The Total Economic Impact™ Of RWS

Translation Cost Savings

Evidence and data. Interviewees noted that translation cost savings was the single biggest benefit their organizations experienced. It came from three layers of translation efficiency and effectiveness improvement:

• Translation memory (TM). Interviewees said that TM consistently formed the foundation layer of translation efficiency and effectiveness improvements, capturing validated linguistic knowledge and enabling immediate reuse. It delivered its strongest value by reducing redundant work and stabilizing quality. The director of content engineering, translation, and DevOps at a technology hardware company stated: “Our first layer everything leverages is our translation memory. From there, you either go down the route of leveraging MT [machine translation] or human‑in‑the‑loop. … That’s how we drive the cost per word down.”

• Machine translation (MT). RWS’s Language Weaver, a proprietary MT engine, extended these benefits for the interviewees’ organizations by addressing the remaining nonleveraged content — especially new, frequently updated, or high-volume material where speed and cost were priorities. Language Weaver allowed the interviewees’ organizations to absorb growing demand without proportional increases in budget or headcount. The localization manager at a cloud infrastructure and security company said: “Our website is building … glossary pages and that’s a huge chunk of work. And thanks to the timing, we pretty much process all those words through machine translation for the glossary. If we had to translate that [in the] conventional way, [it would] probably take 40% more time.”

• Human in the loop (HITL). Language Weaver enabled the role of linguists to shift from mandatory involvement to a selective, risk‑based review model. As the head of localization at a home improvement retailer said: “We don’t validate everything anymore because the quality scores have far exceeded the contracted rate. … We focused our validation on the larger projects.” This interviewee continued, noting, “From when we first started through to today, the overall cost for localization has reduced by roughly 70% to 75%.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The percentage of words being translated with TM is 40% in Year 1, 50% in Year 2, and 60% in Year 3.

• The percentage of words being translated with MT is 20% in Year 1, 30% in Year 2, and 40% in Year 3.

• The cost per word is $0.09.

Risks. The scale of this benefit may vary from organization to organization based on:

• The translation complexity before RWS, which would affect the adoption of MT.

• The technology adoption, which varies by investment priority and engineering resources.

• The cost per word, which varies by language and domain of translation.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $15.2 million.

Avoided Revenue Loss Due To Removing Translation Delays

Evidence and data. All four interviewees commented that RWS enabled substantial reductions in time to market. By combining TM leverage, MT, and automated workflows, RWS enabled SLA compression and faster time to market for the interviewees’ organizations.

• The translation management lead for marketing and communications at a professional services company shared: “Prior to the connector, getting a page built in local languages took us four to six weeks on top of the translation process. That has now been cut down to hours and days … and for many markets the review only takes two to three days instead of five.”

• The head of localization at a home improvement retail company said, “We changed the SLAs to be purely based on new and fuzzy words. … That allowed us to save an average of 11 days compared to the previous set of SLAs.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The translation SLA prior to RWS is 15 days.

• The time reduction rate improves year over year due to the expanded usage of TM, MT, and connectors, growing from 30% reduction in Year 1, 40% in Year 2, to 50% in Year 3.

• Translation delays affect 20% of international launches.

• The profit margin for this global hardware and software company is 10%.

Risks. The scale of this benefit may vary from organization to organization based on:

• Profit margin difference.

• The revenue contribution of each launch.

• The revenue contribution of international markets that require translations.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 15%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $3.3 million.

Efficiency Improvement Of Localization Project Management

Evidence and data. Interviewees reported project management efficiency gains through RWS, as more projects were processed through the self-service portal.

• Interviewees said their organizations handled more translation requests with the same amount of localization resources. As the director of content engineering, translation, and DevOps at a technology hardware company stated: “We’ve been able to reduce the number of resources because there’s not as much hand‑holding required now. More and more of it is automated.”

• Efficiency improvements allowed the interviewees’ teams to focus more on higher-value work. The localization manager at a cloud infrastructure and security company said, “It allows us to take in more and focus a little bit more on strategic work.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• Project management work includes resource coordination and stakeholder management, which takes 1 hour for each project requiring human translation.

• For projects that are translated through self-service portal, project management work is not required anymore.

• The total number of translation projects per year increases, from 9,000 projects in Year 1 to 12,833 projects in Year 2 and 18,150 projects in Year 3.

• The percentage of translations leveraging the self-service portal increases year over year, accounting for 25% of total number of translation projects in Year 1 and increasing to 40% in Year 2 and 55% in Year 3.

• Seventy-five percent of the efficiency improvement has been captured and converted into new productivity. This allows the project management team to take on more projects with the same resources and improve localization processes through higher‑value strategic and governance activities.

Risks. The scale of this benefit may vary from organization to organization based on:

• The number of translation projects and complexity of translation projects.

