Five localisation strategy tips to help your business succeed overseas

Localisation strategy is one of the things often overlooked by small and medium business owners.  When a company enters a foreign market for the first time, many are surprised that it’s simply not possible to translate 100,000 words of user documentation in just two weeks without prior project preparation, and keep language quality that would fit the language purpose. At this point some executives start searching for the best localisation strategy on-the-go, changing vendors or trying to build an in-house process from scratch. 

Localisation processes rarely run well when it is left to trial and error. On the contrary, successful localisation of a product or service requires a strategy that is built well in advance.

Here are five tips to build out a successful localisation strategy. 

Building a localisation strategy

1. Ensure your product is 100% ready for internationalisation

   Even though this might sound obvious, don’t underestimate this part.

   The readiness for internationalisation plays a crucial part in overseas success, especially when it comes to software or app localisation. Before launching a product overseas, make sure it is designed with a global audience in mind, which means it has clear intuitive UI and translatable content.

   It is also a great idea to perform an audit of your software to detect any issues that might impact localisation such as:

   • Does your app support different alphabets including those read from right to left like Arabic and Hebrew?
   • Does the content have all the code removed from it, leaving just the pure text?
   • Have you exported your content to standard-based file formats such as XML or XLIFF? 

   Invest some time in laying the foundations for your localisation properly to ensure its scalability, as fixing poorly internationalised products post-factum can result in big revenue losses. 

2. Choose your localisation setup

   In-house or outsource? Think of this strategic decision in advance. Setting up an in-house localisation team is a good idea for companies producing highly specialised products that will require constant exchange between translators and developers.

   However, when the product complexity allows to outsource localisation and translation services to a reliable vendor, this might help you optimise the workflow and save costs, especially if your company is planning to enter multiple international markets in a short time. 

3. Plan a quality control approach

   When choosing the right localisation method for your business, it’s also important to consider quality control: appoint someone at your company who will oversee the translation on a permanent basis, and make sure that this person coordinates both localisation managers, and all internal departments.

   Don’t hesitate to have your local staff overseas check and approve your translated content — especially when you’re just getting started in a foreign market and the last thing you want to do is to make a cultural faux pas.

4. Consider terminology management as early as possible

   Standardising your product terminology from the very beginning is a very small investment with a very large pay-off. Having a glossary or a database with key terms that you can hand over to linguists can save a lot of time and make sure that your internally defined corporate language is applied consistently throughout the company and that your brand image remains true to who you are, even in other countries.

5. Integrate process automation tools and formats that work on all markets

   It’s a common misconception that the work in localisation is nearly limited to the translation process itself. In fact, it also involves file management, terminology management, quality assurance, AI-based translation systems, and much, much more than that.

   That’s why to prepare your product for scaling internationally you’ll need a powerful translation management system (TMS). Plus, connectors and APIs that allow you to network all the components in the translation workflow across different markets and departments and make sure that as much of the process as possible is automated. 

Your product is your baby and bringing it overseas for the first time is always thrilling, no matter if this expansion comes as a result of a successful funding round or steady, step-by-step growth in the domestic market. Having an action plan in your pocket will optimise your budget and protect you from unnecessary stress, and choosing the right combination of machine translation tools and human expert quality check can make the localisation process an easy and affordable journey for your team.