Translation & Localization Resources

The challenge

To connect with your global audience, you will need to speak their language. The key challenge here is to appoint translation resources that are sensitive to the technical and cultural nuances of the language used by your export markets.

Your aim

To identify and manage resources who will deliver tailored translation services for your website. This will help ensure that you speak to your customers in their language and harmonize your brand worldwide.

How to go about it

The localisation guidelines below show a systematic approach to the vendor on-boarding and management process.

Before you select a vendor, ask your team what is needed by considering these questions:

Languages

What are your target languages? Do you expect this language list to grow?

Volume

What’s your initial word count? How often will you submit new content?

Services

Which services do you need to match your content types, for example:

• Non-visible e.g. SEO metadata requiring light post-editing or less experienced resources

• Specialized e.g. legal, technical or medical requiring resources with industry expertise

• Highly visible, creative e.g. homepage images requiring creative resources, transcreation and offline processing

• Standard aka requiring standard resources and potentially a review

Timeline

What is your timeline according to the service you need and your volume of content?

Platform

What system will you use to create and house content, e.g. Wordpress?

These steps move from basic QA foundations towards more advanced, fully-developed program strategies.

Step 1: Bolster your team of translators

Whether you have an in-house team or work through a third party vendor to source translators, use the following as benchmarks to ensure that you’re set up for quality translations:

Use native speakers

For each language that you localize, source the mother tongue linguists to ensure quality translations.

Look for specialists when needed

If your content has specialized terminology e.g. related to products that are business to business, technical or industry-specific, look for linguists who have experience translating this content.

Give your translators the right resources

Make sure that they have product and locale-specific glossaries and style guides that are updated to relate to local-specific insights.

Step 2: Identify different types of content and their localisation priority

It’s unlikely that your QA process will review every single localized word. So, audit your localized content to identify its type and how you’d like to prioritize it in your review process.

Content Type	Definition	Examples	Review Priority
Branding/Marketing	Content that supports customer outreach and sales.	Website, sales collateral, marketing campaigns, taglines, call to actions	High This is typically your most visible content. It also targets potential and new customers who may have not yet built brand loyalty.
Legal	Content that notifies customers of legal requirements, contains legal agreements, or is required for compliance reasons	Privacy agreements, contracts, forms and other legal notices	High Mistranslation could cause legal issues for the company. Tip: Ideally reviewed, by translators with legal background and reviewed by legal team.
User interface/mobile app	User interface (UI) or application built by your company for clients	Proprietary dashboard or other UI, standalone mobile app	Varies Check traffic and usage metrics. The more visible your content is, the higher you should prioritize it for review.
Support	Content that helps customers troubleshoot issues on their own	Manuals, user guides, help centers	Varies Check the percentage of customers who use this content in each language and prioritize accordingly.

!!! tip 'Tip' If you have an app, make sure that you localize 5 key elements:

  * Name and description in the Google Play Store listing
  * In-App Purchase (IAP) product names and descriptions
  * App Campaign text
  * Images, video and audio
  * Server-based content

The challenge

The quality of your business’s offering should be consistent across all markets. This should filter through to the language you use to communicate your message. Once you have selected suitable third party vendors or in-house staff to provide translation services, how do you benchmark, streamline, and maintain this quality?

Your aim

To make sure that the quality of translation is benchmarked, streamlined, and maintained to ensure people receive a consistent service and your brand is consistent worldwide.

How to go about it

The localisation guidelines below show a systematic approach to quality assurance (QA) throughout your localisation programme.

First consider the scale of your localisation programme. Start by considering these questions:

• What translation resources and tools do we have?
• How will we source experienced translators and reviewers?
• Who will lead the localisation quality assurance process?

By completing the programme steps in this guide, you’ll have a broader idea of what kind of vendor is best for you. These steps move from basic vendor sourcing towards more advanced, fully-developed vendor management strategies.

Step 1: Research vendors

Do a Google search for translation services. Check out each vendor’s website, and consider the following:

• What services do they offer? Do they promote any services over others?
• Who are their clients? Are they mostly large, small or both?
• What experience do they have working with similar companies to yours?
• What languages does the vendor provide?
• Where is the company headquartered? Do they have anyone in your timezone?
• When was the company founded?
• Who founded the company? Do they have expertise in a certain market?
• Do they share any pricing information?

Step 2: Identify vendor services and types of vendors

Standard translation vendors usually offer translation, desktop publishing, quality verification and project management. These vendors come in two main types:

Single-language vendors (SLVs)

These offer services in a small subset of languages, typically one to a few regional languages. SLVs often cost less than multi-language vendors and are a good option if you want to localize content into only one to three regional languages.

Multi-language vendors (MLVs)

These offer global coverage and provide a one-stop shop for all localisation needs. MLVs can handle multiple projects across regions at the same time. They usually use a combination of SLVs, freelancers and full-time linguists to provide their services.

Step 3: Identify the type of vendor(s) you need

Consider the following to determine the type of vendor that you need. Bear in mind that you may need multiple SLVs or even multiple MLVs to complete your localisation work.

Regional expertise

An SLV may be more skilled at translations in certain regions.

Service specialization

Some vendors offer expertise in specializations e.g. creative marketing, transcreations, health content, legal etc.

Services offered

Certain vendors specialize in review services, content creation, testing, etc.

__Quality control--

If you want your content quality controlled, you may want to hire a second 'review vendor'. Think of quality control like having an editor review a writer’s work.

Scalability and risk mitigation

If you have a large volume with tight timelines, consider working with multiple vendors.

