For a process
to be managed
someone needs
to design it first
Who should design localisation processes?
Anyone who sells services
will always try to sell you
more of them
You don’t need to be a salesperson to know this.
But people new to localisation don’t always realise that, once they embed
translation into their processes, they are stuck with it for a long time.
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That’s why language services have been a great source of recurring revenue for so many companies.
Can an LSP help you set up
a localisation process
and a team to manage it?
Sure, if you send them more stuff to translate.
Some of them might say it openly if you corner the CEO.
Many won’t.
If you’re in a scale-up
with a need for localisation
but not much experience…
It’s easy to buy into the idea of having a software that
gets all your content from all your systems and sends back
the translations when they’re ready, automatically.
You can even machine-translate your content
if you want the translations immediately.
What do TMS providers charge you for?
You pay them more the more people use the software and the more words you process.
Will they forget about it when recommending you how to design your processes?
What’s the first thing
the first localisation hires want to do?
I used to help companies hire the most experienced localisation managers. When asked about what they would need to set up the localisation process, most candidates would say “hire a localisation engineer”.
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Those who wouldn’t ask for one would get the job. They did hire more localisation managers, though, and still needed my help to figure out how to set up and manage the process.
Companies don’t always realise that localisation means
new business processes
And someone needs to manage change for those processes to be implemented successfully.
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Localisation managers usually get hired when that change is already happening and because there is nobody to manage it. It’s quite difficult to do when you were hired to manage translation and there is pressure to deliver.
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Even if you can design localisation processes that make sense for the business and all the teams who would rely on them, it takes some skill and time to get those processes adopted so they can run as intended.
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I no longer support companies with hiring localisation managers. But I can help you get started with localisation or improve your existing processes, and make that change easier for everyone involved.
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