Unpopular opinion, inspired by a conversation where LSP representatives look at translation and localization as an industrial process, like shoe-making or fashion. Typically, they come from other sectors like software development.

These people are leading their LSPs into a trap. Industrializing translation, making it faster, cheaper, more factory-like, is competing exactly where AI is taking over. All that high-volume, routine work they've built their businesses around? It's already disappearing into the software people use daily, aka "translation as a feature".

These industrial LSPs spent years training clients to see translation as commodity text processing. Great job: you created the perfect market for automation to completely replace you.

The only translation work that survives will be cultural work. By translators who understand context and communication, bridge cultures, who move meaning between source and target audiences. Not just words between languages. LSPs working with translators are more likely to survive because their clients know they're buying cultural expertise, not text conversion.

And here's another big difference with shoe- or clothes-making. Shoes are not embedded in other products, you need to go to a shop to buy them or order them online. Until people can print shoes at home, shops will still be there. Translation is different, it is accessible without the middle-man.

Thank you, Emily Diamandopoulou, for thinking differently and for inspiring this post. If I had to bet for the 2030 LSP survivors, I'd bet on non-industrialized LSPs.