18 August 2025

RWS, one of the world’s leading content solutions providers, has unveiled Smart Insights—a new AI-driven feature within its Trados language technology platform that promises to reshape the way localisation professionals handle projects at scale.

Positioned as a virtual assistant for project managers, Smart Insights is designed to answer pressing questions in real time, turning what used to be lengthy reporting exercises into instant, visualised intelligence. For a sector where efficiency, accuracy, and speed matter more than ever, the development underscores RWS’s broader ambition: to embed artificial intelligence seamlessly across its content ecosystem.

“Smart Insights is a great example of how RWS is integrating AI across its localisation ecosystem, but it’s just one part of a much broader AI strategy,” explains David Pooley, Senior Product Manager at RWS, in an interview with MovetheNeedle. “Our goal is to embed AI throughout the Trados platform to help users work more efficiently, make smarter decisions, and unlock more value from their content – regardless of their role or level of technical expertise.”

RWS and Its AI Roadmap

Founded in 1958 and headquartered in the UK, RWS has grown into a global leader in content management and language services, working with over 80% of the world’s top 100 brands, including many of the largest pharmaceutical, technology, and financial companies. Its flagship platform, Trados, has long been a cornerstone of the localisation industry, used by thousands of translation teams around the world.

With the rise of generative AI and large language models (LLMs), the company is making a deliberate push to embed intelligence across its products. Smart Insights sits alongside a suite of other AI-driven features recently rolled out across Trados:

• Smart Help, a natural language assistant trained on product documentation.
• Generative Translation, which combines translation memory, terminology, and MT with customisable instructions on tone, style, or inclusivity.
• Smart Review, an automatic quality evaluation tool that grades translations.
• Generative Subtitles, which transcribes and translates audio and video content.
• Content Analysis, scanning text for keywords, entities, and domains.
• Language Weaver, RWS’s own neural machine translation (NMT) engine, integrated into Trados and supplemented by support for other major NMT providers.

“These tools are not isolated experiments,” says Pooley. “They’re part of a growing list of AI capabilities within Trados, all designed to help users work more effectively and make better use of their content. And we’re just getting started.”

The Problem Smart Insights Solves

Project managers in localisation face a recurring challenge: too much data, too little time. Each project involves dozens of moving parts—linguists, deadlines, quality metrics, costs—spread across different reports and systems. When a client calls with a complaint, a linguist becomes unavailable, or an urgent new project lands, managers often scramble to make sense of fragmented data sources.

Traditionally, the solution has been to build custom reports. While powerful, that approach requires technical know-how, knowledge of the right databases, and—most importantly—time.

“Smart Insights removes that complexity,” says Pooley. “Project managers can simply ask questions in natural language – just like speaking to a colleague – and get instant visual summaries with clear explanations. No need to dig through spreadsheets or build reports manually. It’s a faster, smarter way to stay in control and respond to change.”

How It Works in Practice

Imagine a project manager juggling three crises at once:

• Customer A’s delivery is at risk because a linguist has called in sick.
• Customer B is unhappy with recent quality and wants answers.
• Customer C has just submitted another urgent project.

Instead of diving into Excel or querying a reporting tool, the manager can simply type:

• “What tasks are assigned to [linguist name]?”
• “Show me all tasks due this week for Customer A.”
• “Summarise the overall quality of translations delivered for Customer B.”

Smart Insights instantly responds with graphs, summaries, and explanations. The manager can then reassign tasks, prepare for the client call, and slot in the new project—without losing momentum.

In short, what used to be firefighting becomes proactive decision-making.

What a Smart Insights Response Looks Like

One of the key innovations is transparency. When you ask a question, the system first shows how it interpreted it. For example, a query such as “What tasks are assigned to Sorina in French?” is translated into a structured query:

“Task for Task Owner First Name Sorina and Target Language French (France).”

The response typically includes:

• Query interpretation – ensuring users can check accuracy.
• Visuals – bar charts, pie charts, or other graphical views.
• Text summary – an easy-to-read explanation of the numbers.

By combining visuals with context, Smart Insights makes complex data accessible even for non-technical users.

Complementing, Not Replacing, Custom Reporting

Pooley is keen to stress that Smart Insights is not designed to replace traditional reporting, but to complement it.

“Use Smart Insights when you need quick answers to make real-time decisions, when you’re troubleshooting, or when you’re not sure where to find the data,” he explains. “Use custom reporting when you need recurring, standardised outputs like weekly KPIs, or when you’re meeting compliance obligations. Together, they give you the flexibility to manage your data your way.”

Rollout and Adoption

Smart Insights has been launched in phases. It first became available to Trados Enterprise users, included as part of the base package. Following positive uptake, RWS has extended it to Trados Accelerate and Trados Team, where it is offered as an add-on.

To encourage exploration, RWS offers all eligible users a free 30-day trial, including up to 50 queries. This approach allows teams to experience the benefits first-hand before committing to broader adoption.

What’s Next for Smart Insights

The roadmap for Smart Insights reflects a vision of moving from simple data retrieval to context-aware, actionable intelligence.

Planned enhancements include:

• Broader data access, enabling queries on more static information such as service types linked to users.
• Context-aware responses, where users can upload glossaries or style guides to enrich the assistant’s outputs.
• AI-assisted report building, turning Smart Insights into a co-pilot that helps generate reports on demand.
• Actionable intelligence, where insights can trigger actions. For example, after asking “What tasks are assigned to Sorina?”, users could follow up with “Reassign those tasks to Alex”.

“These enhancements will transform Smart Insights from an assistant that provides information into one that drives action,” notes Pooley.

Part of a Bigger Picture

Smart Insights is more than a convenience tool. It reflects RWS’s belief that AI can elevate localisation from a reactive, operational function to a strategic driver of global content.

Already, RWS offers Global Content Intelligence, a set of AI-driven capabilities powered by its Language Weaver engine. These allow organisations to transform “dark data”—unstructured, multilingual, or untagged content—into actionable insights across formats from documents to social media to OCR-extracted images. Clients can adapt models to their domain, work in AI-only or human-in-the-loop modes, and deploy solutions securely at scale.

By embedding AI deeply into Trados and beyond, RWS is positioning itself at the forefront of a new era where localisation is not just about translation, but about making content work smarter across global contexts.

Conclusion

For localisation professionals, the launch of Smart Insights may feel like the arrival of a long-awaited colleague: the one who always has the answers, doesn’t need a coffee break, and can explain complex data in simple terms. RWS demonstrates how AI can support human expertise—removing barriers, boosting productivity, and transforming the role of content in global business.

We can expect RWS to add more AI support in the future, says Pooley: “We plan to evolve existing features, as well as develop new ones that make localisation faster, smarter, and more scalable. Smart Insights is just the beginning.”