“From the Orb vault” is a series of previous market research, presentations, blurbs, and other conceptual writings that we will start publishing regularly, in hopes it might help shape views on the often unregarded topic of global expansion and localisation (L10N). Through these insights, we aim to shed light on the complexities and inefficiencies that many overlook in the rush to scale internationally.
The localisation industry has been drawn, always, to what’s most tangible : the translators making sense in new languages, and, in more recent times, the algorithms that purport to do their job. It makes sense; they’re the tangible elements of the system, the ones you can look at and measure. But visibility is different from importance, and what’s typically hidden is the function that works reliably behind the scenes to keep everything operating: the project manager.
The project manager of localisation has long been considered a coordinator, an individual who maintains timelines aligned and parties informed. That is technically correct, but it fails to capture the heart of it. The project manager does not simply ferry information between parties but bridge consistency across different worlds: linguistic, cultural, technical, commercial. When they do it right, it all appears seamless, inevitable, almost transparent. When they don’t, every slight inefficiency is visible at once.
The irony is that the job (the one that touches all corners of the process) has the least direct access to information of use. Translators now have AI-assisted tools that give them phrases and enforce consistency. Executives receive dashboards of progress and cost expressed in lovely graphical terms. But project managers keep chasing updates in emails, spreadsheets, and chat streams, stitching together a version of reality that is already outdated when it arrives. They aren’t short on technology; they are short on immediacy.
It’s an issue of delays more than experience and effort. The information that a project manager receives is too disconnected, too high-level, or too slow to support real decision-making. Instead of guiding a process, they’re constantly playing catch-up. Instead of proactively managing risk, they’re reacting to crises. Instead of leading with confidence, they’re apologising for uncertainty.
And yet project management in its very nature is an act of decision-making. Project managers must decide every day where to apply pressure, when to restrain, when to escalate, and when to compromise. And effective strategy depends upon timely, contextual information : not upon noise, not upon rearview reports, but upon insight that arrives in the moment when it can affect the result.
That’s why the real revolution in localisation will not be fuelled by quicker translation engines or cheaper automation. It’ll be fuelled by giving project managers real visibility. Because when project managers have live, contextual, shareable information, their entire job shifts. They no longer are coordinators. They are advisors. They no longer respond to workflows. They get to architect them.
This change has cultural dimensions within organisations. A risk-forecasting project manager, someone who can back up every decision with fact and not with intuition, begins to occupy a different kind of authority. She is no longer reporting to management; she is now informing management. They become the one who can view the entire system: the one who can explain to you not only what’s going on, but why it’s going on and what it implies for the next decade of projects.
The future of localisation is for project management professionals to work not as a cost of doing business but as a strategy function that transforms information into foresight. AI will make translation faster. Automation will reduce the weight of drudgery. But without anyone overseeing the interface between humans, machines, and markets, that velocity only adds to chaos.
The actual worth of the project manager has ever been not in maintaining schedules, but in maintaining things sane. Sane between client intent and linguist result. Between deadlines and artistic value. Between promise and fulfilment.
When project managers are finally given real understanding, they will no longer be the back-of-the-house conductors nobody sees. They will get credit for what they always did: bringing the orchestra to sound like music, not just noise.
