Gengo - Business Insights

How to Improve Your Internationalization Speed: An Interview with Lang Co-founders Eric Yu and Peter Zhou

Gengo — Fri, 02 Aug 2019 01:00:19 +0000

Eric Yu and Peter Zhou are the co-founders of Lang, a YCombinator startup focused on simplifying internationalization. With combined experience from Facebook, Instagram, and Atrium, Eric and Peter’s developer-focused approach aims to make internationalization possible for businesses of all sizes. Our discussion explored the major pain points that Eric and Peter experienced in their previous internationalization work, before diving into the technology that Lang is building to achieve their mission. For more expert insight into the world of localization, check out the rest of our interview series here. Gengo: How did you become involved in the internationalization business? Eric: Before we started Lang, Peter and I had both worked closely with Facebook’s internationalization infrastructure. Although Facebook streamlined the experience for developers, it was still painful to manage your own translations and wait for them to be completed before releasing features. Later, we met Abhi, who built the internationalization stack from scratch for his old company. We bonded over our shared pain points, and decided to make something better! G: Where did the idea for Lang come from and which common localization problems does your software primarily try to solve? Peter: We believe engineering cost is one of the biggest pain points when localizing an app. Anyone who has re-engineered their codebase to support multiple languages probably understands that the process is very time-consuming.

There are many solutions to source translations quickly, but no developer-focused tool to streamline and automate the process end-to-end.

We built Lang to turn a months-long process into a 30-minute one. We’re working on getting companies translated as fast as possible with minimal developer time, but we’re tackling an even bigger problem. The biggest problem with internationalization is the tax on developer speed that ensues after launching in other countries. Developers now need to wait for translations, perform multiple stages of QA, and handle data differently. We’re handling one piece of the problem right now, but ultimately want to alleviate all the pain points. G: How does Lang work, and which platforms do you currently support? E: The core of Lang is the command-line interface (CLI). Using our CLI, developers can manage, request, and receive translations by entering one line into their terminal. All devs need to do is mark the phrases in their code that they want to translate with a special function called “tr.” Under the hood, we find all the “tr” marks in their code, automatically request new translations, and pull in the completed translations from our human translators. Larger companies spend months building this infrastructure and integrating with translation services. Currently we only support JavaScript-based apps, but we want to bring this to everybody. G: You’ve chosen to integrate with Gengo to provide the human translation behind Lang’s software. What were your reasons for doing this and how will this decision benefit your customers? P: After looking at all the available translation services, Gengo was by far the simplest and easiest service to integrate with. We could tell the Gengo team spent a ton of time thinking about the developer experience, and, as a dev tool ourselves, we couldn’t think of a better service to work with. For our customers, this means human translations delivered in half the average market turnaround time, and the best possible pricing so our customers can focus on launching and not finance. G: There are a huge range of tools that aim to help businesses with their localization needs. How does Lang differ from its competitors, and which new ideas do you bring to the table that excite you the most? E: Lang is the first localization tool that prioritizes reducing engineering overhead. Our onboarding gets any team set up in 30 minutes, and then the workflow fits seamlessly into any startup’s process.

We’re most excited about unlocking the startup market, and getting smaller companies to international users earlier and faster.

We think of ourselves as the Stripe for internationalization. Ultimately, we want to change the industry’s behavior towards internationalization. Currently, people see it as a huge risk, resulting in either massive growth or tremendous cost to their business. We see it as a cheap, natural benefit for every company. In the future, it should be a bug to have an app only available in English. G: What further capabilities do you plan to add to your software? P: We’re thinking of two major features at the moment. Currently we only translate texts stored in the codebase, but our customers want us to translate the dynamic content that their users create. This is a huge problem, and we’re excited to dive deeper into it. In addition, one of the most common problems for developers after translating an app is the layout being broken. German words are far longer than English ones, and many companies completely redesign their apps so they beautifully support both languages. This is another tough challenge to fix, but we’re taking our first steps to help customers address these problems. G: More generally, how do you see the localization space developing in the future? P: The emerging market is massive. It’s growing quickly. The English-speaking Internet is saturated, and demand for translation services and tooling will only increase in the future. We’re excited about AI further decreasing translation costs so that more people can have access to cheap, quality translations. The world will become more connected, and we’re excited to help people across all ethnicities, borders, and differences communicate better. G: Finally, do you have any advice for anyone looking to internationalize their app or website? E: Take into account your developer’s time! Internationalization looks like a simple process at first, but it takes a lot of time to set up properly. Also, we’ve learned that the real cost of internationalization comes after you’ve translated everything. Maintaining a multilingual app requires QA, tests, and continuous localization. It’s a huge tax on developers, preventing them from shipping features quickly. If you want to know how Lang can help, just shoot me an email at eric@langapi.co!

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How to Prepare Your App for Localization

Gengo — Fri, 14 Jun 2019 02:44:36 +0000

The time has come and your product manager has asked you to start preparing your old app for internationalization (i18n) support. The requirements are written with one line: “Add support for multiple locales”. You are starting to sweat and begin to have heart palpitations. How can we do that now, after years of working in this chaotic codebase? No reason to panic! This guide will show you in short, simple steps, how to prepare your app for localization (l10n). In the end, you will not only find yourself in a better position to work but will also have satisfied the management’s instructions.

Laying the Groundwork for Localization

Preparing an application for localization is not typically a simple process, but we can make it easier if we follow certain best practices. If you have a large application that has not accommodated any sort of i18n support without any framework, then we have a road ahead of us. However, if we use a library such as React or frameworks like Angular, then we are in a slightly better position. In either case, we should sit down and evaluate the changes required and how to best accomplish them without breaking stuff. We should first start with the current project and its status. Let’s see the different cases:

Project Is in Planning Status

If the project hasn’t started yet, then the design decisions are easier. Depending on the chosen framework or library you plan to use, you can find appropriate i18n libraries and start integrating them from the beginning. For example, we have the best libraries for React i18n or similarly, the best i18n libraries for Angular. Make sure you choose one and follow the instructions on how to set it up during the initial stages of development carefully.

