A 5-step guide on how to efficiently localize and translate

by Quoc Nguyen | Aug 16, 2017

The years following the recession of 2008 made entrepreneurship revive; Start-ups from all over the world with wonderful ideas penetrated the market and it was not long enough until they decided to go global. Although ideas and disruptive products got global attention, companies wanted to go further. Everyone knows the value of multilingual content. New clients, new markets, new opportunities and hopefully more income. Localization strategy involves big translation projects, large volumes of files and localization experts before international customers come knocking. Get more for less from your budget using this 5-step guide.

1) Who translates what?

Your content has many different layers. Customers in a new market might be interested to read about the technical details of your product but not your blog. Therefore, recruiting the right persons for the right content is key to your budget efficiency. Hiring top translators might be the obvious choice but for the not so important content machine resources, bilingual employees or crowdsourced volunteers will maximize your translation investment.

2) Don’t let your translators guess.

Even experienced professionals will make mistakes when there is not enough background or terminology information. In order to prevent those costly and potentially brand-damaging mistakes there are two things proven to reduce translation errors: a) give all the information your team needs; specific terminology, branded terms, catch phrases and background information where needed and b) customize your workflow according to your projects or your industry standards. Read more about terminology database and customized workflow creation in Wordbee Translator.

3) Use your translation assets.

Translation resources constitute an important asset for your company; it is the collective effort of your qualified translators and your project managers. With recurring phrases being the biggest percentage of any text, Translation Memory is a linguistic database that stores approved existing translations for future use. Without translation memory, your efficiency is compromised and your budget will be used to translate already translated text and pay full per-word rate regardless of the content. Advanced localization projects additionally utilize ‘Project Memory’ to build faster master TMs. To read more on Translation Memory click here.

4) Plan carefully

Going global sounds sweet to every director but the world is still a big place. Before embarking on a global strategy consider the analytics of every market and consult traffic patterns. It is easy to fall into the trap of going to a market because competition does so and end up burning your budget. A large market does not guarantee success as much as an engaged audience. Therefore, if there are strategic reasons behind your decision of going to a specific new market you need to allocate the corresponding time & financial resources.

5) Don’t leave your projects unattended

Completing a project successfully takes not only proper planning but conscious action to the end by constantly reviewing your progress. You finally built up a great translation team, your project managers are ready and you have carefully planned the new markets that you are about to penetrate. Localization and translation projects are notorious for being complicated. Remove complexity and make your projects more efficient by controlling your projects’ business reporting and analytics. Control your finances, your suppliers, clients and manage the performance of your partners by extracting reports and gain insights into your strengths, weaknesses, trends, and opportunities. Identify areas of excellence or areas with room for improvement, check delivery times, analyse overall efficiency and quality. To read more about business reports and analytics in Wordbee Translator click here.