How Pix4D saves dozens of hours on multi-lingual releases
“Lokalise helped automate repetitive work, saving 12 hours every month that are now better spent on product development.”
Fast-paced projects need solutions that can keep up.
Pushing the boundaries of modern photogrammetry, Pix4D's software suite for drone mapping equips over a dozen industries with the tools to make better decisions through accurate 3D maps and models. As Olivier Amblet, Pix4D's Cloud team manager, puts it: “Anything you'd like to materialize in 3D is likely to be a use case for one of our products”.
With their main focus on the United States, Asia, and Europe, as well as with a strong presence in South America, Pix4D's technology is employed all across the globe by users as diverse as the use cases. Pair that with their fast-paced development and weekly application releases - they cannot let themselves be bogged down by translation.
In step with Pix4D's swift workflow, Lokalise has become key to streamlining their translation processes, ensuring timely multi-lingual releases.
“We don't want the process of translation to slow down the release cycle. So it was very important that we can use a product that lets us streamline the process.”
Communication is key
Before Lokalise, Pix4D used the Qt framework for their localization needs as it offered one of the required formats, as well as provided the necessary tools to edit and otherwise work with the files. But Olivier and his team quickly learned that “the hard part is not to load and save the translation, rather it's the workflow of engaging someone that will translate your files, both you and them knowing what needs to be translated or reworked, and relaying this information smoothly“, which is where Lokalise comes in.
With over 30 people playing a role in the localization processes at Pix4D, having a centralized, easy-to-use hub for all related activities is essential for improving communication, reducing overheads, and ensuring transparency. An added bonus is that “it's less expensive than if we buy several different solutions”, explains Olivier.
“It's super important that you can filter, understand what you need to do, what is translated, what remains, that you can have a global overview of the statuses of all of your translations and that you can communicate about the context around each sentence that you need to translate.”
A convenient localization tool makes for a happy team
At the end of the day, it's about convenience for the team. Other tools didn't “provide the workflow to flag something as accurate or not or to create a task to send to the translator”, which are the central features welcomed by project managers and translators. Developers, on the other hand, appreciate that Lokalise is a robust solution that works the way it's supposed to. “The language support works great. The file format support is fantastic. And that's the most important for me,” highlights Olivier.
Plus, Lokalise's support of numerous formats, as well as being interpretative between them helps futureproof the translation work done and resources invested, because, as Olivier puts it, “technology changes and it's good if you can keep your translation in-between”.
Pix4D switched to Lokalise 3 years ago and haven't looked back. With plans to expand, add new languages, and translate more of their software, Pix4D is happy to have Lokalise to rely on.
“It's not our business to manage translations, our business is to provide the best photogrammetry software for drone mapping. Let Lokalise manage the translations for us.”
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