Project Is Launched but Few Customers Are Using It

If the project is in production but still in the early stages, we may be also in a good position. As the codebase might be small, it would be easier to add an i18n library and translation strings in one go without a lot of changes.

Project is Launched With Customers Using it

If the project is in production but has a large codebase, and the customers have been using it for a long time, then things might get tricky. A change as invasive as adding i18n and l10n support to an app will not be trivial to handle. It is recommended to do gradual releases to the app – or regional updates – so that only a certain percentage of the users get affected in case of mishaps. For example, you could first release the project with the instances of the translatable messages replaced to handle the default locale. For the users, they won’t see any difference but you would have done the first step. Then you can gradually add locales on each release so that you will have time to react. What’s important to have in mind is that ideally, you should have a way to add new translations without redeploying the application so that you can correct any mistakes without any disruptions.

Mapping Out the Preparation Steps

Now that we have established the general direction forward, we can describe the steps in detail.

Find Translators

Before you embark on the process of localizing your app, you need to invest in the most important asset: finding quality and affordable translation services. This is so you can fit the content with the website or application you want to deliver and make sure that the text displays correctly. You will also need to set up a good relationship with new translators – and finding ones that fit your purposes may take some time. In our case, we have the guarantees of Gengo which offer quality translations within hours, backed up by a team of professional translators. They also offer specialized translation services for most of the commercial platforms such as Magento, WordPress or YouTube as well as a cool API for developer usage.

Get a Translation Management System (TMS)

The next most important step is to find a system that will manage the translated content and any sort of localized material. You may resent this thought believing you may not need it, but we recommend you to give it consideration. Localizing a commercial application is not simply writing some JSON files and letting the application use them. Those are datasets that need to be stored and tracked in a system so that they can be referenced in the future or kept under change control. After all, you need to be thinking of the future savings and benefits of having a managed system for translations. If you are looking a solid, reliable and developer friendly TMS, consider giving Phrase a try. It offers all the good stuff that your project team will need for working with translations. For example, it has a really well-documented API and a CLI tool that works like Git. You can pull and push translation keys to the cloud and manage them via ITS Dashboard. It also supports tons of formats for any kind of framework. Working with it means that you never have to worry about missing keys or any impediments in your translation workflow.

Install a Library of Your Choice

It’s now time to choose a suitable i18n library. Generally, here we have to evaluate based on several criteria. For example, we can assess how easy it is to add the library to the existing code, how efficient it is to run, if there is community support or if it offers support for plurals and additional context. We also need to change the user locale while maintaining a good SEO strategy, for example, building semantic links and ideally making the translations available at runtime for better flexibility. We suggest taking your time to try out all the libraries as proof of concepts to see how they fit into your workflow.

Integrate

Finally, you need to push the button and start adding localized content. At this stage, it’s important to work with automation to remove any need for manual tasks. For example, using the Phrase Strings API with the provided library of choice might be the best option, as you won’t have to write error-prone bash scripts. You can add CI/CD pipeline steps to automatically synchronize any translations from the cloud without even touching the command line. This will give you greatest flexibility possible, and greatly simplify your everyday operations.

Wrapping It Up

Preparing an app for localization is not an intimidating process. It involves methodical and careful steps to ensure that we have all the necessary translation services, tools and automated tasks in place before we integrate them. After all, the improvement of each product is in our hands, and we have a responsibility to deliver the best relevant content for our customers.

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How Long Does Translation Take?

Gengo — Thu, 28 Mar 2019 04:50:00 +0000

There are a lot of wild estimates for translation project timelines floating around on the Internet. Many of them are based primarily on the number of words that a given translator can translate in a single sitting, with estimates ranging from 1,500 to 3,000 words a day. Unfortunately, the reality is that translation turnaround time is affected by a complex mix of factors, where the speed of the translator is only one piece of the puzzle. However, that doesn’t mean that your translation will take weeks to complete. In fact, there are plenty of things that you can do when ordering a translation to ensure that your project is completed both quickly and to a high standard. In this article, we’ll explore some of the major factors that influence turnaround time, before laying out some advice for how to avoid delays. Finally, we’ll outline some average turnaround times for a variety of different types of translation projects. Let’s begin!

5 Factors that Affect Translation Turnaround Time

Translation can be a surprisingly complex process, filled with hidden obstacles and potential delays. Below are just a few of the things that are likely to have a big influence on how long it takes to complete your project:

Size of Project: It should come as very little surprise that the larger your volume, the longer it will take to complete your project. As the size and scope of a project increases, the need for multiple translators also becomes more likely. This in turn makes rigorous quality checks necessary. Ensuring that multiple translators have a consistent output could have an additional impact on your timeline.
Complexity of Project: Some documents require a greater level of expertise to translate than others. If your project contains a lot of technical words, abbreviations, or in-depth explanations, your translator will need time to research them. Similarly, medical or legal documents often demand an extended timeline.
Specialism: Different agencies have different strengths. A mismatch between project and translator can cause significant delays. To give an extreme example, asking a single freelancer to translate an entire ecommerce website would take months longer than asking a crowdsourcing agency to do the same thing. Similarly, translators who specialize in certain types of projects will be able to complete them at a faster rate.
Level of Repetition: If a document frequently uses the same words or phrases, it will require less effort and time to translate that document. In fact, there is a whole range of software available to translators that is built around recognizing these repetitions. If an effort is made to ensure consistency of terminology, a high level of repetition can result in a quick turnaround time.
Access to Translation Tools: Certain agencies will employ translation tools or other forms of technology to reduce the amount of work that a translator has to do. For example, access to approved glossaries or spellcheck can significantly reduce a translator’s workload, as well as ensuring a greater level of consistency across longer projects. All of these mechanisms can knock valuable hours off your project’s timeline.

How to Reduce your Translation Turnaround Time

It may initially seem that your project’s delivery date is entirely at the mercy of your chosen translator. Fortunately, there are several things that you can do to ensure that your project doesn’t have any unnecessary delays. By employing these helpful tips, you’ll free up your translator to concentrate on doing their best work – and slash your delivery times in the process.

