Best Practices

How to Plan and Execute a Successful Localization Testing Strategy

Localization testing is essential to any software development process that aims to support multiple languages and reach a global audience.
Lucky Eze
5 min

Localization testing is essential to any software development process that aims to support multiple languages and reach a global audience. It involves adapting a product or service to meet a specific market or region's linguistic, cultural, and functional requirements. This process helps businesses tailor their offerings to different audiences and ensures users can interact with the product or service in their preferred language.

Internationalization testing is the first step toward achieving successful localization testing. It involves designing and developing the product or service to support multiple languages and cultures for international support. This process ensures that the user interface and underlying code handle different character sets, date formats, and other language-specific features.

When planning and executing a localization testing strategy, it's essential to consider the user interface, the primary interaction point between the user and the product. This means testing the translated text and the interface's layout, design, and functionality in multiple languages.

This blog post will delve into the key components of a successful localization testing strategy, including internationalization testing, user interface testing, and other essential considerations to ensure a successful global launch. By following these guidelines, businesses can ensure that their products or services are accessible to the world of diverse audiences and meet their linguistic and cultural expectations.

Why Is Localization Testing Important?

Localization testing is critical in ensuring that a product or service can effectively function in various languages across multiple countries and meet the target audience's expectations. In this section, we will delve into why localization testing is so important.

Localization testing is crucial in ensuring the product is functional in different languages and cultures. Internationalization testing ensures that the software can support different languages and cultures, but localization testing confirms that the product works in the local context. This includes testing for language-specific features like date and time formats, currency symbols, and other regional nuances. By doing this, businesses can ensure that their product works seamlessly in multiple countries.

Also, localization testing ensures that the product meets the linguistic and cultural expectations of the business's target audience. A not localized product can feel foreign and difficult to use, leading to user frustration and dissatisfaction. By testing the product in the target language, businesses can ensure that the product feels native to the user, creating a positive user experience.

Moreover, localization testing can help businesses avoid costly mistakes. In some cases, a product that has not been localized can offend or even violate the cultural norms of a particular market. This can result in negative publicity, legal issues, and brand reputation damage. Businesses can identify and address potential issues before product launches by conducting thorough localization testing.

Also, localization testing can ultimately save businesses time and money in the long run. Without proper localization testing, issues can arise, leading to a need for costly rework. By conducting thorough localization testing, businesses can avoid these issues and ensure a smooth launch in multiple countries.

Localization testing is an essential part of any localization strategy. It ensures that the product meets the linguistic and cultural expectations of the target audience and works seamlessly in multiple countries. Through internationalization and functional testing efforts, businesses can ensure that their product or service is ready for a global audience, ultimately saving time and money in the long run.

Things to Consider While Preparing for Localization Test

Localization testing is critical to any software development process that targets multiple global markets. It ensures that the product is properly adapted to the cultural and linguistic nuances of the target audience. However, preparing for localization testing requires careful consideration of several factors to ensure a successful outcome. This article will discuss some key things to consider while preparing for localization testing.

Conduct Internationalization Testing

Before localization testing can take place, it is important to conduct internationalization testing. Internationalization testing involves designing and developing software that easily adapts to different languages and cultures. This testing should be done in the development cycle to ensure the software can be easily localized without impacting the product's functionality. Internationalization testing should be done early in the development process, as fixing issues that arise later in the development cycle is much more challenging and expensive.

Plan for Compatibility Testing

Compatibility testing ensures the software runs properly in different environments and devices. Testing for compatibility involves verifying that the software works on different operating systems, browsers, and devices. This testing should be done early in the software testing process to identify compatibility issues and ensure the software is ready for release.

Conduct Usability and Globalization Testing

Usability testing ensures the software is easy to use and understand for the target audience. This testing should be conducted in the target language to ensure that the product is appropriately adapted to the linguistic and cultural nuances of the target audience. Globalization testing ensures the software is culturally appropriate and meets the target audience's expectations. Conducting usability and globalization testing is essential to ensure the product is correctly adapted to the target audience and avoid negative feedback.

Gather Customer Feedback

Gathering customer feedback is essential to identify potential issues with the software and ensure that it meets the target audience's needs. This feedback data can be used to make necessary software improvements and identify potential issues that may arise during localization testing. Collecting feedback early in the development process can save time and money in the long run and help ensure that the final product meets the target audience's needs.