Step 4: Create a request for input (RFI)

• Briefly introduce your needs (content, services, volumes and languages) to a few vendors
• Collect information about their linguistic capabilities, such as:
  • Services and languages – a list of linguistic services, including speciality or expert areas
  • References – a list of two to three professional references, including contact information
  • Cost estimate – estimated cost per language and content type. Pricing is typically per word for translation, and per word or hourly for review

Step 5: Shortlist vendors

Determine which vendors best suit your localisation needs. Consider if they offer the services and languages your team requires. Also think about how interested they seem in working with you, for example how responsive they were during your initial scoping.

Step 6: Create a request for proposal (RFP)

Create a request for proposal (RFP) and send it to your shortlisted vendors. Your RFP should:

• Introduce your project – give an overview of your company, content and audiences
• Share your needs – your services, target languages, volume, expertise, timeline, etc
• Outline the information you need – what exactly are you expecting from your shortlisted vendors in their response?

Information you need from shortlisted vendors:

Vendor overview

This could include:

• Languages
• Sample clients
• Areas of expertise
• Location(s)
• Number of employees

Quality processes

This could include information about the vendor’s methodology, and the remediation process in case of issues.

Timelines

This could include information about turnaround time needs, and the process in case of timeline slippage missed deadlines.

Resources

This could include:

• Typical linguists’ background
• Number of linguists employed or contracted by the vendor
• Location of linguists
• Training provided
• Performance management
• How they assign their supplier costs

Organisation support

This could include information about your points of contact, including if you’ll have a dedicated project manager and what timezone they are in.

Systems

This could include:

• What platforms they use
• File types supported
• If they provide support for integrating with your platforms
• If you’ll need to dedicate resources on your end
• If they charge for integration

Cost estimate

You could:

• Ask for the cost per word / language / content type
• Check if they provide discounts for using Translation Memory software
• Ask if there are any additional costs e.g. in project management, post-processing, review, etc

Step 7: Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) for contract with selected vendor(s)

You’ll need a contract for any vendor that you choose to work with. Include services and KPIs in your contract so that you can hold your localisation team accountable to certain standards. Use the following KPIs as a starting point and identify improvements over time.

Linguistic quality KPIs

• Compliance – follow style guide requirements and project instructions
• Grammar – use correct grammar for target language
• Punctuation / spelling – follow language standards and style guide
• Meaning – convey meaning intended in the original source content
• Terminology – use preferred translations in glossary, style guide and translation memory
• Understanding – write content that native speakers can easily understand
• Standards – agree on an “error rate” criteria. Standards should be per project, or per word (such as per 1k words)

Note: Use a separate vendor to measure linguistic quality, if you or the translation vendor do not have resources who can objectively evaluate it.

On-time delivery KPIs

• Standards: Agree 'on-time' criteria. Standards should be either per project (if only one project), or per word (if work will be ongoing).

Step 8: Establish effective communication to maximize vendor support

The way you communicate with localisation vendors should match your work scope. Use the following guidance for initial communication through to post-project communication:

Initial

• Ask the vendor to track and share key details about your project: start date, status, due date, etc.

• Establish an initial meeting. Use syncs to share updates, and identify and address concerns.

• Manage quality expectations. Discuss your needs and expectations with vendors. Update established standards as needed.

• Create linguistic references. Provide explicit references to convey your linguistic preferences e.g. screenshots, style guides, glossaries, etc.

Ongoing

• Alert vendor to quality issues immediately. Be sure to highlight issues, clarify quality standards, and follow up on resolution.

• Call out updates. Discuss updates to your style guide, glossary, QA process, etc.

• Identify continuous improvement opportunities. Share best practices. Communicate observations and recommendations.

• Respond to vendor questions in time. Provide clear information and share resources and tools as you see fit.

Post-project

• Provide feedback to vendors. Let them know what worked well and where to improve for next time.

The above vendor management guidelines can help you select and manage vendors that deliver the quality translations your audience deserves.

Step 1: Build your content QA process

The optimal QA process covers two key checkpoints:

a. Linguistic review

Ensure that the translation conveys the same key points as the source content. Check that the terminology is consistent and matches your glossary, and that correct fonts are used per style guide, etc.

How you set up your process will depend on the volume of localisation projects. For example:

One-time localisation

A native speaker reviews the translation, ideally within a computer-assisted translation (CAT) tool, so that future reviewers benefit from their work.

Low-to-medium volume

The vendor provides both translations and final content review. Translations and reviews are completed in a CAT tool. This will help future linguists to learn from each project and use previous translations for the same content.

Continuous localisation needs

Your vendor uses a CAT tool to coordinate the localisation workflow and build a history – or “translation memory” of past projects. Specialized reviewers provide feedback on each localisation project, and scores are tracked to identify systematic improvements and grade translators’ performance. From time to time bring linguists on site to better understand your business and content needs.

b. Technical validation

Execute the code for a localized version of your website or app to ensure that the copy renders correctly. Check how content looks across screens on desktop and mobile devices. The goal is to catch errors before the localized version of your website or app is pushed to customers.

Step 2: Measure your localisation quality against key performance indicators (KPIs)

You can measure and track how your localisation program is working. Use the following key performance indicators as a starting point and to identify improvements over time.

For example, if your visitor conversion percentage is low in a market, deep dive into your translation quality for that region and connect with native speakers to gather feedback on content.

Linguistic KPIs	• Readability/style/tone • Compliance • Meaning • Grammar • Punctuation/spelling • Terminology
Impact KPIs	• New customers acquired in markets • Website traffic (by country and language) • Visitor conversion percentage • Market share percentage • Translation ROI percentage

With the above quality management guidelines in mind, your next step is to choose the staff who will bring your content to life in multiple languages.