Choose your translators carefully: It goes without saying that you should select your partners with care. However, when it comes to delivery times, an extra layer of scrutiny can save you days. When you investigate your potential translators, be sure to ask about their quality assessment process, how many translators will be working on your project, and what their specialism is. If all of this sounds a little daunting, check out our previous article on the best platforms to find translators for more information.
Confirm your translator’s start date: It’s particularly important to assess how quickly that translator will be able to begin work on your project. In fact, the time it takes to find an unassigned translator is one of the most significant causes of delays. After all, if your documents simply go to the bottom of an in-tray, it could add days or even weeks to your schedule. Before selecting your translation partner, assess whether they excel at minimizing this delay or whether they can give you some concrete guarantees about a start date. It could save you a significant amount of time and money.
Add context to your order: A detailed explanation can save you time in multiple ways. From simply including relevant pictures to supplying a glossary of specific translations, there is a lot that you can do in the preparation stage to make your content easier to comprehend. Not only will this make translators more willing to pick up your project, but it will also ensure that crucial pieces of the text are translated right first time.
Set up communication channels: One of the biggest causes of delays in projects occurs when a translator is unable to resolve a question quickly. While translators should use their best judgement when stuck, prompt communication will always help them to complete your translation more quickly. This can be done either through simple email or, in the case of a company like Gengo, through the actual translation platform itself.

Average Translation Turnaround Times

Quality should always triumph over speed when it comes to translation. After all, translation is a complicated business, where guarantees on time can come at the expense of accuracy. However, sometimes it’s helpful to have a ballpark figure to aim for when planning out your translation project. With that in mind, we at Gengo have compiled some average turnaround times for a variety of translation tasks, drawn from over a decade of experience in the industry. We hope that they enable you to set realistic expectations and have fruitful discussions with your translator of choice.

Project	Word Count	Average Turnaround Time
Personal letter	1,000	4-24 hours
Website article	1,000	4-24 hours
White paper	5,000	2-3 days
Series of blog posts	10,000	1 week
Corporate website localization (small to medium scale)	20,000	2 weeks
Technical user manual	35,000	1 month
Book	80,000	2+ months
Large product database	100,000+	2-3 months

Still not sure what to expect? Contact us to discuss your translation needs. With over a decade of experience in translating between 37 languages, we can ensure that you receive a quality translation at a competitive ROI.

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The best LinkedIn groups for localization managers to join

Gengo — Fri, 08 Mar 2019 05:21:22 +0000

What are LinkedIn Groups?

LinkedIn is a recruitment and social networking site where members can connect with their colleagues and other professionals in the same industry. LinkedIn groups are one feature that helps users find professionals to connect with and discuss the latest business trends. Here are the best LinkedIn groups that we recommend for localization managers. If you haven’t already, check out Gengo’s LinkedIn page too and follow us for the latest translation and localization industry news.

LinkedIn Groups for Localization Managers

Localization Professional (31,000+ members): This is a LinkedIn group for translation, localization, and globalization professionals to expand their network and ideas. Find new colleagues, share information, and discuss the latest translation and localization news here.
SMAP Interpretation, Translation & Localization (6,600+ members): This is a LinkedIn group for localization managers, project managers, writers, translators, and editors. Let’s connect people and companies working in translation and localization, and discuss best practices, trends, and issues.
Translation Management Systems (TMS) (5,400+ members): In this LinkedIn group, you’ll find the latest news and thought leadership related to translation management system technologies. The group should be a useful resource, and all conversations are moderated and require review.
Certified Translation Professional Group (33,000+ members): This LinkedIn group was established by the Global Translation Institute in 2009 to provide tools and training to professional translators, and people looking to enter the translation and localization industry. The Global Translation Institute is an industry association which has over 29,000 members globally from over 50 countries and is the sponsor of the CTP certificate program.

Looking to connect with more localization professionals on LinkedIn? Check out these 6 best LinkedIn bloggers in the translation and localization industry.

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Introducing the best online translation services

Gengo — Wed, 27 Feb 2019 07:32:06 +0000

Are you looking for an online translation service? Here are the best online translation services that can quickly and accurately translate your content in any format. Whether you’re looking to translate social media posts or complicated medical reports, the following online translation services have got you covered.

Online translation services

Day Translations is an online translation service that supports over 100 languages (see the full list of available languages here). You can get a free quote from Day Translations within 10 minutes by filling out their form here. Gengo supports 35+ languages and 70+ language combinations (see the full list of available languages here). Standard translation tasks start at $0.06 per word, and advanced translation tasks start at $0.12 per word. The customer satisfaction rating across all translation jobs is 97.6%. Translation jobs are completed as quickly as 15 minutes for short requests. One Hour Translation supports 95+ languages, starting at $0.087 per word for business translation and $0.144 per word for expert translation. Small translation projects are usually completed under an hour, and large-scale projects are usually completed within a few days. Lionbridge is a 20-year-old online translation service with a lot of experience. They now translate 273 million units per month, including highly technical content such as clinical trial translations, financial reports, and e-discovery. Textmaster supports over 50 languages, starting at €0.08 per word for translation, €0.12 for enterprise translation, and €0.16 for expert translation. They average a 24 hour turnaround time, and maintain a 98% customer satisfaction rate. Transifex is a web-based translation and globalization management platform. Their pricing plan includes five different subscription options, ranging from the starter plan at $139 per month, to pro plan at $1,549 per month. Unbabel is an artificial intelligence powered human translation platform, using both machine and huma translation. Their pricing plan is subscription-based, and fees depend on the content type and volume that you are translating.

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19 Upcoming Translation & Localization Industry Events in 2019

Gengo — Tue, 25 Dec 2018 15:00:00 +0000

With 2019 right around the corner, it’s time to start thinking about your translation and localization event schedule. To help you out, we’ve gathered a list of global language industry events and conferences to attend in the new year. Gengo is also planning to attend some of these events, so we’d love to see you there!

