Expanding your business into new markets is always an exciting venture. Yet, developing a strong localization team can get tricky.
Each market needs its own subject matter expert, native translator, and quality reviewer. You’ll also need someone to manage everything, a designer or two, developers — the list goes on.
Overwhelmed? We’re here to help.
What to consider when building a localization team?
Building a successful localization team is so much more than just hiring translators. You need a group of experts who understand the language and the nuances of the culture, preferences, and technology.
When assembling your dream team, consider these essential steps:
Defining clear roles and responsibilities
First things first — know what you need. Clearly define the key roles for your localization project and each role’s responsibilities. This includes creating detailed job descriptions, outlining specific tasks and expectations, and establishing a clear chain of command.
Having these things in order can prevent confusion and make sure everyone is on the same page from the get-go. It can also help you avoid problems like overlapped work, miscommunication, and missed deadlines.
If you’re unsure where to start, try looking through localization job postings to get ideas. It’s a great way to understand your industry’s current landscape and identify the most important skills each role needs.
You can even get a better understanding of compensation to stay competitive when recruiting. This research will help you create accurate job descriptions that attract the right talent for your team.
Establishing effective communication channels
Once you’ve figured out team roles, you need to make sure that everyone on the team can communicate effectively. Clear and open communication is important for any team, especially localization teams that work across different locations and time zones.
Using project management software, or a translation management system (TMS) can significantly improve your communication. Not just for completing translation tasks, a TMS also streamlines communication by centralizing all project-related conversations within a single platform. This means no more back-and-forth email threads or switching between apps.
Everyone has access to the same information, improving communication with external translators, vendors, and even customers.
Regular check-ins can also help your team stay updated and aligned on project progress. Try hosting a daily stand-up meeting, or a weekly progress update.
If your team is multilingual, be mindful of language barriers. Providing internal translation services or language training might be a good way to bridge the gap.
Building a culture of collaboration
Many localization teams struggle to collaborate because they work with people from different departments. In fact, 69% of teams say cross-functional collaboration is their top 3 internal challenges in localization.
You need to put in additional effort to help team members from different departments and backgrounds work together. Here are a couple of ways you can do to build a collaborative team:
- Set shared goals: Make sure that everyone on the team is working towards the same goals, and understands how their role contributes to the big picture.
- Encourage knowledge sharing: Create opportunities for team members to share their knowledge and expertise through workshops, meetings, or chats.
- Celebrate collective successes: When your team reaches a milestone or completes a project, celebrate together.
Creating a localization kit
A localization kit has all the tools your localization team needs to make content work for different markets. It keeps your brand voice and user experience consistent across all languages and locations.
Here’s what to include:
- Style guides: Your brand voice, terminology, grammar, and stylistic rules.
- Glossaries: A list of key terms and their approved translations.
- Tutorials and instructions: Step-by-step instructions on how to use the tools and software your team relies on.
- Visual assets: Guidelines on how images, videos, and other visual elements should be adapted.
- Reference materials: Background information about your product, target audience, or brand values to give the team more context.
Not sure what resources to include? Our localization resource checklist will help you out.
Remember to structure your localization kit in a logical and organized way. Use clear headings, subheadings, and a table of contents to help your team find the information they need quickly.
Measuring performance and adapting strategies
Did you know that 86% of teams who measure their app downloads are more likely to receive an increased budget? Measuring performance is key to demonstrating the value and success of your localization efforts.
To do so, you need to set key performance indicators (KPIs). By establishing clear, measurable goals, you can effectively gauge your team’s effectiveness and efficiency.
For example, you can track how many projects were finished on time and within budget. Or, you can measure how productive each translator is by how many words they translate per day.
Based on the data gathered, you can then adjust your workflow and individual workload, reallocate resources, and change up your strategies accordingly.
Budgeting for a localization team
Budgeting accurately ensures that your team has the resources it needs, without overspending. When budgeting, consider the costs of:
- Internal staff: Include salaries, benefits, and any training or development expenses for your in-house localization team.
- External vendor: Include any localization tasks that you want to outsource, such as translation, voice-over, or testing.
Additionally, allocate a budget for training, tools and software, and quality assurance processes.
Don’t forget to plan for scalability. As your localization needs grow, so will your budget. Make sure your budget can adapt to accommodate new languages, markets, and projects.To save money on localization, use machine translation for first drafts. You can also group your vendors to negotiate better rates.
What are the key roles in a localization team?
Depending on your product, your new market, and the complexity of the required localization, each localization process may look different. But these key roles stay the same for the most part:
Localization project managers
Localization Project Managers are the backbone of any localization project. They are responsible for supervising the localization process, managing the team, setting deadlines, managing the budget, and communicating with the client (or, if in-house, with the leadership team).
In other words, they control the project from start to finish. They are also in charge of developing and maintaining glossaries and style guides that keep the brand voice consistent.
As the go-to person for any localization questions, they help developers, designers, content creators, and translators communicate better.
