Smartling, the leading AI translation platform, today published results from IBM's use of its platform to localize marketing content across more than 170 countries. By deploying Smartling's Translation Management System and AI Human Translation alongside IBM watsonx, IBM's marketing team cut average localization time in half and improved translation quality by 40%, enabling the company to publish localized content in days rather than weeks.
IBM's marketing, communications, and citizenship organization manages a constant flow of product launches, platform updates, and campaign content that must reach global audiences quickly and accurately. As content volumes grew, the team's manual translation workflows, including file submissions spread across multiple systems, constant status checks, and limited translator context, became a bottleneck that couldn't keep pace with the business.
IBM needed localization to work inside its existing technology stack, specifically its Adobe Experience Manager and Adobe Workfront environments. Smartling's native integrations with both platforms made the transition straightforward.
With Smartling in place, localization tasks in Workfront are created and tracked automatically, source files and reference materials move without manual intervention, and completed translations return directly to structured folders in Adobe Experience Manager, ready for publishing. The manual handoffs that once slowed the process are gone.
By pairing Smartling's AI Human Translation and centralized glossaries with watsonx as a key part of the AI foundation, IBM built a continuous feedback loop in which terminology, style guidance, and linguistic data improve over time. As new products and naming conventions emerge — a constant reality at a company IBM's size — updates flow across systems, keeping translations consistent across markets.
Today, IBM supports millions of translated words per month through Smartling, achieving 99.5% automation across web, marketing assets, and e-learning content, with MQM (Multidimensional Quality Metrics) scores consistently in the high 90s.
"IBM operates in more than 170 countries, and their content never stops moving," said Bryan Murphy, CEO of Smartling. "What they've built with our platform shows what's possible when localization is treated as part of the marketing engine rather than a separate process. The speed and quality results speak for themselves."
Results at a glance:
- Reduced average time to market by over 50% (from approximately 20 days to under 10)
- Improved translation quality by approximately 40%
- MQM scores consistently in the high 90s
- 99.5% automation achieved by eliminating manual file handling via Adobe Experience Manager and Workfront integrations
- Scaled to millions of translated words per month across web, marketing, and e-learning content
About Smartling
Smartling’s LanguageAI™ platform is revolutionizing digital content translation and localization. Recognized as the top translation management system by CSA Research and G2 users, Smartling uses AI and machine learning to eliminate manual tasks, integrate with existing techstacks, and deliver translation quality at scale — all at a fraction of the cost and turnaround time of traditional translation. For more information, visit www.smartling.com.
Media Contact
Sarah Lehman
Smartling
sarah@sixeastern.com