Conference	Description	Location	Date
ALC UNConference	An event without presentations or speakers, ALC UNConference is a more casual event limited to senior staff at language service companies to promote active participation and thought-provoking discussion.	Huntington Beach, CA, USA	January 17~19, 2018
Translation Technology Round Table	A two-day event by The Localization Institute to promote a better understanding of translation technology integration solutions for buyers, suppliers, and everyday hands-on users.	Boulder, CO, USA	January 24~25, 2018
Lenguas 2019	The biennial event conference brings professional interpreters and translators together to address topics such as best practices, market trends and continuing education.	Mexico City, Mexico	January 24~26, 2018
AITCO 2019	The first ever Africa International Translation Conference will provide networking opportunities including the opportunity to learn from and meet the major figures in translation from across the world.	Nairobi, Kenya	February 8~9, 2019
Together	The event is intended to strengthen the language industry by bringing language service companies and freelance translators in a positive, collaborative environment.	Barcelona, Spain	February 21~22, 2019
LocWorld39 – Kuala Lumpur	The conference focuses on international business, translation, localization and global website management. Attendees include the people responsible for communicating across the boundaries of language and culture in the global marketplace.	Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia	February 27~28, 2019
GALA 2019	With the theme “The Changing Role of the Human Being in an AI-driven Language Service Industry,” GALA brings the global content delivery community together, including providers of language services, managers of global content and language technology developers.	Munich, Germany	March 24~27, 2019
TAUS Global Content Summit San Francisco	This one day summit focuses on a variety of themes including machine translation and machine learning to the design of modern translation pipelines.	San Francisco, CA, USA	March 28, 2019
TLC 2019	The annual Translation and Localization Conference aims to focus on the latest technologies, localization industry trends and various domains of translation.	Warsaw, Poland	March 29~30, 2019
TAUS DQF Workshop	The workshop will cover how basic quality management principles apply to assess translation and defining translation quality.	Tokyo, Japan	April 17, 2019
EUATC 2019	The 14th International European Union of Associations of Translation Companies conference, aims to increase the globalization of the the language industry and the usage of internet to operate across borders and time zones.	Tallinn, Estonia	April 25~26, 2019
ALC 2019	The annual conference for the Association of Language Companies represents businesses that provide translation and localization training services. The conference will reconvene to review federal policy and regulatory issues facing the industry.	Washington D.C., USA	May 1~4, 2019
CIUTI 2019	The conference aims to provide a forum for trainers, educators, professionals and industry representatives on how to strengthen the interface between research and practice in the field of translation and interpretation.	Melbourne, Australia	June 3~5, 2019
LocWorld40 – Estoril, Portugal	The conference focuses on international business, translation, localization and global website management. Attendees include the people responsible for communicating across the boundaries of language and culture in the global marketplace.	Estoril, Portugal	June 11~13, 2019
TAUS Data Summit 2019	The focus of the summit is on the challenges and opportunities of managing and sharing language data in the translation industry	Salt Lake City, UT, USA	June 26, 2019
UTI Camp	The Ukrainian Translation Industry campsite welcomes all that want to be updated with the latest translation news, discuss related issues and have a good time outdoors with friends and family.	Dnipro, Ukraine	July 22~28, 2019
The ATA Conference	The 60th conference organized by American Translators Association aims to support the professional development of translators and interpreters and the related professions.	Palm Springs, CA, USA	October 23~ 26, 2019
tcworld 2019	The tcworld conference will include sessions that cover localization topics. Will be accompanied by the tekom-Trade fair that includes an exhibition covering the field of technical communication.	Stuttgart, Germany	November 12~14, 2019

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Interview with Catawiki Localization Managers Emily Ingham & Virginia Laghi: How to provide cheap, fast, quality localization services

Gengo — Mon, 17 Dec 2018 15:00:00 +0000

Catawiki is Europe’s fastest growing online auction house, for buying and selling special items and collectibles. It was originally founded in 2008 as an online community for collectors. The Catawiki Localization Team is part of the Product & Technology Department. But unlike all of the other product teams which are exclusively composed of engineers, the Localization Team presents a diverse mix of backgrounds and skills. I sat down today with Emily Ingham and Virginia Laghi, localization managers at Catawiki, to discuss their localization strategy and how they make important decisions about localization projects. Emily is the Product Owner and she engages all Catawiki stakeholders on localization topics and priorities. On the other side, Virginia leads the content team, composed of five editors who define the best localized content for Catawiki’s core languages: English, Dutch, German, French, Italian, and Spanish. Together with six backend developers, the Localization Team drives innovation by creating localization experiments and building tools for editors and translators to work efficiently. The team also coordinates over 140 freelance translators for 17 languages.

Rei: Please tell us about your background and how you got into the current role as a localization manager.

Emily: When I started at Catawiki three years ago, there was no Localization Team yet. There were two customer support agents that coordinated translation projects and UI localization, in addition to their main daily tasks. As Catawiki grew, we went from needing about 3.5 million words translated a month to 8.4 million words, and this arrangement became unscalable. We decided to build a dedicated team with engineers and content editors in our core languages and to centralize the localization of all content types. We also decided to include Gengo as a translation solution to help scale the translations. At the moment, we have a 50/50 division between Gengo and our freelance translators that we coordinate ourselves. All content types go through the Localization Team now. This includes user interface texts, FAQs, legal documents, and auction lot content and we translate into 17 languages. Virginia: Before joining Catawiki 2 years ago, I worked for different companies as either a content editor for my native Italian language, or a translation coordinator. At Catawiki, I could use both skills for the same role — I was responsible for Italian content and for coordinating all internal translation requests. Now, all of our editors have this dual role in being the ambassador for their native language, as well as owners of specific localization projects, such as freelancers management, quality assurance, content maintenance, taxonomy, across the 17 languages that Catawiki serves.

In your experience, how does translating ecommerce content differ from translating other types of content?

