How Dailymotion improved global user experiences while reducing time to market by 50% and slashing developer time spent on localization by 30%

Challenge: Limitations with previous localization solution made localization more complicated than it needed to be

As Dailymotion built up its presence in other markets and regions, localization felt like a no-brainer for a company that prides itself on building a more personal experience for end users.  

“If you're not speaking the same language as the user, you’re not going to reach them properly”, said Matti White, Localization and Content Design Manager at Dailymotion.

When Matti joined Dailymotion as their first dedicated localization manager two years ago, localization was a shared responsibility between product managers, marketers, and engineers.

“It was an add-on task, if you want to put it that way, rather than their central role”, explains Matti.

The team was using another translation management system and found it frustrating due a set-it-and-forget-it approach, limited customer support, rigid functionality, and high costs relative to their needs.

Localization had become very fragmented and complicated across the different products.

"We had one process for the iOS app, one process for Android, and something completely different for the website."

This fragmentation while using their previous tool led to significant problems:

• Engineers were spending a lot of time localizing manually and fixing bugs. “We had problems with broken placeholders, and updating source content would often break projects,” explained Matti.
• Inconsistent messages appeared across different platforms, leading to poor user experiences
• Stakeholders were getting content translated twice, leading to unnecessary costs

Solution: Dailymotion chose Lokalise for its ease of use, personal support, flexibility, and value for money

Matti had used Lokalise in a past role and knew it would fit well with Dailymotion's goals, as well as align with their vision of providing a more personal, authentic experience to users—which requires consistent, high-quality localization.

Dailymotion chose Lokalise over other localization tools for 4 key reasons:

1. The ease of getting localization done: Matti found the UI very easy to use. There's a lot less clicking around, and exporting Xliff files is so much easier than in the previous solution.
2. Flexible infrastructure: The integrations Lokalise offers gave Matti the flexibility to work with the agencies he’s had good experiences with in the past, so he could export and import quickly without having to create custom code. “With our previous tool, it felt like there were quite a lot of limitations on how you could do things.”
3. Supportive customer culture: One of the main reasons Matti switched to Lokalise was because of the excellent support he’d received in the past—something that was very aligned with Dailymotion’s vision of being more human than others in the field.
4. More value at a lower cost: Cost was another factor. By switching to Lokalise, Dailymotion calculated they’d save 30% on the annual fee.

Lokalise is more intuitive and efficient to use. There's a lot less clicking around and wondering 'where on earth has that has gone?’. It’s the opposite of frustrating.

Matti White,
Localization and Content Design Manager at Dailymotion

Implementation: Migrating to Lokalise was smooth and quick, with zero issues

The process of switching to Lokalise was extremely smooth and quick. Dailymotion connected its tech stack to Lokalise through different integrations, including GitHub, Slack, and Braze, and gradually rolled it out across projects without any issues.

“We've already made back the time we spent on the migration!”, said Matti.

Key features that made a difference:

• Cross-platform management: "Being able to combine Android and iOS has not just improved quality, it's also saved me a massive amount of time," says Matti. Previously, these were separate projects requiring different placeholders, so the team would adapt them manually and translate things twice.
• Slack integration: When source language content changes, Matti receives an immediate notification. That way, developers don't have to tell him whenever they've changed something. “It sounds like a small thing, but it's a really big quality of life improvement,” says Matti.
• Developer integrations: The GitHub integration has made localization simpler and faster for the engineering teams, who now feel more confident working with localization.

A big majority of the engineering team said they felt more confident working with localization now and that it took them at least 30% less time to do it. 

Matti White,
Localization and Content Design Manager at Dailymotion

• Marketing integrations: "We're also using the Braze integration. That was another thing we couldn't do before. The integration in our previous localization solution was broken, but we have that now, and our marketing team is very pleased."
• Contextual features: The team at Dailymotion makes use of all of the context features—screenshots, descriptions, tags, and custom statuses so that they get the best possible translations.
• Translation memory: Dailymotion has two different tones of voice and style guides depending on whether they talk to business customers or private users, and now they can separate them by having two translation memories in Lokalise. “In French, we speak to users in the app as ‘tu’. But for a big publisher, that's not appropriate. They were getting mixed up because of the one translation memory we had before.”

Results: Localization takes half the time it used to, and fixing bugs now takes 15 minutes instead of one week

Since implementing Lokalise, localization at Dailymotion is a lot easier, with stakeholders working more collaboratively and efficiently.

If we look at the localization process from start to finish I'd it's about half the time now, and a lot of that is because I can oversee and control everything that's happening quite quickly.

Matti White,
Localization and Content Design Manager at Dailymotion

The most dramatic improvement has been in bug-fixing times, which have gone down from maybe a week to about 15 minutes.

Before, in their previous solution, updating source content would often break projects, whereas now Matti can make changes instantly, and then they get pulled into GitHub with no extra work for developers.

The biggest thing for us was reducing the amount of work on developers. Before Lokalise, I would say they'd spend more time localizing than me, which is not the right way around.

Matti White,
Localization and Content Design Manager at Dailymotion

Fixing issues immediately and maintaining consistency across platforms has also led to a better experience for their users.

It’s been very easy for other teams to use Lokalise, too, because of how customizable it is.

“If our designers log in they only see what they need to see. There's nothing cluttering the UI. They just go in, click a button, and view what's there. It took maybe 15 minutes for me to show them how to use Lokalise.”

The simplicity of Lokalise means the localization process runs smoothly even when Matti's not available, reducing team dependencies

If making localization simpler wasn’t already enough, Dailymotion has saved money on its annual subscription by switching to Lokalise.

Future: AI translation integrated with existing processes

Dailymotion is now exploring AI translation capabilities within Lokalise.

"We're currently 100% human translation, but we are moving towards AI," says Matti.

"We're at the phase of building style guides and glossaries to prepare for it, and we'll start in the next few weeks."

Matti’s advice for others considering localization platforms:

"Start by meeting with everybody who might be involved. Figure out what they want and then look at your options to see which one best fits. Make sure people understand why localization is important and why it needs to be managed well."

He also notes the importance of having someone own the process:

If you have people's buy-in from the start and someone owning the process, then a localization platform is going to save you a lot of time, a lot of frustration, and probably quite a lot of money in the end.

Matti White,
Localization and Content Design Manager at Dailymotion