Much of the conversation around localization tends to center on language quality, scale, or the latest breakthrough in LLMs. These are important topics, but they often overshadow a more immediate, more operational question: how do you actually build complex localization programs that work at scale, and with limited resources?
That’s the problem Bureau Works and Blackbird.io are solving. And they’re doing it in a way that’s less about flashy features and more about everyday reality. It’s about getting content in and out of systems cleanly, about avoiding spreadsheet chaos, about giving teams control without adding technical debt.
It may not be a revolutionary claim. But in practice, it changes everything.
A System That Solves the Core Problem
Bureau Works doesn’t try to be everything. It focuses on solving one very specific problem that almost every translation agency and in-house localization team faces: how do you automate the core workflows of translation—intake, routing, translation, review, and delivery—without having to hire a project manager for every new client or language pair?
Gabriel Fairman, the founder of Bureau Works, puts it simply:
“We’re not here to decorate the process. We’re here to grind the problem into a pulp. We automate the translation lifecycle end-to-end, so people can focus on outcomes, not operations.”
It’s a purpose-built platform for managing the translation process with predictability, accountability, and transparency. It doesn’t flood users with options—they don’t need them. It just works. And it works at a price point that makes sense even for small and mid-sized agencies, which often can’t justify the cost of building custom systems or maintaining heavy enterprise tech.
Extending That System Without Writing Code
That’s where Blackbird.io comes in.
Blackbird, led by Bruno Bitter, isn’t a localization company. It’s a data and workflow automation platform built to help operations teams connect their tools, trigger workflows, and keep systems in sync—without having to write custom scripts or APIs for each integration.
It’s flexible by design. You can use it to automate sales workflows, marketing ops, multilingual content operations, customer success routines, and translation workflows, such as through the integration with Bureau Works.
“We want to help teams get more done with what they already have,” says Bruno. “They shouldn’t need an engineering sprint just to send a file or an entry from a CMS from one place to another.”
The integration with Bureau Works is public, transparent, and available on Blackbird. You can use it to:
- Trigger translation projects when content is updated in a CMS, file storage tools, or PIM.
- Upload and retrieve files from Bureau Works programmatically.
- Push project status into dashboards or messaging tools.
- Exchange and sync glossary data across systems.
- Orchestrate post-processing steps before publishing translated files.
- Add human oversight steps in systems like Asana, Jira, Notion or Monday.
For many teams, building connectors like this in-house just isn’t realistic. It’s expensive, fragile, and hard to maintain. Blackbird makes it possible to create these integrations with no code, using a visual flow builder that plugs directly into the Bureau Works API. Both companies are committed to expanding on these use cases as they work on more shared customers.
Making Complexity Manageable
One of the biggest tensions in localization today is the mismatch between what clients want and what localization teams are equipped to deliver. Clients want localization to feel simple on their end—push a button, get translated content back. But behind the scenes, the complexity has only grown: more languages, more formats, more systems, more last-minute changes.
This is the challenge both Bureau Works and Blackbird have been thinking about from different angles for years.
Bruno puts it like this: “The goal isn’t to hide the complexity. It’s to manage it better. We don’t believe in duct-taping platforms together. We believe in giving teams a way to design their own workflows with confidence.”
With this integration, agencies and localization teams get the best of both worlds: the depth and reliability of a purpose-built TMS in Bureau Works, and the flexibility of a purpose-built orchestration platform in Blackbird.
You can trigger events. You can customize file flows. You can experiment. And if the stakeholder changes the game midstream—new locale, new approval step, new format—you’re not stuck.
Scale with Maximum Efficiency
Perhaps the most important element here is scalability. Localization teams, big or small, operate on high-performance frameworks. They need automation and impactful business results, but can’t afford to have poorly structured programs that don’t scale. This solution makes it possible to deliver that automation without the overhead.
Bureau Works’ pricing model avoids per-seat or per-project fees that punish scale. And because Blackbird doesn’t require in-house developers to operate, it opens the door to process sophistication even for teams that don’t have a dedicated engineering arm.
For Gabriel, this is part of a broader mission: “We’ve always believed a TMS should enable scale, not charge a premium for it. What we’re doing with Blackbird reinforces that—we’re taking work that used to be expensive and fragile and making it practical.”
Two Innovative Companies, One Shared Approach
It’s no coincidence that both Bureau Works and Blackbird have been four-time finalists each in the LocWorld Process Innovation Contest (PIC) over the past two years. Both companies try to solve problems from the ground up, without relying on industry clichés, outdated assumptions, no smoke and mirrors, and no “feature fatigue”.
They don’t try to guess what customers want. They listen to what customers are already doing, and try to make that work better.
Gabriel says: “When you really watch how people are getting work done—especially in localization—it’s often through spreadsheets, duct-tape solutions, manual updates. There’s no need to ‘innovate’ past that. Just help make those same workflows cleaner, more resilient, more connected.”
Bruno agrees: “We’re not here to abstract away the mess. We’re here to give teams the tools to work with it, reliably.”
Conclusion: Practical Progress
This isn’t a platform launch. There’s no glossy keynote or 90-second product trailer. But for agencies and localization leaders, it’s one of the most practical shifts to happen in years.
It makes automation accessible. It makes workflows transparent. It removes technical overhead without limiting flexibility.
More importantly, it reflects a larger trend: that localization is finally being treated like the infrastructure it is. It’s something you design, monitor, improve, and depend on.
And that, more than any buzzword, is what makes this worth paying attention to.