E: In our case, the e-commerce content is user-generated. This means that we often receive source texts that aren’t “clean”. Our translators often report many small errors from major errors which can change the meaning of the product. In addition, we also often receive the content quite close to the deadline as we’re dependent on the sellers and experts on adding the lots. E-commerce content also often comes in huge volumes with short shelf-life. So for our team the big question of the choice triangle always arises. Do we chose quality, cost or speed?

What is your quality control process for outsourcing localization jobs?

V: For user-generated product descriptions, we keep track of all reported translation mistakes in a dashboard. These reports come from sales, customer support, experts and users. Depending on the quantity and overall gravity of the mistakes, we then run quality reviews of translation samples from the specific linguist. Resulting from the reviews, which we also run periodically for all linguists, we send specific reports with instructions and feedback to the linguists. In addition to quality reports, we also maintain style guides and glossaries, which are specific per product category… stamps, art, coins, etc..

Catawiki homepage in Italian language

How do you make important decisions about the timeline and budget for your localization projects?

V: Depending on the type of content, we have specific SLAs. For user-generated product descriptions, we consider a translation deadline of one week, from the moment the user sends us the product description, to the moment the lot goes live on the platform. This type of content has a short lifespan of seven to ten days, and high word count of about two million words per week. In order to reach the deadline, while ensuring translation quality, we work with a team of 120 linguists in a one-step translation process, and we run periodical reviews of freelancers’ translations. When it comes to legal, UI, marketing, and Catawiki-generated help copy, we use a three-step process: first translation by our freelance linguists, second review by subject matter experts such as the legal department, category experts, and marketeers, and third proofreading by the internal editors. Deadlines depend on the requester’s needs and the final word count. As a rule of thumb, we consider 24 hours for requests larger than 1000 words. Anything smaller we can treat with urgency within the day. E: 90% of our monthly word count comes from translating our product descriptions into English only. When making our yearly budget, we use the forecasted volume of lots and aim at staying below a certain percentage of our commission.

How do your large-scale localization efforts at Catawiki differ from those running smaller projects? What are some things to keep in mind when beginning to scale these projects?

V: When a product team needs to launch a new feature, they will ask us to create and localize the content needed on that page. Even if the feature is very limited to a specific part of the website, for instance, the payment flow, the editors make sure that the terminology used in the copy is consistent with the tone of voice of Catawiki at large.The constant effort to see any new content against the entire “Catawiki voice” ensures a uniform and legally correct word usage, including branded and company-specific terms, as well as the communication of a consistent message across all languages we support. Another thing that we always need to keep in mind when scaling up our localization projects, is the need to consider the specific grammar structures of the different locales. We work with 17 languages and each of them have their own peculiarities regarding word order, date formats, declension, plural forms, and the general expansion of the target word count when translating from English.

By working closely with all product teams, engineers, and designers, we ensure that all localization challenges are taken into consideration from the very beginning of the process.

Is there a character limit we need to consider? Are we using in the English source an idiom that won’t be translated easily in other languages? Is there enough context for the external translators to understand where and how the copy will be used?

What are the challenges specific to Catawiki for localization?

E: The main challenge for Catawiki is the short shelf-life of our product descriptions. Every week around 40,000 lots are offered for auction, but they only stay online for a maximum of 14 days. If you have 10,000 t-shirts, you only need to write one product description. But Catawiki deals with unique objects, offered by users, and they all have different descriptions. As this costs a lot of money, we had to make the decision to translate all descriptions into English with human translators and machine translations into our 16 target languages. Another big challenge that we face is how to guide users to write good product descriptions. We often see a lot of repetitions or copy/pasted Wikipedia articles which we obviously prefer not to translate. The challenge, however, is to not only focus on saving costs, but also optimizing for the users. V: Creating and localizing content in Catawiki means to work with specialized terminology depending on the product category, such as art, classic cars, stamps, coins, and jewelry. The challenge is to maintain a high quality of this specialized content, while ensuring a quick processing and delivery of translations. To overcome this challenge we assign the translation requests for each category to a dedicated group of freelance translators who become specialized on that topic. At the same time we also collaborate closely with the internal subject matter experts, who are involved in the review of content and help us creating and maintaining specialized glossaries and style guides.

What innovative solutions to these challenges have you implemented at Catawiki?

E: One solution that we implemented to guide sellers when writing their product descriptions is with instant feedback. By using data science models, we directly ask the seller to change the text while they are writing. This has helped us to reduce repetitions and increase the quality. Our biggest innovative solution, however, is using what we call lot specifics, which are product specifications for generating titles and subtitles.

Catawiki auction page in Simplified Chinese language

Please tell us more about the Product Specifics feature at Catawiki and how it has helped you with your localization efforts.

E: We started to realize that the content in our titles and subtitles often corresponds to the product specifics of the object. Product specifics are drop-down fields with values that a seller can pick from. All of these values only need to be translated once and are translated into all 17 languages. We started to analyze the content and came up with a template for the Watches category using the values of our product specifications. This worked so remarkably well that we’ve now expanded this method to (almost) all our categories. In the backend, we’ve created templates for the title and subtitle fields for all categories. When a seller selects a value from a drop-down in the lot specifics, we immediately place this value in the title field. Hence, we automatically generate a title depending on a seller’s input which we can show in all 17 languages with the cost of only translating once. This has reduced our translation costs significantly while coming a step closer to providing a fully localized experience for our buyers.

What is your experience with user-testing around machine translation, human translation and showing the original English content?

This all boils down to the choice triangle – cost vs. speed vs. quality.

E: Obviously, we all agree that human translations are superior to machine translations when it comes to quality whereas the machine beats humans in both costs and speed. When we A/B tested machine versus human translations, the quantitative data did show a negative trend, but we made a decision to go for machine translations anyway, because of the enormous cost savings that we could achieve. As a compromise, we kept translating into English with human translators as having a good source text increases the quality of the machine translations. Now, two years later, we do see a number of negative qualitative user comments on the quality of our machine translations, so this will be the next innovative solution that we’ll tackle.

