From typewriters to AI: how Aplomb Translations is future-proofing a legacy

Aplomb Translations is embracing digital tools and AI to modernise its operations without losing the human expertise at its core

Kim Karmozyn never expected to lead a business at the intersection of language, law, and technology. But today, as CEO of Aplomb Translations, she’s helping modernise a specialist translation agency built on decades of expertise and a team that spans the globe. 

Founded by her husband 36 years ago, Aplomb provides high-end translations for legal, financial, and technical documents, many of which cannot be entrusted to AI. ‘Our work is nuanced, complex and sensitive,’ says Kim. ‘Court transcripts, medical texts, multi-language audio recordings, and they have to be word-perfect. One mistake could have serious consequences.’ 

The agency offers transcription, subtitling, and localisation across thousands of language combinations, from shipping contracts to mining reports. Every project is quality checked by expert linguists. ‘AI might help with speed and consistency,’ Kim explains, ‘but we always start with a translator. Machines don’t understand nuance, and if they learn from bad data, those errors get baked in.’ 

Moving from analogue to digital 

Aplomb’s client base has changed dramatically in recent years. ‘Traditionally, our customers were middle-aged lawyers who didn’t use social media. But during lockdown, that changed. Suddenly, they were on LinkedIn. Digital marketing became a real opportunity for us.’ 

Recognising the need to modernise, Kim joined the Help to Grow: Management Course at Birkbeck. ‘Our systems were still analogue in many ways. The course gave us the tools to digitalise, and to do it as a team.’ 

She applied the Sustainable Business Model Canvas to evaluate how the company creates, delivers, and captures value in a shifting market. ‘We needed structure. The canvas helped us define our value proposition more clearly and think about how our offer fits into different client workflows, especially urgent and complex projects.’ 

Have you mapped out your business model recently? What value are you delivering, and to who? 

Kim also found the STP (Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning) framework useful for rethinking the agency’s marketing. ‘It helped us identify who our best customers are, and how to attract more like them. Who do we want to clone as a customer? What do they need from us?’ 

Who are your ideal customers and how effectively are you positioned to serve them? 

Clarity, confidence, and team alignment 

The Help to Grow: Management Course also helped Kim reframe her leadership approach. ‘I’ve always hired people with different strengths, but the course helped me formalise that. I don’t need to back up what everyone else is doing, I need to trust them to do their jobs.’ 

She now has team members leading on marketing, technology integration, and finance. ‘It helped us carve out specialisms and build trust. It’s made a huge difference, and it’s allowed me to step back from the day-to-day and be more strategic in my approach.” 

Another takeaway was the importance of adaptive planning. ‘As a small business, we move slowly, but consistently. The course taught me that it’s okay to go at your own pace, as long as you keep applying what you’ve learned.’ 

Do you have an adaptive plan for the future or are you still caught in the day-to-day? 

AI with human oversight 

While Aplomb Translations has always relied on human expertise, Kim is actively exploring how artificial intelligence can support, rather than replace, the team’s work. ‘We’re not anti-AI,’ she says. ‘But we are very aware of its limits, especially in high-stakes contexts like legal and medical translation.’ 

Some of the agency’s current projects involve multi-language audio transcriptions from real-world environments, such as ships, courtrooms, or family law recordings, often with poor audio quality, overlapping voices, or technical jargon. ‘That’s not something AI can handle well on its own. You need trained professionals who understand context and nuance.’ 

Kim’s goal is to integrate AI in a way that strengthens quality, speed and consistency without compromising accuracy. ‘We’re speaking to AI specialists to help us develop custom glossaries that plug into our workflow. But we’ll never let those systems run unsupervised. Every translation will still be checked by a subject expert.’ 

What the Help to Grow: Management Course gave her was the confidence and headspace to approach AI strategically, not reactively. ‘There’s a lot of noise around AI, and it’s easy to feel like you’re falling behind. But the course helped us step back and ask, “what actually fits our business model?”’ 

The Four Benefits of Digital Transformation – enhanced customer experience, improved efficiency, better decision-making, and new business models – were a useful guide. ‘For us, it’s about using technology to serve our clients better and protect our reputation. If an error gets baked into a machine-learning system, it can spread quickly and become systemic. That’s a real risk in our industry.’ 

How are you integrating digital tools like AI in a way that enhances your value proposition? 

Balancing innovation with a people-centered approach 

For Kim, the path forward isn’t about chasing technology for its own sake, it’s about adopting innovation in a way that strengthens what Aplomb Translations already does well. The business is carefully integrating AI into its workflow, using it to enhance consistency and efficiency, but never at the expense of accuracy, nuance, or human judgment. 

This balance between progress and principle is what’s guiding Kim’s leadership. By taking a more strategic view of her operations, building specialist roles within the team, and exploring the right digital tools for the right tasks, she’s ensuring the business evolves without losing what made it successful in the first place. 

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