Over the last thirty years, Ireland has consolidated itself as the Mecca of the localization industry. Nowhere else in the world has there been a higher concentration of companies involved in the linguistic and cultural adaptation of digital content in the widest sense of the term. This article explores the connections between the entrepreneurial bloom in the computing industry, the concomitant expansion of the localization business and Ireland's outstanding economic growth in recent times. It also examines how the impetus of this unprecedented industrial and economic development has been harnessed by academics, researchers and practitioners in the field. Particular emphasis is placed on the emergence and consolidation of an extensive network for localization training and certification since 1997. In the second part, the article reports on the Global Initiative for Local Computing (GILC) and its ramifications for localization training worldwide. GILC proponents aim to draw attention to the economic implications of localization activities and the risk that current mainstream localization practices may promote western cultures and languages at the expense of their economically weaker counterparts around the globe. In the final part, the author discusses a number of localization training initiatives in Brazil, India and Egypt, where the Localisation Research Centre (LRC) has already entered into partnerships with government authorities and the educational sector. Drawing on these examples, he seeks to ascertain whether the so far largely Europe-centred training model developed in Ireland manages to cater for the needs of localizers in these countries.