Create a Localization Test Plan

Creating a localization test plan is essential to ensure the localization testing process is properly organized and executed. The test plan should include information about the target audience, languages to be supported, and any cultural or linguistic nuances to be considered. It should also include details about the testing process, such as the tools, methodology, and expected outcomes.

Use Localization Testing Tools

Localization testing tools can help streamline the testing process and ensure the software is properly adapted to the target audience. These tools can automate many aspects of the localization testing process, such as language translation and cultural and linguistic nuances verification. Localization testing tools can help save time and money and ensure that the final product meets the target audience's needs.

Preparing for localization testing requires careful consideration of several factors, including internationalization testing, compatibility testing, usability, and globalization testing, gathering customer feedback, creating a localization test plan, and using localization testing tools. By properly preparing for localization testing, businesses can ensure that their software is adequately tested and adapted to the cultural and linguistic nuances of the target audience, helping to ensure a successful launch in multiple markets.

Designing a Comprehensive Localization Testing Plan

A comprehensive localization testing plan ensures your product suits the target audience and market. To create such a plan, you must consider several key factors and follow a well-defined process. This article will outline some best practices for designing a comprehensive localization testing plan.

Understand the Localization Process

Before designing a localization testing plan, it is essential to understand the localization process. Localization involves more than just translating the content into the target language. It requires adapting the product to the target culture and market, which includes currency, date and time format, measurement units, and other cultural differences. Therefore, it is essential to clearly understand the localization process to ensure that your localization testing plan covers all the necessary aspects.

Define Testing Objectives

The next step in designing a comprehensive localization testing plan is to define your testing objectives. These objectives should be aligned with your overall localization strategy and should take into account your target audience and market. For example, if you are targeting a specific region or country, you need to consider the language, cultural differences, and other localization requirements that are specific to that country.

Select Suitable Testing Types

There are several types of testing that you can use to ensure that your product meets the localization requirements. The most common types are functional testing, usability testing, compatibility testing, installation testing, and globalization testing. You must select suitable testing types based on your localization strategy, target audience, and product type.

Create a Testing Plan

Once you have defined your testing objectives and selected the suitable testing types, the next step is to create a testing plan. The testing plan should include a detailed description of each testing type, the testing objectives, the testing environment, and the testing schedule. You should also define the roles and responsibilities of the team members involved in the testing process.

Consider Cultural Differences

Cultural differences are essential to localization, and you should consider them when designing your testing plan. For example, if your product includes images or symbols, you must ensure they are appropriate and acceptable in the target culture. Similarly, it would help to consider the differences in date and time format, measurement units, and other cultural differences that may impact the product's usability and acceptance in a particular target market locale.

Include Installation Testing

Installation testing is an important part of localization testing and should be included in your testing plan. The installation process can vary based on the target platform and market. It is important to thoroughly test the complete installation process to ensure the product is installed and configured correctly.

Monitor Team's Progress

Monitoring the team's progress is crucial for ensuring the localization testing plan is executed according to the defined schedule and objectives. You should track the project and testing progress, identify any issues or risks, and take appropriate action to resolve them.

Incorporate Customer Feedback

Incorporating customer feedback is essential for ensuring that the product meets the localization requirements and is accepted in the target market. It would help if you gathered feedback from customers representing the company and target audience and used it to improve the localization process and product quality.

Executing Your Localization Testing Plan: Best Practices

Once you have a comprehensive localization testing plan, it's time to execute it. However, localization testing is not a one-time event but an ongoing process. You must follow some best practices to ensure your localization testing is successful and effective.

Involve the Localization Team

Your localization team is your best resource for executing your localization testing plan. They have the expertise and experience to do test cases, help you identify potential issues, and provide feedback on the localization process. Involve them in every step of the way to ensure the best possible outcome.

Test on Multiple Devices

The user experience can vary significantly on different devices and platforms. Ensure that you test your software on a wide range of devices to catch any issues that may arise on specific platforms.

Leverage Automation

Automation can be a powerful tool for localization testing. It can help you save time and reduce human error. However, be cautious not to over-rely on automation tests, as they may miss critical issues that a human tester could detect.

Test Early and Often

Localization testing should begin as early as possible in the development process. This will allow the testers and you to identify issues before they become too costly or time-consuming. Also, test often to ensure that issues are caught early and can be addressed promptly.