Finally, do you have any advice for localization managers working on similar projects, or localization managers looking to scale their efforts?

E: Think big! My main vision and driver has always been to try and crack the choice triangle. How can we translate everything into all languages in time for little costs with good quality? By thinking outside the box, but also not being afraid to test different things, we’ve started to crack the cost and speed issues. We’ll now start looking into scalable solutions for quality. Some of our experiments flopped, but we’re still happy to have done and learnt from them. Gather your data and don’t be afraid to also make unpopular decisions. When we decided to stop translating into target languages, my localization heart didn’t want this to happen. But it did buy us time to understand our costs and where they come from and we now have a good base to start and innovate from. From years of focusing on costs, we are finally ready to transition to a more user-focused team. V: No localization challenge is too big if you work with the right team. What makes it ‘The dream team’ is the perfect mix of technical, operational and creative people. Engineers, editors, copywriters and translators all work closely together and get a good understanding of each other’s challenges. This is what makes the team stronger and a great backbone for all risk-taking, outside-the-box, daring attempts at big localization projects. As a team, we are also not afraid of getting our hands dirty: some of our processes are still not automated so it happened that we had to all get together and copy-paste hundreds of words from one platform to another, or edit an entire translation memory from scratch. We all do it together, nobody excluded: we work together, suffer together, fail together and celebrate together! Go global with Gengo’s people-powered translation platform. or Contact us

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What are the best platforms to find freelance translators?

Gengo — Wed, 17 Oct 2018 15:00:00 +0000

More and more people are turning to freelance work as a source of income. As a result, the employment of remote workers is a major opportunity for businesses looking to improve their ROI. This is particularly true in the translation sector, where the number of freelance translators is exploding.

However, that doesn’t mean that finding a great translator is simple. There are a variety of different platforms where you can find freelancers, each with their own benefits and drawbacks. Not every option will suit your business and there’s not necessarily a catch-all solution to the problem of finding the right person.

It’s worth taking the time to assess your options, so we’ve listed the pros and cons of the major platforms for freelance work below. By understanding how each type of service fits with your needs, you’ll maximize your chances of finding the perfect translator for your project.

Freelance Translator Platforms

Pros:

Specialized: Although anyone can sign up, many freelance platforms are only for those actively seeking to do translation work. They have a mix of both amateur and professional translators, often with profiles where you can read reviews by their previous clients. This makes them a good place to begin your search for a freelance translator.
Easy to find translators: Since these sites only contain translators, it makes them good places to draw up a list of potential candidates for your job. This reduces the amount of time spent combing the Internet for people who might be able to help.

Cons:

No external support: Working directly with your translator does have some benefits, but these are often outweighed by the need to manage your freelancers directly. The amount of contact you need to have with your translator during the project can be surprising, including everything from preparing and sending the documents to regularly checking in with the translator for progress reports. All of this is time-consuming and can be a significant drain on your resources, especially if you have a high volume of work or multiple freelancers to deal with.
Payment friction: Since there isn’t any guidance from the site about payment, it has to be set up on a case-by-case basis with each translator you hire. This involves several potential hurdles, such as timing and method of payment. Also, when it comes to negotiating the translator has an advantage, since they know the correct price for your job. Without doing due diligence, you could end up paying over the odds for your translation.
No protection: These problems can be further exacerbated if there are any disagreements during the project. Since freelance translator platforms don’t provide support, you’ll be left alone to deal with any issues that arise. In the worst case scenario, it’s possible for a translator to simply drop your translation, which is a potential nightmare for anyone with urgent deadlines. Other services outlined below are able to incentivize translators to work diligently and complete in a timely manner regardless of the relationship between the two parties, which affords you more protection.
Hard to scale: Even if your translator is the best in the world, there’s a limit on the amount of work they can do in a day. If you have more work than one person can feasibly do, having a great relationship with one translator is not enough. You’ll have to invest even more time in finding great translators, which could be better spent on actually getting your work done.

General Crowdsourcing Sites

Pros:

Choice: These sites are open to anyone looking to supplement their income with a range of freelance work, making them a huge resource with thousands of potential options.
Payment: Since many of these sites handle payment, one of the big causes of friction between translator and employer is removed. This also provides an authority to refer to if issues arise around pricing.
Competitive rates: Competition for jobs can be extremely fierce, meaning that you’ll likely receive cheap quotes and have the work completed for a low price.

Cons:

Lack of specialism: Since it’s possible to post a wide variety of tasks on general crowdsourcing sites, it’s far harder to find a specialist translator on these platforms. Most freelancers trawling these sites are happy to perform any task, regardless of whether they’ve been trained to do so. By employing someone who isn’t specialized, you sacrifice the chance to receive a quality translation from a career translator.
No quality assurance: Further to the above, the extreme competition for jobs can drive people to prioritize a large number of payouts rather than building a great portfolio. There have been cases where unscrupulous freelancers will provide low quality or machine-translated work that doesn’t meet professional quality standards. There’s no guarantee that you will receive a translation that you can use and many sites offer no form of quality control, meaning that you will have to check the received translation yourself.
Competitive rates: Low rates come at a cost. Since hiring fees are often at rock bottom on these sites, translators who are able to provide you with the quality that you need might actually be driven away. While it may be possible to find a great translator on these sites, you’re far more likely to find quality in a place where it is appreciated.
Management: Despite the help these sites provide with payment issues, the day-to-day management of translator and project remains your responsibility. If you have a large project, you’re still going to waste a lot of time guiding it to completion when you could be doing other important work.

Translation Crowdsourcing Sites

Pros:

Reduced friction: By employing specialist project managers to distribute, track and check the quality of your translation, sites like Gengo significantly reduce your workload. They also help you to avoid other causes of friction, such as quality and price disputes, since these are handled in-house. No matter how many translators you’re employing, your single point of contact will be able to handle everything and leave you free to concentrate on your business.
Job completion speed: Since they have access to a large pool of specialist translators, these sites can ensure that your project is in the hands of a selection of specialists. By ensuring that your project doesn’t go straight to the bottom of an in-tray, translation crowdsourcing can significantly reduce your timeline as well as improve your quality.

