Ding provides users with a quick and easy way to send mobile recharge to their friends and families in a blink of an eye, no matter where they are. The company covers 500+ mobile operators in over 140 countries worldwide and have every intention to grow further.

For over a decade already, Ding mobile top-ups have been available for millions of customers via iOS and Android mobile applications, online at their website, and in more than 600,000 retail stores all around the world. Due to Ding’s international presence, seamless localization is a necessity. Therefore it is one of their top priorities when it comes to engineering the mobile apps and filling the website.

Gaps and challenges

Before going multi-language, Ding did not take advantage of any translation management systems (TMS). But one day they realized that adding even a single extra language to the mobile app had become a huge pain. Ding used a spreadsheet-based solution, which is quite time-consuming and far from what you would call scalable - in other words, outdated.

Without proper translation management, the team faced certain issues affecting the development cycle. Occasionally, some translations received from partners were out of context: this often happens when screenshots and strings are separated. Correcting them meant sending additional queries to the translators, so the re-work and pending adjustments were inevitable. This resulted in an even greater time loss, and annoyance for the whole team.

Here comes the solution

Identifying the problem in the early stages allowed Ding to save a decent amount of both time and money. The team started searching for a TMS that would allow scalability and better coordination, and soon they discovered Lokalise.

The most important thing for the Ding team was improving the translation management process and the development cycle. They liked the wide set of features provided by Lokalise, and their managers also found the solution robust and cost-effective.

Lokalise has become an integral part of their day-to-day localization workflow. After the UI designers finish the English version, the new keys are added into Lokalise. The developers start working with them at once, without having to wait for the translations. Those are handled by both Lokalise marketplace and third-party translation agencies. Finally, the whole thing goes into production.

Now it is all in one place

Ding’s development and localization processes became far more efficient thanks to Lokalise. The main benefits for Ding are:

• much better translation management instruments that free up a lot of time,
• team members can now focus on more pressing matters,
• the translation quality has improved dramatically,
• all the strings are now in one place - no lost keys, no values devoid of context.

Dieter particularly stresses the importance of live updates. Before, all the translations were required to be in place in order for the team to complete the QA stage. Real-time updates available in the Lokalise SDK allow adding the localized content straight away without having to wait for the next release.

The team also gives credit to Lokalise support engineers for being “responsive, passionate and knowledgeable”. Confidence in the received technical support, alongside numerous improvements on the workflow, present Ding with a great opportunity to boost their growth.

Most used features

User management: an easy way to organize the project contributors

Live SDK: over-the-air localization SDK for Android and iOS devices