Monitor Progress and Provide Feedback

Keep a close eye on your team's progress throughout the testing process. Monitor their progress against the plan and provide feedback and support where needed. This will help keep the team on track and ensure the testing is completed on time and within budget.

Incorporate Customer Feedback

Customer feedback is a valuable source of information regarding localization testing. Consider customer feedback when planning your testing and incorporate it into your testing process. This will help you identify issues specific to your target audience and tailor your testing accordingly.

Consider Cultural Differences

Cultural differences can significantly impact the success of your localization testing. Ensure that you consider cultural differences when planning your testing. For example, certain colors or images may be considered offensive in some cultures, while in others, they may be acceptable.

Conclusion

Localization testing is crucial to software development processes that target global markets. It involves adapting a product or service to meet a market or region's specific linguistic, cultural, and functional requirements. By conducting internationalization testing, businesses can ensure the software can easily adapt to different languages and cultures. It is also essential to consider compatibility, usability, globalization, customer feedback, and creating a localization test plan for a successful outcome. Localization testing ensures the product meets the linguistic and cultural expectations of the target audience and avoids costly mistakes, ultimately saving businesses time and money in the long run.

Collaborative translation is a powerful tool for your business if you’re looking to expand to new global markets. By coordinating a team of professionals who work together in real-time, you can quickly deliver high quality translations that resonate with local audiences.

But what if you don't know how to synchronize a large team's efforts? Or are you‌ struggling to find the right software for a well-coordinated translation process? Well, look no further! In this guide, you'll learn all the know-how's of collaborative translation to bring your brand to global audiences.

Overview

  1. What is collaborative translation?
  2. Why seamless translation collaboration is important
  3. Best practices for collaborative translation and global market success

What is collaborative translation?

Collaborative translation is when multiple people simultaneously work together to translate content. A collaborative translation process often makes use of specialized tools and software to make sure the translation is quick, accurate, and consistent.

  • Example: Let's say you're a B2B SaaS company looking to translate your marketing materials into a new language to connect with potential clients abroad. Use collaborative translation to bring together translators, developers, and other specialists to translate content into many languages at once.

Your team can use a collaborative translation platform like Redokun to work on projects simultaneously. A coordinated workflow will make sure that your translations use the same terminology and style, improving the quality of the translated product for your target audiences.

Collaborative Translation vs. Crowdsourcing

People often confuse collaborative translation with crowdsourcing and think the two are the same. However, these approaches to translation are different.

Crowdsourcing is when a large group of people contributes translations, often through an open call or invitation by a company or author. Brands can turn to crowdsourcing, community translation, or volunteer translation when they are looking to reduce costs and accelerate the process, especially for large multi-language projects.

In crowdsourced translations, the contributors can be volunteer translators, subject matter experts, or just anonymous individuals online. In other words, you may not know who's worked on the translation and what their qualifications are. It makes crowdsourcing distinct from collaborative translation, where the team would be an established group of professionals you've selected

Why seamless translation collaboration is important

As a busy B2B/B2C marketing manager or project manager, you might ask yourself: Isn't the "divide and conquer" a better strategy when working on a translation or localization project? It seems logical that each project team member, including translators, designers, and editors, works on their tasks separately and step by step.

However, collaborative translation can help your team reap many benefits compared to a traditional approach to translation projects:

Reasons why seamless translation collaboration is important
  • Produce high-quality translations consistently. When your whole team works on a translation project simultaneously on one platform, it's easier to stay in context and keep track of the translation accuracy for every target language. On top of that, your team can conduct agile QA throughout the project cycle.
  • Faster turnaround times. By working together, your team can complete projects faster and more efficiently. Centralization saves a lot of time at every stage of translation. And since your team can work on more than one translation at a time, you can publish your translated content in several new markets at once.
  • Reduced costs. You get to improve efficiency while working with a smaller team of translators. The smaller and more coordinated the team, the less the risk of costly translation errors. It means reduced translation costs and better project budget compliance.
  • Increased flexibility. Collaborative translation allows your team to produce translations into many languages at once and easily make changes to any project document. You can conveniently engage in a feedback loop and guarantee a continuous localization process.
  • Better communication. Collaborative translation effectively brings all members of your localization team together on one platform. It helps you make sure that everyone is working toward the same goals ‌and simplifies overall localization management.

