The language services industry is entering what CSA Research calls the “post-localization era,” where translation alone is no longer enough. In its 2024 commentary “Entering the Post Localization Era: A New Dawn for the Language Services Sector,” CSA emphasizes that LSPs must evolve into Global Content Services Providers (GCSPs)—partners who support the broader landscape of global digital operations, not just linguistic conversion.

While technologies such as generative AI play a central role in enabling this shift, CSA notes that tools alone are not enough. At the core of GCSP transformation lies content development—a capability that remains one of the highest entry barriers for most LSPs today.

At Hansem Global, our foundation has been built on managing the entire lifecycle of functional content: from document planning and authoring to multilingual translation, publishing, and reuse. Based on this experience, this article examines where organizations must begin their GCSP journey and what real-world challenges they must overcome to make that vision actionable.

Why Content Development Remains the Industry’s Toughest Challenge

Over the past decade, many LSPs have attempted to expand into content development in response to growing client needs—especially from manufacturers seeking support not only for translation but for upstream documentation development. Despite these efforts, most initiatives have fallen short due to:

• A lack of professional writing expertise, which requires entirely different skills from translation
• Difficulty building structured writing teams, especially in technical domains
• Limited strategic investment or training due to leadership’s inexperience with documentation
• Short-lived or unsustainable content units that fail to maintain quality over time

Crucially, what clients were asking for was not marketing content—but functional content: user manuals, service documentation, regulatory policies. And yet, most LSPs have little experience directly planning and producing this type of structured content.

This gap presents a foundational challenge: before implementing AI or building content strategies, LSPs must first develop the organizational capability to produce reliable, reusable, and structured content.

Hansem Global’s Roots: A Fully Integrated Content Operation

Unlike many LSPs that approach content from a translation-first perspective, Hansem Global began as a content development company. Our experience includes planning and writing functional documents such as technical manuals, product guides, and policy documentation. Over time, we extended this foundation into multilingual production and lifecycle management.

Our capabilities are supported by a well-established operational framework:

• Documentation design aligned with international standards and industry-specific regulations
• Structured information architecture for multilingual readiness
• Integrated content operations covering authoring, translation, QA, publishing, management, and reuse
• Extensive experience in maintaining high-accuracy multilingual functional content

This foundation has naturally expanded into multilingual marketing content as well. Our creative content group produces branded sales, onboarding, and consumer education materials tailored for local markets and optimized for conversion.

While CSA’s GCSP vision emphasizes AI and content strategy alignment, these technologies only function effectively when built on structured and quality-controlled source content. Hansem Global already operates with a mature content infrastructure, making it AI-ready by design. For many LSPs, by contrast, the first step toward GCSP will be building such an infrastructure from the ground up.

The AI Shift Is About Content Architecture, Not Just Tools

Generative AI is reshaping how functional content is produced—but successful implementation is not just a matter of adopting new tools. Rather, it requires a full re-engineering of the content design and production process.

For functional documents, several preconditions must be met before AI can deliver meaningful value:

• Information structure must be clearly defined from the product planning stage
• Content must be standardized and quality-controlled
• Structured data must be available for AI to generate consistent, usable output

At Hansem Global, every phase of the content lifecycle is already system-integrated: from writing and translation to publishing and reuse. This structure enables scalable AI-assisted content creation and quality assurance, even in highly regulated or technical fields.

In contrast, many LSPs still face significant barriers—not in deploying AI, but in preparing their content architecture to make AI useful.

Conclusion: GCSP Transformation Starts with Structure

The GCSP model holds great promise as a future direction for the language services industry. But to move beyond a marketing vision and make it operational, organizations must first answer critical internal questions:

• Do we have in-house capabilities for content planning and design, not just translation?
• Are we equipped with systems to ensure consistency, reuse, and structured content across languages?
• Before deploying AI, do we have data structures and quality standards that AI can actually work with?

Hansem Global has built a working GCSP model rooted in functional content—not as an idealized goal, but as a structured, operational reality. Our infrastructure enables us to manage the entire content lifecycle across multiple languages and regulatory frameworks, supported by both human expertise and scalable automation.

GCSP is not about being a “translation agency that also does content.” It requires a shift to content-first thinking, structure-centered operations, and technology-enabled production. This is what Hansem Global calls the “document-centered GCSP”—a practical and proven model that others in the industry can learn from.

Take the Next Step in Your GCSP Journey
For LSPs, the path to becoming a GCSP begins with building the right content foundation—structured, reusable, and AI-ready. At Hansem Global, we’ve already made this transformation and are helping organizations worldwide strengthen their content operations to meet the demands of the post-localization era.

Ready to explore what a document-centered GCSP model could look like for your organization? Contact us at info@hansem.com or visit our website to learn how Hansem Global can help you make your GCSP journey actionable.