Technology

Product Globalization Solutions: A Planning Guide for Startups

You don’t have time to babysit an extensive in-house process between 48-hour development sprints. But with the right product globalization solutions, you won’t have to.
Henrique Cabral
2 min

You don’t have time to babysit an extensive in-house process between 48-hour development sprints. But with the right product globalization solutions, you won’t have to. Combined with big-picture planning, a powerful platform could turn your continuous localization ambitions into a living, breathing reality.

5 Crucial Planning Steps for Product Globalization

Startups are in the unique position to plan for localization early so it can work hand-in-hand with product development for the best all-around results.They’ve already got a great product to take to global audiences. They haven’t established an in-house localization process that’s sapping their resources. And they have the funding to invest in whichever solution is best. If any of this sounds familiar, you’re in the right place to learn more.But before you start evaluating localization tools, we recommend taking a moment to review the foundational elements that make sleek globalization possible:

1. Pause to consider all the global implications.

Successful localization begins with big-picture thinking. Before you start talking about tools and integrations and translators, you need to take three steps back and consider all the implications of going global with your product. Take this opportunity to ask questions like:

  • How effective will our product be in the global marketplace?
  • What are the inherent logistical challenges our product will face in other locales?
  • Which support systems are necessary for our product to function internationally?
  • How can we optimize the reception of our product in other markets?

You’ve spent how long now so completely focused on your product? Strategizing beyond the product itself can be a challenge when you’re so deep in it. But by thinking critically about the broader issues of globalization, you can bring even more value to your startup by building a solid localization strategy. In the long run, your product will absolutely benefit from this wider view.

2. Get your engineers on board with internationalization.

Next, you need to make sure your product can function internationally from a technical perspective. Many companies design software systems and mobile and web applications with future localization in mind—but not all of them do. Some products will require extensive retrofitting in order to function internationally.

Take the time now to figure out if it’s feasible to create localized versions of your software. Do you have all content extracted to a resource file that can be easily translated? Has your team tested the UI in languages that will increase string length? Have you ensured that your app can toggle between LTR and RTL depending on the localized version? Are you ready to support locale-specific data formats for contact information? Do you know how your international users expect to pay? If not, this is your opportunity to figure out how much it will cost (and how long it will take) to make necessary adjustments before going any further. Better yet, if you’re still in the design phase, you’re in the very best position to be thinking about localization proactively.

3. Budget carefully for ongoing localization.

Well-funded startups sometimes forget to consider expenses before embarking on large-scale localization. This mindset can be dangerous because hyperlocalization can be so tempting.

An eager startup could easily sink hundreds of thousands of dollars into translation costs for too many international markets too fast. It isn’t always necessary.When you set a reasonable budget, you’ll realize that it’s not worth the cost (or the time) to localize everywhere all at once. For example, you don’t necessarily need a fully localized version of your app in both Austrian German and Swiss German when a version in standard German will do. Or you might not need to translate every aspect of the content into all your target languages. A simple overlay tutorial in Italian might be enough for users to understand and use your English app interface.Avoiding hyperlocalization with a careful strategy can help to control costs and position your product for a higher return on your investment. Eventually, you can expand further with a step-by-step approach that prioritizes the most rewarding markets.

4. Consult the data before deciding on a strategy.

We know how much you love your product. It’s easy to imagine that users all around the globe will love it as much as you do. But the truth is that there are probably some locales in which your product will thrive more than in others. When you can identify those successful target markets, you want to prioritize them. Don’t throw your money around on the rest just yet.The easiest way to identify your localization sweet spots is to examine existing data.

Market research is the name of the game. We encourage our clients to take a deep dive into their Google Analytics or their app store data to see where they’re already getting the highest traffic and downloads in international markets. Plan to localize in these select areas first. Then use A/B testing to selectively localize elsewhere and judge carefully whether those efforts were worth the spend before you line up even more markets.

5. Identify the best localization tool for your startup.

Now it’s time to choose a content localization management system—one of the best product globalization solutions you could employ. Unfortunately, choosing a localization partner involves taking a big leap of faith. There’s really no way to test their process until you bite the bullet and sign a contract. You need to know who you can trust, who’s going to care about your product almost as much as you do.When evaluating localization services, don’t just choose the company with the flashiest marketing or the most Google ads. Instead, ask important questions about what their localization platform can do, where they source their translations, and how their pricing structure works.Important note: You should be very wary of any technology vendor who charges you based on the volume of work you’re doing in their system. Translation itself is a word-by-word cost—but your use of a software platform should not be. Some very prominent players in the localization industry are trying to take advantage of startups with false expectations and predatory pricing mechanisms. A trustworthy localization partner will operate honestly, without hidden fees, and help you achieve a high ROI by streamlining your localization needs.

Investing in the Best Product Globalization Solutions

It’s time to shatter the status quo of the localization industry. A fully-automated localization platform involves all the custom integrations you need, and a good company isn’t going to overwhelm you (or distract you) with tech you don’t need. Instead, you can expect to be guided through the strategizing, implementation, and maintenance phases of ongoing localization with a consistent focus on streamlining costs and achieving a high ROI.Localization doesn’t have to be a distraction from product management. When you hire the right localization firm, you can relax knowing you’ve partnered with a team that can automate localization, control quality, and advise you as to the best way to reach your globalization goals.

Bureau Works is a localization platform with powerful back-end services that lets you sit back and focus on product development instead of localization management. We’re changing the localization game with one of the best product globalization solutions on the market.Contact our team today to make your dream of automated continuous localization a reality.

Written by Henrique Cabral

Henrique is a partner at Bureau Works as well as the CTO. He also speaks code and loves racing cars.

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

Henrique Cabral
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