.
Lorcan, from your perspective, how do you see geographies playing a role if they do?
And what can you tell us about the Middle East?
[00:21:29] Speaker B: Yeah, they do. And I was saying to you beforehand that I lived in the Middle east for eight years, so I know the Middle east really well. I love the Middle east, great people there, a huge amount of energy, and it's such a dynamic region in the world right now because there's so much development going on across multiple industries and so much investment going on. When you look at places like Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi and Dubai and Qatar and for our industry, I see a lot of opportunity.
We have a footprint there, but not a huge footprint, but I see a lot of opportunity for us. You know, when you look at the need for the Arabic English translation across the board, I think things like FlowFit, XCM, Transifex, have a real role to play in, in those parts of the world. And one of my things is I want to See how we can grow our business there.
[00:22:24] Speaker A: That's great news.
There are, as you say, many opportunities and we've visited International Translation Forum about three times now and definitely there is an ongoing conversation and I hope our listeners enjoy the February issue that's going to be focused on Saudi Arabia.
Lorcan, you've mentioned that. Where you see opportunity and of course with all the acquisitions and the things you're doing from xtm, it is clear that there are things that excite you about this industry, about what we're doing and where we are headed in our relationship with enterprises and other types of clients. Of course, what excites you most about where this industry is headed?
[00:23:07] Speaker B: Yeah, I think I've considered the whole software industry and put localization in there. Eddie, I like I've been in the software industry for over 25 years, as I mentioned. This is what AI brings to the table, is a step change in how we're going to interact and use software, you know, over the next few years. And I think it's a really interesting time to be part of that software industry.
And localization is going to be impacted as much as everything else. And in some ways I think localization will, will lead the way. But I think over the next number of years, and it does take enterprises a while to adopt, but the way we interact with solutions and our expectations of how software will be used and how you can use it will dramatically change and we have to be ready for that. And it's going to become conversational and you're going to expect to use software from where you do work. So if you live in a slack or live in a teams, you expect to be able to control your localization from there and it will pick up context and you expect to be told when you need to intervene or fix something. Otherwise you're going to expect it to be essentially on autopilot. And that's an exciting time. It's a great time to be building.
[00:24:25] Speaker A: Products and those products. You did mention it briefly but. And we can touch on it if you are fine with it. And it's Agentech. 2025 was supposed to be the year of agentic, which in many ways I think it was.
The conversation was open.
We realized many of the things that were happening to make agentic happen.
It wasn't the all knowing omniscient God that you could basically say anything to and it knows all of the entire everything of the world.
But I think that conversation evolved and 2026 seems to be a year where the conversation is More realistic and where the conversation actually translates into a transaction.
How are you evolving that conversation within XTM about Agentic and where do you think it's going to go?
[00:25:17] Speaker B: Yeah, I think you're right. I think 2025 was the year I think the penny dropped on Agentic and people realized what it could do. But I think in enterprise software it always takes longer to become mainstream. So you're going to go through your normal hype cycle of adoption. For us, we actually pulled all of our product managers together last week in Dublin. This was one of the big topics and we're building a way. We already, we launched an NGINTI platform last year. It does a certain amount of work, but we are rapidly building on that and it will evolve over time. And I think every software company is doing the same and eventually, Eddie, you know, they'll all come together and everybody's using like something like the MCP protocol and thing, but it's not orchestrated to the degree that you would expect right now. But give it another year or two, it'll be a whole new world, I.
[00:26:15] Speaker A: Think, and I am personally ready for that whole new world. Companies are transforming the way in which LSPs used to work, in which TMS used to work, in which the understanding of the technology used to work has changed significantly. And I think it's still changing. It also feels that it's not very well understood.
If you could think about this, Lorcan, what do you think is the thing that we are misunderstanding the most about this specific moment in technology?
[00:26:46] Speaker B: I think the biggest mistake we can all make is not to think ambitiously enough. You know, we see some of the things that AI is doing right now and you think, okay, that's fantastic. You can, you can do translations through LLM, you can do quality control through, through AI, et cetera. But actually, if you think about our industry, the way we write code is dramatically changing. The way we test code is dramatically changing from the localization industry point of view. You know, we're going to see a day where you will write something, Eddie, and literally in your Slack channel, be very easy for you to say, just translate to this the 20 languages, check that the quality is okay, and publish it to my website next Friday at 2:00. And that's it. You will have written that in conversational English and it'll come back to you if there's something wrong. Otherwise you've done your work. And there might be six different applications doing work in the background, but they will be all orchestrated by something like an XTM to do that for you.
[00:27:51] Speaker A: And thank you for saying something like the xtm, it of course takes us to the world of the unknown and many new business models are to happen. It seems like this is the time where innovation is needed. It seems of course, like innovation is at the center of xtm. Lorc. And would you say, you said you had this amazing meeting with the product managers. What else happens at XTM that encourages the team to think the way you think we should be thinking?
[00:28:22] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, we try to encourage that sort of forward thinking. So when you look at where the world is going and we've over 300 people, you know, you need real change agents inside the company. You need people that understand this industry but also are reading ahead and trying new technology. And not everything will work. So what we're trying to do is foster a culture of one of our values is to strive for better and always be looking to move ahead because I think you're going to see a lot of incremental innovation. It's not going to be some light bulb moment in six months time, but you have to be getting better every day and using some of this technology and taking it to market every day. And some of it will land Eddie, and we'll get some of it wrong.
But we will be moving forward regardless.
[00:29:15] Speaker A: Norga, we wish you bad success. I hope your projects work really well. We look forward to getting some updates from your team once some technologies are launched. I'm sure we'll continue having some coverage of that. Before we go. Is there anything else you'd like to add? Any message to anyone out there?
[00:29:35] Speaker B: No, Just to say thank you, Eddie. I'm looking forward to meeting you in person at a localization event if you're in Lock World in Dublin. And for your listeners, thank you for the welcome. I've got into the industry. Tons of people have reached out to me and I'm thrilled to be part of it.
[00:29:58] Speaker A: That is great to hear, Lorcan. And this is part of what we do here. A multilingual media thank you for listening to Localization today and a big thank you again. Lorcan Malone, CEO at xtm. He was sharing his perspective on how localization technology must evolve to meet the realities of AI driven global enterprises and how platforms like XTM are defining what language infrastructure can be and what it will be in the future. Catch new episodes of Localization today on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube. Subscribe, rate and Share Share so others like you can find the show. I'm Eddie Arrieta with multilingual media. Thanks for joining and we'll see you next time. Goodbye.
