Cooking up localization success with product teams – recipe book inside

We believe localization is a lot like making a gourmet meal. It’s not easy. 

That’s why we created The Lokalise Kitchen. To help other ‘cooks’ in the biz learn from those who have already mastered the art of localization.

We asked our master chefs (our customers and partners❣️) for their winning recipes and ingredients for launching quality global products and content on time. 

We also asked them about their localization journey – the good, the bad, and the ugly. Which recipes failed, what they learned, and advice for those starting out on their localization journey.

In this article, we’ve unpacked a handful of recipes and ingredients from The Lokalise kitchen to help your business thrive in new markets while delivering authentic local experiences to your customers.First up…

Ingredients recommended by our product-focused partners

Apart from translation management system (TMS), where teams, tools, and processes come together to serve five-star multilingual products on time, our partners Ditto, Hygraph, and Storyblok recommend a few other essential ingredients for a localization kitchen that runs smoothly.

Now over to the recipes from our seasoned localization product managers, engineers, and designers.

Recipes for localization success

Take a look at these recipes from our customers, from product managers to developers at companies like Life360, Kinto, and Navan. 

Design-driven localization infused with style guides

Joaquin Munoz, Localization Product Manager at Life360, shares his recipe for a flexible localization process that’s easy to implement.

Joaquin’s recipe in six steps:

1. Define all your deliverables, the teams you’re working with, points of contact(s), and what your dependencies are
2. Once you break that down, you have the type of file formats or different connectors you need to service different teams (for example: Figma import for design-driven localization)
3. Automate processes to take away the manual work
4. Add two major ingredients: your tools vendor and your LSP (language service provider)

“You’re going to want to have two major things in place and that is going to be your tools vendor and your LSP, your language service provider. Those are going to be your go-tos and absolutely unequivocally, your closest partners in making things happen and having your best quality.”

5. Create a glossary and style guide for every language that you’re going to support
6. Have a point of contact representing each stakeholder team and empower them for self-service on their respective localization kits, so they can request translation for their components independently with the Localization team CC’d, only needing to step in when guidance or queries are needed. 

The secret ingredient? A variety of technologies that give you the flexibility to adapt localization for different projects and get it done quickly.

Fast and smooth software localization

For Samuel and his team, speed is essential when it comes to releasing new products and features in multiple languages. With a good process, software localization is rather smooth:

“The fundamental thing is to make the translation and localization process as frictionless as possible so that we can avoid stopping developers from releasing new features and functionalities.” – Samuel Vrech, Software Engineer at Confirm.

Here’s Samuel’s localization recipe in five steps:

1. Integrate with GitHub and send a pull request to import content to Lokalise as soon as a new feature is in developement
2. Automatically assign tasks to Lokalise AI for a preliminary round of content in all the languages requested
3. Pull the preliminary translations back to GitHub
4. Do a quick manual QA check, which includes automations to spot syntax errors like malformed placeholders, tags, etc
5. Go to production, then make another pull request to pull in the updated translations after the product has gone live

The secret ingredient? Automations that remove the hassle and increase developer productivity.

“It’s like they don’t even know they’re localizing”. Whenever something is written in plain English, it’s automatically transformed.

Instant mobile app localization

Oskars Grins, Mobile Application Project Manager at airBaltic, shares his recipe for localizing a mobile app from scratch. 

Key steps include:

1. Add the texts needed for your app in Figma as you go.
2. Ask your copywriter to review ideas and refine copy if it’s high-impact, otherwise, send it straight to translators. Note: If it’s just one button, then there probably won’t be an issue. 
3. Assign tasks to translators automatically once they are ready for translation by setting up automations. You can also include an expected turnaround time.
4. Review the analytics dashboard to get an overview of task progress, if tasks are overdue, and translation costs.

The secret ingredient? Over-the-air translations for quick updates without the app store hassle.  

A perfectly baked localization strategy

For Paula Fernandez Quesada and her team, localization runs a lot smoother and cooks are a lot happier with a localization strategy in place.

Here’s what Paula’s recipe includes:

1. Insert yourself within different teams and ask questions about the tools they need to localize more efficiently
2. Make sure each team’s localization needs are met and that localization fits within their structure
3. Educate teams about localization by automating answers to common questions on Slack, like the best way for developers to import translation strings to Lokalise.
4. Decide who needs access to which projects in your translation management system by asking what they need access to and why. Then use permission management capabilities to easily control access to projects, languages, tasks, and more. 
5. Add translators to the mix by inviting them to Lokalise
6. Automate content imports and exports, notifications, and localization/translation queries.

The secret ingredient? A smooth localization process that doesn’t disrupt the backend.

Design-Led App Localization for Seamless UX

Guthrie and his team usually start by sitting down together to craft the content for apps in the base language. Only then can they start adapting apps into other languages. 

“If you don’t get your UX copywriting right, you definitely won’t get your translations and localization right.”

Here’s Gutherie’s recipe for design-led localization:

1. Set up a design-led localization process, where the Design Lead for each product owns the copy.
2. Create a simple key naming formula where the names of keys also tell you a bit about what part of the experience the copy is for.
3. Ask a UX writer to craft copy in the base language and set up weekly workshops to review the screens with the copy. Highlight anything that’s unclear from a UX perspective.
4. Push translations through Lokalise AI then send them to a native UX writer to review and edit. 
5. Do user research to review copy. Send out prototypes and test different words, phrases.
6. Implement changes based on user feedback

The secret ingredient? A clear taxonomy for translation keys that makes it easy for designers to take the lead.

🔥 Localization recipe fails to watch out for

Before you go, here are some localization faux pas and recipe fails that our localization masterchefs have experienced – and tips on how to overcome them.

Poor internationalization

One of the big pitfalls in localization is poor internationalization. 

What’s helped Life360 internationalize its product better is having a style guide and glossary integrated with Lokalise TMS. Design-stage localization has also helped the team better prep their UX and code.

“ A design driven approach is inextricably linked to good localization” 

Time-consuming manual work

Back-end teams often import and export translation files manually. Not only is this tedious and time-consuming, not to mention a waste of developer resources, it’s also ineffective when it comes to communication with other stakeholders, as Paula from Navan found out. 

Developers were uploading files and expecting them to be picked up for translation. But Paula would only find out about new translation files once engineers reached out asking why they haven’t been translated. 

To avoid these time-consuming and manual processes, set up automations to automatically import content and notify the right people when they’re ready for translation. This makes the whole process easier for everyone.

Unclear key taxonomies

When dealing with apps, you often have buttons with a single word. 

For example, ‘start’ as a verb in ‘start your journey’ or start as a noun in ‘the start of your booking’. 

If you only have one key for ‘start’, there will be some confusion about how to translate the word. In Italian, there are two very different words for start, depending on the context, whether it’s a noun or a verb. So, not only do you need two keys, you need to name keys in a way that’s obvious, like putting ‘noun’ or ‘verb’ at the end of the key name. 

Lack of context for translators

Without context translators are more likely to make errors, especially when it comes to complex products and industry-specific terminology.

That’s why screenshots and key tagging are essential. This lets you see which key goes where on an image. You can also open a single image and see all the keys attached to it. It’s a lot easier for translators to translate when they see the full context, which also means fewer mistakes.

Conclusion

Whether you’re looking to streamline your localization workflows, deliver lightning-fast mobile app updates, or create a design-driven user experience, these recipes from the Lokalise Kitchen will help you on your way.