January 23, 2020 |
New year, new translation and localization projects. If you have expansion plans for 2020, it’s time to think seriously about a strategy. You can start by analyzing what’s worked well in the past and identifying which elements to adjust for improved ROI.
Some new year localization resolutions can also help you avoid past mistakes and improve the results of your multilingual projects.
By making localization resolutions (and sticking to them!), you’ll see a better return on your investment. Let’s take a look at the main ones below.
If you were busy and buried in work last year, you probably missed all the occasions to provide feedback to your translators and localization experts. Just because you approve their work and things move on as planned doesn’t mean it will always be the case.
Feedback is essential if you’re looking to get higher levels of performance from your team. Without proper feedback, people will feel less motivated to put their best skills to work. Moreover, without any reaction from you, they may naturally think there’s no need for change or improvement.
You don’t have to send personal emails to every translator and linguist working for you. Call the project manager and find the most effective ways to communicate feedback regularly. The project manager knows when and how to deliver the message to the team.
The beginning of a new year is the perfect time for catching up on unfinished work. So, make sure that you include your missed deadlines among your localization resolutions this year.
Before you jump into new localization projects, take the time to go through any unfinished business. Depending on how you have worked in the past, you might need a few days or a couple of weeks to put everything in order.
This step is necessary to ensure you don’t start a new project when you’re already loaded with work from unfinished jobs. It will slow you down, create confusion among new translation teams, and make you miss even more deadlines. All this naturally affects your budget and overall productivity.
As you probably now, expansion plans should follow market trends. So, based on your past performance, identify the most lucrative geographical regions before moving to the next batch of languages to localize for.
If your market analysis is getting old, make sure that the data you have is still relevant to the industry. Any report that is older than two years should be updated to match the current state of the market. Look for new entrants, demographic changes in your target audience, modifications to the law, and any other detail that can influence your bottom line.
The ultimate goal is to prioritize languages and geographical regions to increase the cost-efficiency of your localization project.
Most companies tend to focus on the results of the project and ignore the overall costs of translation and localization. Over time, this leads to unrealistic budgets that don’t reflect the correct amount of resources necessary to carry out such complex projects.
As you put another year behind you, it’s essential that you go through your past expenses. Try to identify how much you spent on localization last year, for example. Make sure you include all the costs (internal and external) to get an accurate image of your project.
This in-depth analysis enables you to keep control of how your resources are distributed between various teams. Furthermore, it reveals where you’re overspending, how much you can save, or whether you might have to recalculate your budget.
Analyzing previous costs allows you to set the right budget for next localization projects so that you don’t over-stretch yourself.
Besides cost evaluation, your localization resolutions for 2020 should also include some thoughts toward the technology you use. Challenge your project managers to carry out a performance analysis and see whether your tools and software are still relevant, or if you should invest in new ones.
The language industry and technology go hand in hand, and upgraded solutions are continuously introduced on the market. Keeping up with the news in the industry can increase the productivity of your translators while allowing you to cut translation costs.
Translation and localization projects are dynamic and involve people from different countries and time zones. The outcome depends on how they manage to communicate with you and with each other.
Make sure you have the right tools in place to ensure effective communication at all times. Ideally, you’ll have everyone working in one place, on a single platform that supports all files and formats.
If you have bottlenecks anywhere in your workflow, make solving them your top localization resolution this year. This way, you make sure everyone’s on the same page and all the people you pay work together and have the same goals. See it as an investment to increase productivity and improve the quality of your localization work.
Testing is crucial in localization projects. If you missed this step here and there last year, you should change your strategy. Launching websites, video games, apps, or any other product in a foreign country without proper testing is like driving blindfolded. You never know what’s going to happen, and it’s not worth the risk.
While it may seem like you’re cutting costs or saving precious time, this is only an illusion. Many errors are discovered and fixed in the testing phase. This ensures better user experience, increased trust, and higher chances of having an excellent product in local markets.
Make 2020 the year for testing before going live, as part of your strategy to improve your performance.
These localization resolutions are meant to help companies, translators, and language service providers to maintain high standards for their translation and localization projects. You can never be too ready or prepared to face new challenges. Adopt the ones that can add value to your business and stick to them for as long as possible.