Cons:

Specialist content: While these sites are an excellent choice for the vast majority of content, certain things may require a specialist translator with specific background knowledge. For example, if you need someone to translate a volume of ancient Chinese poetry, or even just someone who is able to work on site in your office, it may be more efficient to deal with an individual who can guarantee the fulfillment of your special conditions.

Why Gengo?

It’s our commitment to quality that separates us from the crowd. While other services leave you to push your translator for their best work, we’re constantly refining our platform to ensure a consistent high standard regardless of language pair, content type or volume. Whether you need 100 words or a million, you can be sure that everyone who touches your translation is giving their all.

Our obsession with tech doesn’t stop there. Thanks to our use of systems such as translation memory, we can guarantee that you won’t paying any more than you need to. In fact, our flexible pricing system means that you’ll always know exactly how much you’re paying, while also providing you with absolute clarity on what you’re paying for.

Want to know more? Contact sales for more on how our translation makes the difference.

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How much does translation cost?

Gengo — Sun, 09 Sep 2018 15:00:00 +0000

The translation industry is notoriously opaque when it comes to pricing. Until recently, there were only two options if you needed a translation: somehow do it yourself, or ask a specialist. Traditional translation agencies have made the most of their captive market, adding hidden costs and creating loopholes in their pricing system in order to maximize their profit margins. Although new services are challenging their industry monopoly, these changes have actually made it even more difficult to pin down what you’re actually spending your money on. As a result, there’s no quick answer to the question of how much translation costs.

All of this can be a nightmare if your business is looking into translation. With different services using different pricing methods and no universal standard fee, it can be difficult to gather all the information you need to make a good decision. In the interests of clarity, let’s run through some in-house and outsourced translation of the hidden factors that come into play when using various translation services. By knowing what will affect the price of your translation, hopefully you’ll be able to make a more informed choice and increase the profit margins on your investment.

5 factors that affect translation price

translation memory

Whether you’re talking to an agency, a freelancer or a crowdsourcing service, some factors affect the cost of all translations. The following considerations should be kept in mind when conducting your market research:

Rarity of Language Pair: Of course, supply and demand is one of the biggest factors in the final price of your translation. It’s the reason why language pairs that share close roots, such as English and Flemish, can sometimes be significantly more expensive than more distant, popular pairs, such as English and Chinese. If translators in your language pair are hard to find, you should expect a large final bill.
Distance Between Languages: When translating between languages with vastly different grammar or cultural context, it can be easier to use a common language like English or Spanish as a go-between. However, this effectively means that your text will be translated twice. This practice is particularly common when working in unusual language pairs. If you think this might be necessary for your project, expect to pay extra for it.
Translator’s Cost of Living: Where the translator lives plays a large role in how much translation services charge. If your translator lives in New York, the overhead costs and salary demands will be much greater than if they lived in Bogotá, so they must charge more to compensate. It’s worth considering where your translators will be when calculating your projected expenses.
Volume of Work: If you have an extremely large text and choose an agency who are unable to scale the amount of work they do, they will be forced to hire freelancers to help them complete the task. It’s likely that you will bear the brunt of the cost for this.
Formatting Requirements: If your document has specific or unusual requirements, agencies or freelancers who don’t have a versatile platform for translation will be forced into expensive workarounds.

Further costs when using traditional translation agencies

As the oldest players in the industry, traditional agencies have plenty of tricks up their sleeve to make sure they turn a profit. Here are some of the specific factors that may affect your bill:

Type of Content: Whether it’s legal or financial texts, most agencies specialize in a certain kind of translation. Make sure to choose an agency that has expertise in your field, or you may end up paying extra. Also, you may find that different things cost more to translate within each specific field. For example, emails often cost less than webpages to translate. If you decide to employ an agency, make sure to ask about the cost of each different type of document to check you’re getting the best deal.
Staff: As the main source of income for the agency, your project will be priced to cover the costs of other staff working there who may not directly work on your translation. Although this seems unavoidable, the diversification of the industry means you can dramatically reduce this section of your bill. Consider innovative solutions such as crowdsourcing that can almost entirely remove these costs.
Pricing System: Many translation agencies won’t list prices, claiming that every project is unique. However, it’s important to know which particular pricing system they use. The most popular pricing method is per word, but you may also be charged per page, per hour or a flat fee. Each has its own benefits and drawbacks, so be sure to ask for a detailed explanation of what you’re paying for. With per word pricing, don’t forget to ask whether words are counted at source or after translation, since texts can shrink or expand dramatically during the process.

Faced with all these extra costs, it can be tempting to just bring translation in-house, particularly if your business needs regular translation. However, far from saving you money, this can prove to be a significant investment that your company doesn’t need to make. For more information on the costs involved, check out the article we wrote comparing in-house and outsourced translation.

The crowdsourcing solution

It’s clear to see that this is an industry in need of a pricing revolution. Luckily, crowdsourcing is tackling many of these hidden costs head on. By using crowd technology, it’s now possible to employ thousands of professional translators from across the planet who compete for jobs at one fixed, competitive rate. These easily scalable platforms are wiping away the industry’s vague promises without compromising on quality.

Thanks to the growth of these new services, both customer and translator are increasingly accepting no excuse for unclear pricing. Soon, traditional agencies will have to come to terms with this shakeup of the industry. Once they do, there may finally be a short answer to the question of how much translation costs.

How much does Gengo cost?

LEVEL	STANDARD	BUSINESS	ADDITIONAL SERVICES
Price per word*	From $0.06	From $0.12	Contact sales
Quality	Translator who passed our Standard level test. Best for casual content.	Translator who passed our more rigorous, Business level test. Best for content requiring more accuracy.	Proofreading by a business level translator. Only available for customers with sales support.
Recommended use	Internal communication Social media posts User reviews Emails and letters	Presentations Reports Mobile apps Website localization	Documents translated using Gengo business level.