• The salary of in-house project managers, which varies by industry and location.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $745,000.

Reduced Quality Validation Costs

Evidence and data. The interviewees’ organizations reduced internal and external costs for translation quality validation due to the enhanced intelligence of the RWS system and its centralized translation workflow.  

• Interviewees noted that the improvement in translation quality helped free up the localization teams’ time. The head of localization at a home improvement retail company said: “We don’t validate everything anymore. The quality scores have far exceeded the contracted rate, so we focus our validation on the larger projects.”

• Interviewees further noted that translation validation that previously required local marketing resources was reduced because RWS improved the local context data. As the translation management lead for marketing and communications at a professional services company said: “The local teams want to make sure the language makes sense in the way that we talk about it. [For example], some things translate well from English [but] make zero sense in Spanish. We don’t talk like that.”

• The cost for third-party quality sampling was reduced for the interviewees’ organizations. The director of content engineering at a technology hardware company stated, “We’ve been able to reduce the third‑party quality sampling budget by about 50% compared to what it was before.”

• The centralized approach improved their teams’ visibility into the translation workflow and spend. The translation management lead for marketing and communications at a professional services company shared: “Markets were using external agencies independently — we had no visibility. With a centralized approach, we could finally see and manage what we were spending.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• In-country linguist review efficiency improves by 40% in Year 1, 50% in Year 2, and 65% in Year 3 as the cultural intelligence layer performance improves with more reference data.

• Third-party costs prior to RWS are $70,000.

• Reduction due to RWS is 50%.

• Seventy-five percent of the efficiency improvement has been captured and converted into new productivity that allows the in-country linguist to focus on other tasks.

Risks. The scale of this benefit may vary from organization to organization based on:

• Third-party costs. The model is conservative about the spend on this category.

• In-house linguist review effort, which varies depending on the type of content and languages that require translation. 

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 15%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $2.5 million.

Unquantified Benefits

Benefits that provide value for the interviewees’ organization but are not quantified for this study include:

• Brand voice consistency and governance. Interviewees highlighted the importance of consistent terminology, tone, and brand voice, especially as they sought to scale global content without sacrificing local relevance. The translation management lead for marketing and communications at a professional services company shared: “We have fairly extensive terminology and brand guidelines incorporated into our system. Any off-the-shelf LLM is not going to have those capabilities.”

• Security and compliance readiness. Interviewees whose organizations had strict security postures said the ability to meet infosec requirements and operate within enterprise governance constraints was a prerequisite to modernization. The localization manager at a cloud infrastructure and security company said: “AI-assisted translation capabilities within Trados Enterprise have allowed us to translate the entirety of the legal content on our website. This ensures we are fully compliant with local regulations in all the regions where we operate, a task that would have been cost-prohibitive or too slow using purely manual processes.”

• Transparency of translation jobs. Interviewees highlighted that in their previously more decentralized environments, their organizations lacked the ability to answer basic questions about translation spend and activity across markets; centralization and platform reporting capability provided the visibility required for governance.

• Consultative partnership and enablement. Interviewees referenced the importance of vendor partnership beyond tooling. This consultative approach was especially important where internal complexity, stakeholder alignment, or organizational adoption (rather than technology alone) represented the primary barrier to further value realization.

• Accessibility and usability of localization tools. RWS solutions improved the practical usability of localization operations at interviewees’ organizations by removing access constraints, simplifying submission and the handling of content, and reducing reliance on manual coordination. The localization manager at a cloud infrastructure and security company wanted a tool to be cloud-based without compromising the security since their old solution was offline and difficult to access.

Flexibility

The value of flexibility is unique to each customer. There are multiple scenarios in which a customer might implement RWS’s technology and expert services and continuously consider ways to expand use cases and scale of adoption, including:

• Increase automation with custom model training. Interviewees noted their organizations are actively integrating more LLMs and machine translation into Trados Enterprise. The head of localization at a home improvement retail company said: “We just signed off [on] a trial to train our own large language model with RWS to try and integrate AI further into our workflows. It’s going to be a crucial strategic project for us this year.”

• Develop adaptive service levels by content type. To further improve automation, some interviewees said their organizations are experimenting with adapting service levels based on the content type and business purpose. The head of localization at a home improvement retail company said: “We want to be this multilingual hub and adapt the way that we work depending on the type of project. For example, instruction manual content needs to be very factual, while creative content that requires adaptation into a market or different cultures is different.”

• Expand usage of Language Weaver. As Language Weaver usage expands (particularly for lower-risk or high-volume content), interviewees expected to reduce turnaround time, increase throughput, and lower cost per word, while applying human review selectively where brand and compliance risk is higher.

Flexibility would also be quantified when evaluated as part of a specific project (described in more detail in Total Economic Impact Approach).