Ask AI to write something “in our brand voice” and the result is usually… OK. It is clear. Grammatically correct. Professional. Perhaps even quite good. And yet, somehow, it doesn’t sound like you. That is not necessarily an AI problem. It is a brand problem. Or, more precisely, a problem with how organisations define and transfer their brand voice.
Unfortunately, companies sometimes treat it as something that lives in a style guide: a few adjectives such as confident, human, innovative, and approachable, followed by examples of preferred terminology. This approach is already far from ideal for linguists. For AI, it is completely insufficient.
Your brand voice is more than adjectives
Ask an AI to sound “confident but not arrogant” and you are giving it an unclear message, not a specification. What does your organisation actually do when it wants to sound confident?
Does it…
• make short, decisive statements? • use data rather than superlatives? • use humour? • avoid exclamation marks? • explain complex ideas simply?
Those choices are your voice.
And they are often hidden in thousands of decisions made by marketers, product teams, executives, and local market experts over many years.
This is where things get really interesting for global organisations.
AI can produce a technically solid translation while still making a brand sound like a completely different company. Because transferring words is just a small part of localisation. Preserving intent, personality, and positioning while allowing the expression to work naturally in another market, that’s where the magic happens.
Recent research and industry experience point to the same gap: organisations increasingly use AI to scale multilingual content, but maintaining a consistent brand voice across languages remains difficult. A recent survey conducted by Zogby Analytics found that 96% of translation professionals called quality mission-critical, while only 57% felt they consistently maintained brand voice across languages.
The implication is important: AI doesn't remove the need for linguistic expertise. It makes that expertise more valuable, because someone has to teach the machine what “us” actually means.
A useful example
Imagine an international tech company that needs to communicate in several languages across multiple countries and markets. Using one of the well-known AI assistants to handle their translation needs seems like a good idea to get the work done quickly and at a low cost. However, the output doesn’t match their voice. After a while, it becomes clear that employees, partners, and clients abroad don’t always receive the right message. Fixing this is time-consuming and expensive.
The company decides to team up with a translation and communication consultant to analyse their workflows, data, procedures and needs. A custom solution is set up that allows the company to use its own context and linguistic history as an asset.
The result is still cost-effective and fast, thanks to a high level of automation, while the output actually matches the company’s voice. Not by prompting it, but by providing highly specific terminology lists, context stores and an infrastructure designed for the company’s workflows and programs.
Bringing AI and your organisation together
Nowadays, companies often require a strategic approach to manage their multilingual content. This involves taking into account brand and industry knowledge, understanding the company’s software and technology, and being able to distinguish between what AI can do for the client and where human expertise might be necessary.
ELAN’s preferred place in all of this? Right in the middle.
Why?
Because style guides need to become machine-readable. Terminology needs to become structured and contextual. Approved translations become training signals. Human review must become more than proofreading, it has to teach the systems what “good quality” looks like. All of this requires a dedicated and strategic approach, with a partner who is not just a service provider but both a consultant and an architect.
The role of the expert Customised AI solutions will play a vital role in the future. However, the linguist as a local expert will remain important because “on brand” does not mean “identical everywhere”.
A successful global brand has a consistent personality but knows that personality reveals itself differently in different countries and cultures. What sounds direct and confident in English can sound unnecessarily aggressive in another language. What feels warm in one market can feel too familiar in another.
So, why doesn't AI sound like my organisation?
The short answer: Because your organisation is not a prompt, and all its intricacies, decisions, history and vision can never be captured in a prompt, not even in an extensive set of prompts. The companies that get the most from AI will therefore not necessarily be the ones with the cleverest prompts. They will be the ones that turn their organisational knowledge into something AI can actually use.
For ELAN Languages, this means that we don’t stop at offering an “AI-driven translation”. Our goal is to join forces with our clients and help build their linguistic infrastructure.
Have you ever asked yourself why your AI output often doesn’t sound like your organisation? At ELAN Languages, we will gladly examine that question, analyse your organisation’s needs and draft a tailored proposal that goes beyond a stand-alone solution. Get in touch with Johan Noël at johannoel@elanlanguages.com or call +32 11 43 47 64 for more information.