A Fortune 500 technology company (who wishes to remain anonymous) offering a mobile app that allows their business customers to manage the IT solutions the company offers. The company enjoys an expanding global customer base for its mobile application, currently available in two languages. With the increasing demand for localization in their Asia-Pacific market, they needed to streamline cumbersome translation processes and expand to ten new languages while accelerating time-to-market without straining engineering resources.
"Localize was the clear choice for our localization needs. Their platform addressed all of our requirements, covering simple setup, collaborative tools, multiple translation options, next-level support, security, and compliance." - Engineering Manager, Anonymous Co.
The company initially offered a choice of 2 languages to navigate its popular mobile application. With a focus on the diverse and expansive Asia-Pacific market, the company was receiving increasing requests to translate the app into more than ten languages in a short timeframe. Before adopting Localize, the company's approach to localization took significant engineering resources, and expanding the app to more than ten languages would require substantial effort from their engineering team.
In addition to development resources, the translation of the Asian-Pacific languages required careful human review due to the complexity of the company's products and the technical nature of the mobile application. Originally, the company accomplished this with a manual approach that required translations be made in JavaScript files, which developers then converted into strings in their codebase. "We'd take English JavaScript files and hand them to translators. Then, they needed to return it to us in a JavaScript format," explained the Engineering Manager.
"I was spending roughly 20% of my time as an engineer updating individual strings in our code base for just 2 languages - we needed a way to scale this process to 10 languages without burying the engineering team." - Engineering Manager, Anonymous Co.
To manage, translate, and launch the mobile app in more than ten languages, the company needed to automate its processes, alleviate developer resources, reduce the possibility of errors, and improve time-to-market.
Because of its intelligent automation features, integrated dashboard, and wide range of supported localization files, the company turned to Localize’s advanced Translation Management System (TMS) to translate the mobile app into the targeted languages.
The company's engineering team set up automation using the Localize REST API to seamlessly integrate the Localize for Mobile project with their development processes.
Using Localize, the company could isolate its translation work from its development process, allowing the Asia-Pacific team to log into the Localize dashboard and assist with translations without touching code. Non-technical members could work in the user-friendly interface to edit translations without dealing with the JavaScript files the company had been using in the past. “Localize has been an evolution for how we handle translations in our app. I was spending roughly 20% of my time as an engineer updating individual strings in our code base for just 2 languages - we needed a way to scale this process to 10 languages without burying the engineering team. Now our Japan team, for example, can go into Localize to make edits and we just pull them down through the API.”
The engineering management team could also add team members around the globe to aid in the translation process within Localize. "The cool thing is the granular user permissions. I could give each user access to the project and the language they needed. It was all right there, so smooth and intuitive." continued the Engineering Manager. “Localize’s customizable dashboard and advanced user permissions allow new users to get up and running in no time.”
Today, the company offers its mobile application in more than ten languages, utilizing nearly 100% human translations. The company accomplished its mission, automating translation management by sending new content into Localize and pulling down the latest translations to release to their customers. These new processes save significant engineering resources, have revolutionized translation management, and vastly improved the company’s ROI.