When your localization project is completed, they are the ones who implement those translations into their end-use environs.
Software developers
Software developers are the architects of your digital product. They are the ones who add string identifiers (key, or key names) into the code of your website, mobile app, game, or software product.
These identifiers create a map between the code and the translations. This map is stored in localization files, which contain the original text (key identifier) and its translations in different languages.
For example, the key identifier for a login button on your website might be “button.login,” and the translations could be “Login” for English, “Iniciar sesión” for Spanish.
Working closely with your website localization team, your developers allow you to easily localize your product to different languages and cultures.
Software developers are also responsible for fixing any technical issues, such as bugs, compatibility issues or delays, during the localization process. They make sure that your localized product works across different languages and platforms.
Designers
Localization is not just about translations — it needs to resonate visually and functionally with your target audience.
Designers ensure everything looks and runs how it’s intended, regardless of the language. They, including user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) designers, also work at the “ground level” of localization.
Before content creators and translators can make or translate your content, designers must create the layout, pattern, and style according to what your developers have programmed.
Colors, symbols, and the overall visual aesthetics and functionality of the design, must be adapted to each market.
Design is a key step in localizing your product. Your product can look and feel different for different languages and cultures.
For example, Romance languages (Spanish, French, and Portuguese) take up to 25% more space than English, and can completely alter the layout and design of a website or mobile app if considered after-the-fact.
Don’t overlook the importance of your designers regarding localization. Your customers aren’t one-size-fits-all, so neither should your product design be.
Marketing specialists
A marketing specialist or a subject matter expert (SME) from the new market makes sure your product or service is relevant and resonates with your new target audience.
They decide what content needs to be translated and what new content needs to be made for the new market. They also need to analyze the new target audience preferences and expectations.
Knowing what they need and want can help the design and content teams make localized content that is both appealing and culturally sensitive.
If your localization team doesn’t have an in-house SME for the new market, hiring an expert in the new culture is key to localizing your product as accurately as possible.
Content team
A Content Team refers to your Copywriters, Content Marketers, and other creators who write, strategize and manage your business content.
Their main job is to make and manage material for customers, including product information, help desk and knowledge base content, and marketing materials like blog posts and campaign copy.
This means they often need to work with other teams, like marketing, product development, and localization. So, there should be clear, streamlined processes in place to align different teams in the right order.
Your content team should have a set of standard tone of voice rules and principles that everyone can follow and try to follow.
Most of the time, the localization process involves changing your already-written content to the new language. This means your content writers often support your products and company information.
Very often, transcreation is a part of this process. Transcreation involves adapting and reworking content to fit a different audience. It not only considers the language but also the cultural preferences and sensitivities of the target market.
Translators and language service providers (LSPs)
The heart of your localization process is undoubtedly translation. Translation is typically handled by contracted translators, though larger businesses may hire language service providers (LSPs) or bring translation in-house for major language groups like Spanish or Simplified Chinese.
Your translators should ideally be native speakers of your target language and subject matter experts (SMEs) in the material they translate. They typically tackle the core content translations, which they then may route to a second translator for a quality review. This two-level process may be essential if you don’t have in-house native speakers of your target languages to verify the translation quality.
For high-quality translations, you should provide your translators with as much context around the project as possible. Include information about your target audience, your brand’s voice, and the specific goals of the localization project.
While machine translation tools like Google Translate and automatic translation can be helpful for getting a general idea of the meaning of a text, they cannot replace human translators. Human translators understand the subtleties of language, culture, formatting differences, and other details that only localization can catch.
Product managers
Product Managers educate others about your products’ intricacies and ensure all localized content is accurate.
They work with the localization manager and help with the localization process, especially during product development. This close partnership ensures that the product is designed with localization in mind from the start.
Their other key role is tracking the progress of localization projects and identifying and resolving any issues that may arise. They need to monitor deadlines and make sure that everything stays on track.
A Product Manager who keeps up with the latest localization practices can always improve their plans, use new technologies, and stay ahead of industry trends.
Quality assurance experts and reviewers
Proofreading and testing can make or break your localization process. Whether you’re localizing for one or ten new languages and cultures, you should always include a thorough review process in your localization process. That’s where quality assurance experts come into play.
After your content is translated, it’s reviewed by your quality assurance (QA) team and reviewed by internal and external test groups for accuracy and usability.
Reviewers are often native speakers of your new language who check for errors, omissions, and accuracy relative to the source material.
QA managers can collaborate with product managers and the content team to ensure the new language(s) accurately reflect your product and company information.
Their main objective is to maintain expected quality levels and resolve quality-related issues so that your products are just as accurate and relevant to your new customers as it is to your original market.
5 localization team models
The ideal localization team structure depends on your company’s size, budget, and specific goals.
Here are five localization team models to help you find the right fit:
- Centralized localization team
A centralized localization team is located entirely in-house, within a single department. All team members work in the same location, and follow the same guidelines and procedures.
