Localization #Globalization #ServiceNow #AI

A translation can be word-for-word accurate and still be completely wrong. In this episode, Bobby Brill sits down with Sam Smyth, Product Manager on the globalization side at ServiceNow, to get into what happens after you decide to go multilingual — the tools, the governance, and the quiet work nobody sees until it breaks.

Sam spent fifteen years in localization operations and management before joining ServiceNow, and he's blunt about what actually goes wrong: it's rarely the translator. It's the content you sent them. We get into Localization Workspace, the new globalization agent that builds a glossary from your knowledge articles in minutes, why every customer still insists on a human in the loop, and the one mistake that will break your product UI in six languages at once.

Past Localization episodes:

https://youtu.be/4ka4qLk8Uj0

https://youtu.be/cGXCnABXKow

Guest: Sam Smyth, Product Manager - ServiceNow

Chapters 

00:00 "People don't see localization until it goes wrong"

00:22 Translation vs. localization — a quick recap

00:56 Meet Sam Smyth: fifteen years in localization

01:37 When a perfect translation is still wrong

03:34 Why customers don't want to leave the platform

04:07 Localization Workspace: no more spreadsheets and email chains

05:13 The surprise: everybody still wants a human in the loop

05:38 Speed, cost, quality — picking all three

06:55 Inside the globalization agent 08:50 Who approves the terms? (And which shade of green?) 09:55 Language governance and the invisible costs

11:49 AI, volume, and doing the work upstream

13:02 Where to actually start with a glossary

16:28 A day in the life of a localization program manager

18:56 Shifting left: from firefighting to strategy

20:35 The one mistake: never hardcode your UI

22:10 Wrap-up

ServiceNow Training and Certification:

https://www.servicenow.com/services/training-and-certification.html

ServiceNow Insights podcast playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCOmiTb5WX3qvGq7Cp3o2KkCiplJyqQOK

Servicenow.com: https://www.servicenow.com

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