Six best practices for collaborative translation and global market success

To be great at collaborative translation, you need to approach it strategically. Even if you've never used this approach before, you can follow the six steps below to build an efficient collaborative translation workflow. And if you're already familiar with this method, these practices will help you improve the way you collaborate on any translation projects.

Six best practices for collaborative translation for your global business success

1. Work out a detailed project plan

Before you start working on translations together, you need a clear-cut project plan. You should first identify the following items.

  • Project timeline: Define crucial deadlines, project milestones, and the overall project duration.
  • Translation volume and key deliverables: Calculate the general word count, and determine the workload for every language pair if you translate into multiple languages.
  • Project budget: Keep in mind possible added and hidden translation costs.
  • Project team: Define what kind of specialists you need: translators, editors, proofreaders, etc. Will you need to find external translators? Consider all your HR needs in advance.
  • Your approach to the translation process: How much do you want to rely on machine translation? At what point will you edit translated strings? Answer all these questions before you go on.
  • Quality assurance protocol: Establish an efficient QA procedure for all the language pairs you're working on.

It may sound like a handful but the more detailed the plan, the more streamlined the translations will be down the road. Besides, you can already use Redokun to boost this stage of the localization process!

Redokun is a translation management system you can use to automate, coordinate, and optimize your translation processes from content creation to publication.

Redokun simplifies your project planning. In particular, you can use the tool to:

  • Monitor your ongoing translations easily. Keep track of all of your translation files and projects across multiple languages in one space, and check their progress at a glance.
Redokun Document Detail Page
  • Meet deadlines with digest emails. Redokun will send you daily or weekly email digests to update you on the progress of translations. From there, you can initiate one-click reminders to your translators who are potentially falling behind schedule.
  • Making budget planning easier. Redokun has a transparent, scalable pricing structure that will cover exactly the volume of work your project needs.
Redokun is an easy-to-use tool that requires no onboarding. Your team can start using all the system’s features right away. During your project planning stage, you won’t need to factor in a lengthy training period to introduce team members to the tool.

2. Divide tasks and assign responsibilities the smart way

Good collaboration is impossible without a well-planned distribution and organization of roles and tasks. Ensure that every team member is on the same page and understands their respective responsibilities.

For example, the project managers should divide ‌translation tasks among translation team members according to their language proficiency, area of expertise, or subject matter knowledge.
  • On Redokun, you can invite translators to work on different language pairs and content types depending on their skills. All you need to do is enter the translator's email. The software will send them an email invitation and let you know once they've started translating the file.
  • You can also invite several translators to work on one document.
How to invite translators to Redokun

To maximize the efficiency of project management and task division, establish a clear structure of your workflow. Make sure all your pages, files, and folders are well organized and team members know where to find necessary resources for their respective tasks. A centralized, cloud-based storage for all your documents is a must.

  • Redokun is a cloud-based software that makes file management easy. You can create folders and customize permission settings for multiple users for better organization. No more need to look for spreadsheets and lost documents scattered around different digital locations.
  • Don't forget to make the most of the Reporting Dashboard. It shows you the status of the translation project and helps you see how users distribute tasks (for example, what methods they use to translate different content segments).
Redokun Dashboard with translation statistics

3. Enhance the collaborative translation process with clear communication

It's important to have open communication channels among all team members in your translation project, including internal and external translators. For a successful collaboration effort, you need a shared communication space to:

  • Conduct regular check-ins.
  • Discuss translation options and other aspects of the working process.
  • Update and adjust requirements and guidelines.
  • Maintain feedback loops.
It's up to you to choose between email, messengers, or tools like Google Drive or Slack to keep your collboarative operations flowing. However, using multiple channels for different aspects of the project can get messy. It's harder to manage your team and make sure all collaborators are up to date on the ongoing translation tasks.

You can avoid these potential problems by centralizing all your communications and project management. With translation software like Redokun, you can manage, translate, communicate, and collaborate — all in one place.

  • Translate content in context. Your translators or editors can use page previews in Web Editor to understand the context of the text while working on it.
  • Work together in real-time. Use Redokun as a full-scale collaborative translation platform. It enables real-time cooperation among your team members, improving efficiency and reducing communication errors.
  • Use comments, mentions, and notifications to exchange feedback quickly. Redokun's Web Editor is a convenient place to stay in touch and discuss your translation progress every step of the way.
Collaboration feature in Redokun
  • Create a hybrid workflow. Work with your in-house teams or external translators to suit different localization project formats and scalability needs.