STANDARD
From $0.06
Translator who passed our Standard level test. Best for casual content.
Internal communication Social media posts User reviews Emails and letters
BUSINESS
From $0.12
Translator who passed our more rigorous, Business level test. Best for content requiring more accuracy.
Presentations Reports Mobile apps Website localization
ADDITIONAL SERVICES
Contact sales
Proofreading by a business level translator. Only available for customers with sales support.
Documents translated using Gengo business level.

*Price via website order

At Gengo, we pride ourselves on our clear and competitive per-word pricing. We’re not interested in how many extra fees we can add to your bill. Instead, our business is built to maximize the return on your investment. Our obsession with technology has allowed us to create an automated job distribution system and versatile translator dashboard that help us to slash your bill. On the translation side, we use translation memory to track repeat phrases in your text and reuse approved translations, so you’ll only pay for it once. Whether you have a hundred or a million words to translate, you’ll know exactly how much you’re paying from beginning to end.

Need something special? Contact sales to work out how translation can make you money.

or Contact us

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Which languages should I localize my website into?

Gengo — Mon, 30 Jul 2018 15:00:00 +0000

If you localize your website into a foreign language, you could seize the opportunity to attract a new customer base that speaks that language. This would allow you to also provide a better experience for your existing customers. 1.5 billion people in the world speak English, but only 360 million people speak English as their first language, so the others might actually prefer to browse the web in their native languages. Before launching into our discussion of how to decide what languages to localize your website into, it’s important to first clarify the difference between translation and localization. Translation is only one part of localization, which also includes things like culture and communication styles. Localization includes things like the calendar system, metric or imperial measurement units, and currency – while translation does not. When expanding your website to include a new target audience, it’s important to not only translate, but localize your website, to communicate your brand to the new target customer base in the most clear and authentic way possible. But which languages should you localize into? The following factors can guide your decision:

1. Current Website Traffic

Some website platforms such as WordPress have built-in analytics tools for network monitoring. If your website platform does not have this function, or you are looking for more extensive analytics and performance metrics, then you can use a third party tool such as Google Analytics. Information about your current audience such as where they are located, and which languages they browse in (if you have already localized your website into several languages), can give you valuable insight for crafting your business growth plan.

2. Benchmark Competitors

Visit your competitors’ websites and check whether their websites are localized into other languages. This might give you some insight into their business directions. Then, you can decide how to compete effectively, whether that is by localizing your website into the same languages, or into a different language so you might get a bigger share of the new target customer base.

3. Target Markets

This will probably be one of the biggest factors in your decision about which languages to localize your website into. The first step here is to identify your target markets. Which countries have the highest demand for your products, and are the potential customers there receptive to online marketing? More broadly, you can consider which countries currently have the most purchasing power and largest ecommerce markets overall, or which countries are expected to see a huge growth in purchasing power or market size. If your company already has a business plan to expand into certain foreign countries, you can dive into research about the cultural practices of those countries. Also consider whether your company is prepared to provide customer support in the local language and ship products to foreign addresses. Other things to consider are tariffs, internal taxes, and government restrictions in the foreign country. For example, the European regulations on Technology Transfer Agreements, which govern licensed technology for the production of goods or services, have certain restrictions on active sales, but not on passive sales. In an active sale, the salesperson actively approaches individual customers, while in a passive sale, the salesperson responds to unsolicited requests from individual customers, including the delivery of goods or services to customers in foreign countries. The law usually considers Internet sales as passive sales under this regime, but they can begin to look like active sales if the website’s language and design are tailored to a particular customer group.

4. Design

Localizing your website into different languages can affect the overall design, so you need to confirm whether your company has sufficient engineering capacity, or can outsource the web design. Some languages like Arabic and Hebrew are written right to left, so you may need to redesign parts of your website to make room for the text. In addition, character-based languages like Chinese, Japanese, and Korean generally require fewer characters and less space than Roman alphabet languages to convey the same sentence. Depending on your original and target languages, the translated text might be significantly longer or shorter than the original version. For example, this article written by a Gengo translator about the evolution of languages is 501 words and 3,206 characters long in English, but only 1,501 characters in Japanese. In addition to translation, localization also includes communication style and culture – what kind of web design might be appealing for people in your target market? It’s important to balance localizing the visual design with your brand image. Mascot characters are a huge part of Japanese culture, but people from western countries might find them too distracting. Japanese web design also tends to be a lot more cluttered than what Westerners are used to. This stems from a risk-averse culture where people usually prefer to know as much information as possible about a product before making a purchasing decision. Take a look at Starbucks Coffee Japan’s homepage on the left, compared to the American homepage on the right:

5. Top Languages Used on the Internet

You may also consider the most-used languages on the Internet, although this probably will not be the determinative factor when deciding which languages to localize your website into. English is obviously the top language, followed by German, Russian, Spanish, French, then Japanese. By localizing your website into these most-used languages, you can promote your business as a global and diverse brand, which can give a positive first impression to new customers. At the same time, you can also mitigate the possible risk of receiving negative reviews from people who were frustrated because their language was left out.

6. Cost

The cost of the actual translation depends on various factors, such as how technical your content is, original and target languages, word count, how many qualified translators are available, and where the translators are based. Common languages such as English and Spanish tend to be cheapest to translate, because there is a large pool of qualified translators available. Most African languages, however, tend to be expensive because so few people in the world speak those languages, and even fewer are qualified translators. Where the translators are based also factors into the translation cost because translators who are based somewhere with a high cost of living will usually charge higher prices. Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic, Finnish, and Korean are some of the most expensive languages to translate, due to the high cost of living in those countries. Gengo’s translation prices are clear and competitive, and calculated to reflect the volume and content of translation that you need. To receive a free estimate, you can add your content to our online order form or contact our sales team.

Why Gengo?

We can synthesize large amounts of data about your current website metrics to help guide your decision about which languages to localize your website into. Then, we can continue to support various stages of your website localization project. Our 21,000 certified contributors span the globe in all major time zones and almost every country, so we can comfortably keep pace with your requests, no matter the type or volume of support you need.

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