Why we added an AI translation widget to a human translation agency's homepage

Fifteen years ago, I built Tomedes on a simple premise: professional human translation, done right, at a price that makes sense. Today we serve over 120,000 clients across 270+ languages, and our translators have handled everything from legal contracts and medical records to government documents and global marketing campaigns.

So when I decided to put an AI translation widget front and centre on our homepage, I knew it would raise questions. This post is my answer to those questions, and the data-backed reasoning behind a decision that has shaped how we think about translation in 2026.

The market had already made a decision, we needed to catch up

Over the past two years, something fundamental shifted in how clients evaluate translation providers. The question is no longer simply "which agency has the best linguists?" It is "which partner understands how to combine AI efficiency with human quality, and can manage that workflow for me?"

Our internal data reflected this shift clearly. Clients who landed on Tomedes.com were increasingly arriving from searches that combined terms like "AI translation" and "professional translation" in the same query. They weren't looking for one or the other. They were looking for both.

At the same time, we were building exactly that capability. We had launched MachineTranslation.com (a standalone AI translation tool that runs consensus across 22 large language models) and we had developed a widget from that same technology. The question wasn't whether to integrate AI into our offering. We already had. The question was whether our homepage reflected the company we had actually become.

It didn't. And that gap was costing us.

What a fresh-eyes review revealed

We ran an internal review of the Tomedes homepage with one specific brief: read it as a first-time visitor who has never heard of us.

The exercise was instructive. The page featured a prominent AI translation widget on one side and a professional translation quote form on the other, but nowhere did a single line of copy explain what the relationship between these two things was. A sophisticated buyer looking for a managed AI + human workflow would not have found their answer on that page. Neither would a client who needed certified legal translation and was wondering whether we were still a professional agency or had pivoted into a tool company.

The lesson: When your product evolves faster than your positioning, you create confusion for exactly the clients you most want to attract.

This wasn't a failure of the product, it was a gap in communication. And the fix wasn't to remove the widget or to remove the human translation messaging. It was to write the sentence we had never written: Tomedes uses AI as a tool within a human-led translation process, not instead of it.

What the data told us to do

Before making any homepage changes, we looked at the performance data for the widget on the pages where it was already deployed.

Users who opened the AI translation widget and completed a translation converted at over 80%. More than four in five people who opened it used it. That is an exceptional completion rate for any interactive tool, and it told us the widget was not a distraction. It was a front door.

The implication was clear: the widget was generating intent, and we needed to make sure that intent led somewhere. A visitor who uses the AI widget, sees quality output, and then immediately understands that Tomedes can also provide a certified human translation of that same content — that is a conversion path. We weren't building it. We built it.

When over 80% of people who open something use it, the answer is never to remove it. The answer is to make sure it leads somewhere meaningful.

We made the decision to keep the widget, expand it across service and language pages throughout Tomedes.com, and invest in rewriting the context around it entirely.

Why the hybrid position is the right one for 2026

I want to say something plainly that the translation industry tends to overcomplicate: AI and human translation are not competing products. They are sequential stages in the same workflow, each appropriate for different content types and risk levels.

AI translation today is fast, scalable, and increasingly accurate for standard content in major language pairs. It is not sufficient (on its own) for content where legal precision, cultural nuance, certified accuracy, or regulatory compliance is required. Anyone claiming otherwise has not handled a legal deposition, a medical device manual, or a government tender document.

Human translation at its best remains the gold standard for those high-stakes use cases. But it is expensive, slow, and genuinely unnecessary for the large volume of routine multilingual content that modern businesses need to move quickly.

What Tomedes has built is the infrastructure to serve both. Our Managed AI Translation service combines AI engine selection, human post-editing, QA scoring, and delivery — all managed by experienced project managers who own the outcome. We typically reduce translation costs by 80–90% compared to traditional human-only workflows without compromising quality. Every output is scored for fluency, accuracy, and terminology adherence.

For clients who need speed with a human safety net, MachineTranslation.com offers a human review add-on. For clients who need full professional certification, Tomedes handles it end to end. The two brands serve the same spectrum, we have simply made sure the infrastructure exists at every point on it.

What changed in the rewrite

The homepage rewrite focused on three specific outcomes.

Making the positioning explicit from the first paragraph

The new copy states clearly that Tomedes provides both AI-assisted and professional human translation, and that the right choice depends on the content — not on which tab a visitor happens to land on. This eliminated the ambiguity that the earlier version created for sophisticated buyers evaluating multiple providers.

Focusing the page on buyers, not vendors

The previous homepage included a section inviting professional translators to register as vendors. That section serves an important operational function, but it was competing for attention with the buyer-facing content. The homepage is now built for clients. The vendor registration pathway exists, but it no longer competes with the primary conversion goal.

Updating our proof points to reflect 2026 reality

We updated all figures and service descriptions to reflect current scale: 120,000+ clients, 270+ languages, 22 AI models in our consensus system, and quality metrics from our own platform data. These are proprietary figures that come from our operations, no competitor can replicate them because they reflect our specific infrastructure and track record.

What this means for translation buyers

If you are evaluating translation providers in 2026, the question to ask is not "do you use AI?" Every serious provider does. The question is: who owns the outcome when the AI isn't enough?

At Tomedes, the answer has always been our team. What changed is that we now say so clearly — on the homepage, in the widget, in the copy that connects them. The AI is visible because it should be. The human expertise is visible because it must be.

That combination (AI speed, human accountability, 20 years of operational infrastructure) is what 120,000 clients have trusted us to deliver. The homepage now says so.

Tomedes — Professional Translation in 270+ Languages
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About the author

Ofer Tirosh
CEO of Tomedes
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