4. Use machine translation and translation memory tools

Computer-assisted translation tools are a great addition to human translation. Machine translation (MT) helps your collaborators speed up the localization process by automating translation. Of course, it doesn't have the quality of a human professional translation — it’s more like a helping hand that's always there to facilitate the translation of complex phrases or new terms.

  • Redokun is integrated with two Machine Translation tools: Google Translate and DeepL. Translation suggestions by these two tools pop up right below where the translator should key in the translation, as shown here.

To enhance collaboration even further, consider using translation memory tools. They ensure consistency and save translation software users a lot of time.

Translation memory (TM) is a translation technology that stores previously translated sentences or phrases as segments and creates a unique database for your localization projects. You can reuse your translation to increase efficiency and consistency in ongoing and future translations.

With Redokun as your collaborative translation platform, you can leverage TM to:

  • Consistently translate any repeated word, phrase, or sentence across different language pairs and documents. It's especially important for translating technical terms, marketing slogans, CTAs, and other catchphrases. Translation memory helps you stay consistent in your marketing messaging.
  • Pre-translate your entire documents. Combine TM matches from your previous translations with Machine Translation to get a fully pre-translated document even before your team gets to work.
  • Manage your translation memory database. Import and customize your TM database to further improve translation quality and consistency.
”The speed of translation is quite impressive in that it doesn’t take [much time], maybe a couple of minutes when you translate from English to eight markets. I think that’s what I’m most impressed by.”

Read more about how Kenni and the marketing team at Rockfon increased their translation productivity by 70% using translation memories and other Redokun features
here.

5. Use glossaries and style guides

Glossaries and style guides are valuable resources your team can use for reliable reference.

A glossary is a list of terms and their corresponding translations that are specific to a company or industry.

A style guide outlines the preferred tone, voice, and style for a company's marketing materials across markets and languages.

Your collaborators can refer to these resources when they’re not sure about a translation. For example is when they're deciding how to translate a company abbreviation, whether to the Oxford comma, or choosing the right tone to address customers, etc. No more ambiguity about linguistic, stylistic, and cultural aspects of your translations.

  • Use Redokun's glossary feature to create a glossary and style guide that outlines rules for spelling, grammar, punctuation, terminology, and tone specific to your project.
Redokun glossary feature preview

6. Continuously review and revise

A key benefit of a collaborative translation platform is the ability to review and revise translations in an agile and efficient manner. By involving multiple specialists in the process of editing and QA, you can guarantee accuracy and consistency in the translated content at every stage of the project.

To implement effective review and revision procedures in your collaborative translation projects, it is important to:

  • Plan for review and revision in advance. Identify who will be responsible, set the timeline, and use specific tools.
  • Consider involving in-country reviewers who are familiar with the local market and culture to ensure that the translations are accurate and appropriate for the target audience.
  • Perform regular QA checks. They should include consistency in terminology and formatting, and verify that the translations are free from grammatical errors and typos.
Pro-tip: Ever experienced the headache of having to update a translation that’s already 70% done when there is a last-minute change to the source document?

With Redokun’s revision feature, you don’t have to spend hours poring over Excel sheets and comparing files to spot the places where new words have been added or sentences have been changed. Just upload the latest document version and the system will identify new text that needs translating — saving your team’s time and effort while keeping previous translations intact.

Summary

Collaborative translation is an excellent approach if you want to improve the consistency of your translations, reduce costs, and establish a strong presence in global markets.

The key to seamless collaboration is a combination of careful planning, role distribution, agile QA, and smart use of translation software.

Make Redokun part of your collaborative translation efforts and enhance the pace of your global business growth‌. Start your 14-day free trial today and benefit from a quicker and more streamlined translation workflow.

Till next time,

Anastasia

Lucky Eze
Lucky Ezeihuaku is an SEO expert and specialist Translation content writer with Bureau Works. He has a master’s degree in English and Literature, and has been writing professionally for at least 7 years. He has gone on to specialize in the Translation and Localization niche, churning out multiple quality, informative, and optimized articles for Bureau Works over the past year. He claims writing and developing SEO strategies keeps him going, and he’s also interested in Data Analytics.
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