Website localisation process

The initial meeting with our client allows us to gather key information such as targeted geographical areas, targeted audience, expectations around media elements (images, videos, etc), specific webpage purposes and functions from one country to another, tone of voice and overall brand image. We will also look at the most cost-effective way to localise our client’s website based on the CMS our client has chosen to build it in. Transladiem is best placed to advise whether carrying on with using an existing back-end environment to input translations, installing a plug-in or proceeding via exports.

At this stage we provide our client with a quotation in which we will itemise the services requested. All our quotations are free of charge. This is also the stage where we discuss the costs and timeline associated with the different project steps. Once we are all set and get the go-ahead, we can start the website localisation process.

Based on the instructions received, our project team will set up the project to meet the most effective and adapted translation process agreed upon with our client. This could mean setting up a plug-in between our translation management system and the client’s website to transfer content automatically from one another, navigating the client’s specific translation environment purposefully created on their back-end or analysing the exports received. That’s also the time for us to line up the right resources for this project. We take great care in selecting the right linguists for the material our clients send through. All our linguists have areas of specialisation and native languages which need to match your project to be considered. It is our job to find the best suitable linguists based on the specifics of the project. Depending on the client’s requirements, our team will now build a glossary, if this has been scoped, to define the key terms, technical words and highly repeated words on which we need to consult our client’s SMEs in order to obtain approval before kicking off the actual translation stage. The glossary is then shared with our linguists which they will rigorously follow to produce localised content fully aligned on the client’s SMEs expectations.

The files to be localised have been prepped for translation in a previous step and are now sent to the relevant linguists that will work on the project. The translation received is then QA’ed by our project team through our internal verification step (adherence to translation memories and project glossary, truncation, punctuation, numeral equivalence, missing works, double space, etc).

Once the translation step is completed and that the output has been verified by our team, we send the files to a revisor or proofreader, a second experienced linguist, who will compare the source text against the target text to make sure the translation is accurate and true to the source text. The proofread translation is then QA’ed but our project team through our internal validation step.

Before repopulating back the translated content automatically into the client’s website via our plug-in, typesetting the translations into the client backends or delivering the localised exports, Transladiem always offers clients the chance to review the localised content in a friendly format (a bilingual table with source and target content presented in a word document or via our online review platform) and to add any potential changes they wish to make at this moment. This step exposes our work directly to the client in order to get amendment requests or sign-off on the translation before proceeding to the next steps of the localisation process. This step is highly recommended but remains optional as not all companies have the capacity to run through this. If our stakeholders insert edits into the bilingual tables containing the translations, we will check into these changes to make sure there are no typos, grammar errors, double-spaces or any kind or wrong insertions before implementing all amendments.

Once all localised contents are signed off, our team will format the exports if we received any and work on the media elements present in the website, that is, localising the potential images and videos, which will all undergo our internal QA step before being sent to our client’s development team.

Though our post-localisation service applied to websites, Transladiem commissions native testers to run the final linguistic QA on the localised websites. Indeed, populating the translation back into the client’s website environment will often shift elements and mess up the layout of the file, this is precisely what our testers need to flag in a bug report with accurate screenshots and explanations regarding the fixes needed. These bug reports are delivered to our client so their development team can make the necessary adjustments. It is very common that our clients draft a specific testing plan for us to go through with precise links that need to be clicked on, URLs to be checked and certain functionalities to be tested.