The challenge
Launching multilingual research has traditionally meant compromising on one of three priorities: speed, cost or quality.
Human translation delivers accuracy but is often time-consuming and expensive, while machine translation offers speed at the expense of linguistic nuance, respondent experience and data quality.
THG Fluently has eliminated that trade-off through an AI-enhanced translation ecosystem combining Decipher integration, API-enabled automation and expert human linguists. Purpose-built for market research, it enables organisations to scale multilingual research with greater speed, efficiency and confidence.
The solution
THG Fluently implemented its AI-enhanced multilingual workflow within a leading global research technology environment.
Traditionally, translating and proofreading a 20-minute online survey required up to three days and approximately 17 hours of linguist time per language.
By combining AI translation, contextual prompting, terminology management, automated MQM scoring and expert human review within a single workflow, THG Fluently reduced end-to-end delivery to just one day while cutting linguist effort to approximately four hours per language.
Linguist productivity increased from approximately 300 words per hour using traditional workflows to around 1,000 words per hour through AI-assisted post-editing.
The result is a scalable multilingual workflow that enables research teams to launch surveys faster, accelerate fieldwork and expand into new markets without increasing operational overhead.
Results
By combining AI, intelligent automation and expert linguists, THG Fluently enables research teams to launch multilingual studies in a fraction of the time, reduce translation costs by up to 66% and maintain the quality standards global research demands.
- Survey translation turnaround reduced from 3 days to 1
- 66% reduction in translation costs with AI plus human review
- Huge cost savings through fully automated API workflows
- Fourfold increase in linguist productivity
- Human-quality MQM scores of 8.5–9.5
- Same-day multilingual survey deployment across global markets
Speed alone is not enough. In market research, translation quality directly impacts respondent experience, data integrity and the reliability of business decisions.
Using the industry-standard Multidimensional Quality Metrics (MQM) framework, THG Fluently’s AI-enhanced workflow consistently achieved final quality scores between 8.5 and 9.5, matching or exceeding the organisation’s benchmark for traditional human-only translation workflows.
Even fully automated API workflows exceeded acceptable quality thresholds while maintaining survey integrity, linguistic consistency and respondent experience.
Unlike general-purpose AI translation tools, THG Fluently combines intelligent automation with research-specialist expertise to preserve meaning, context and research intent across every language.
THG Fluently’s AI-enhanced workflow with expert human review reduces translation costs by 66% compared with traditional human translation and proofreading workflows, while maintaining human-quality output and enabling significantly faster multilingual survey deployment.
The result is a more scalable operating model that enables research organisations to expand internationally while controlling costs and accelerating time to insight.
What sets THG Fluently apart is not simply its use of AI, but the research-specific infrastructure underpinning it.
Unlike general translation providers, THG Fluently has been developed around the operational realities of survey scripting, tracker studies, multilingual field management and respondent experience.
Integrated Decipher and API workflows automate multilingual survey deployment within existing research platforms, reducing manual effort and accelerating project delivery.
Purpose-built quality assurance checks ensure:
- Accurate translation and validation of survey scales
- Preservation of survey scripting and logic
- Consistent terminology across global trackers
- Correct grammatical agreement for dynamic survey content
- Consistent brand voice and research intent across every market
Why THG Fluently
THG Fluently helps organisations transform multilingual research through AI-enhanced translation, intelligent automation and expert human oversight—enabling faster global studies, lower operational costs and trusted multilingual insights.
More than a translation provider, THG Fluently is a strategic multilingual research partner backed by the THG Ingenuity ecosystem. Supported by THG Ingenuity’s technology platform and strategic partnership with Google Cloud, THG Fluently combines enterprise-grade AI infrastructure with specialist research expertise to deliver trusted, scalable multilingual operations.
As research operations increasingly embrace AI-assisted and self-service methodologies, THG Fluently is evolving beyond survey translation to support real-time translation and coding of open-ended responses, alongside AI-driven fraud detection that identifies suspicious verbatim responses and flags potentially fraudulent qualitative interviews during live fieldwork.
As AI reshapes research, THG Fluently is helping define the future of multilingual insight generation.