This model simplifies communication and gives you better control over quality and consistency. If you’re a small company with fewer resources or limited target languages, a central localization team may be a good choice.
Benefits:
- Streamlined communication
- Unified processes
- Clear ownership
Challenges:
- Potential for bottlenecks
- Limited scalability
- Lack local market expertise
- Decentralized localization team
A decentralized localization team is spread across different teams, such as marketing, and product development. Every department is in charge of a specific section of the localization process.
Since each department is only responsible for its own localization efforts, they can work alone and make decisions quickly. As a result, they’re often more agile and responsive to local market needs.
This model works well for larger companies with diverse product lines or target markets.
Benefits:
- Deeper product and market knowledge
- Greater autonomy and ownership
- Faster results
Challenges:
- Inconsistent processes or workflow
- Overlapping tasks
- Difficulty maintaining a consistent voice
- Hybrid localization team
Hybrid localization teams combine both centralized and decentralized models. They have a core localization team, which manages the localization strategy, and individual teams in different departments or regions that handle local market adaptation.
This model is perfect for large companies operating in multiple regions, as it has the best of both worlds — global consistency and local expertise.
Benefits:
- Flexibility
- Scalability
- Deeper insight into local markets
Challenges:
- Complicated coordination
- Conflicting priorities
- Unclear communication
- Outsourced localization team
Outsourced localization teams are external vendors or agencies hired to handle all localization tasks. They specialize in translation, cultural adaptation, localization testing, and desktop publishing.
Having an outsource localization team can help you quickly scale and access specialized talent without building an in-house team.
Companies with limited internal resources or those looking to quickly expand into new markets may benefit from this model.
Benefits:
- Cost-effective for smaller project
- Access to specialized expertise
- Fast scaling
Challenges:
- Less control over quality
- Communication barriers
- Inconsistent brand voice
- Community-led localization team
A community-led localization team is a unique model that leverages volunteers to translate and adapt content. These volunteers usually love the product or service and are willing to help the company.
Sometimes there are paid staff to coordinate projects, check quality, and engage with the community. The staff makes sure the translations are accurate and consistent, and supports the volunteers.
A successful example of a community-led localization team is Any.do, a to-do list app. Any.do has a community of over 1,000 translators who have helped the app be translated into over 70 languages.
Benefits:
- Cost-effective
- Authentic translation
- Increased user engagement
Challenges:
- Quality control
- Meeting deadlines
- Complex project management
Lokalise brings all stakeholders under one roof
There are so many moving parts in the localization process. How can you ensure your team is aligned, on track, and consistent in every market? Lokalise can help.
Streamlined communication and project management
For years, project managers used spreadsheets, emails, phone calls, and other tools to do the localization process. Now, you can use Lokalise instead.
Lokalise gives your localization project manager a unified communication tool to send content to your translators and track their progress.
Your content team may also work closely with your localization project manager to organize, prepare, and import content into Lokalise while the content is kept for translators and provided by designers.
Lokalise will automatically route any changes made during agile development processes into the translation workflow for updates and changes.
When Revolut, a Fintech company, faced challenges of manual processes and managing multiple languages, they turned to Lokalise.
We provided a centralized hub for all their translation projects, making it easier to find and manage their translation files and resources. Moreover, Lokalize automated many of their manual tasks, further streamlining workflow for Revolut.
As a result, Revolut saved 100+ hours per week on localization tasks, improved collaboration between teams, and achieved a 100%+ increase in user growth.
Developer-friendly localization solutions
Lokalise provides localization solutions for issues specific to software and technology. Our solution makes it easier and faster for developers and translators to work together to create the best user experience in all languages.
For example, your developers can tag individual content elements in their code. This will show up in changes and updates to your content and product. You can also use 40+ integrations, including GitHub, GitLab, Webhooks, and more.
MWM, a music mobile app developer, had trouble localizing because it was hard to manage many apps and update them often. Lokalise empowered their developers with a streamlined and efficient localization workflow.
Now, their developers can easily export translations into the formats they need. They can also access translations to make changes or updates, even after initial implementation.
The search feature also lets developers quickly find and fix problems when they notice issues in their apps.
Centralized quality assurance
Lokalise serves as a single source of the truth, eliminating version control issues. By centralizing all translation files and assets in one place, there’s no longer a problem of having multiple versions in emails or shared drives.
Translators, reviewers, and project managers can easily work together, leave comments, and fix problems right within the platform.
Lokalise’s Quality Assistance (QA) feature also offers automated QA checks, automatic translation memory, automatic translation suggestions, and built-in spelling and grammar checks.
Companies like Rydoo, have taken advantage of these features to perfect translations before they’re released. This has improved collaboration, both between Rydoo’s team members and between their internal team and their freelance translators.
Localization simplified with Lokalise
Building a great localization team can require a little work, but the effort is worth it. Once your team is up and running, support them with a translation management system, like Lokalise, to ensure effective and aligned communication and task management.
Streamline your global expansion — Book a demo with a Lokalise specialist or sign up for a free trial.
