White Paper: Preparing Your Website for Localization (cont.)

Set up good project management practices

1. Establish a staging server for online testing. Whether you set it up yourself or ask your localization partner to establish one for you, you will want this server so that online testing can be performed without affecting your live site. Making this staging site accessible to your localization partner will save your internal staff many hours of content management time.
2. Establish good file and content management processes. How often will updates happen? Will they be small or large?
   1. If you are hosting the staging server, keep track of which versions of the files are on the server.
   2. Establish clear ownership guidelines. In general, if your LSP has made a final delivery, you should take ownership of the files. However, if testing is still ongoing, the LSP should retain ownership of the files and you should not make any changes.
   3. Keep the staging server up to date.
   4. Be sure that you overwrite old files with new files. Good version control is imperative to smooth processes.

Conduct effective linguistic reviews

1. Identify qualified reviewers for each language. The ideal reviewer is a native speaker of the target language who knows your products and marketing messages and has time to complete the review in a timely manner. Their role is to support the translation process and serve as a final quality check that translations are technically sound and that marketing messages are conveyed correctly.
2. Manage your reviewers and review cycles. Don’t let your project get bogged down in review. Schedule the reviews ahead of time and get a commitment from your reviewer that comments will be returned within an agreed upon period.
3. Establish terminology and style guidelines early on. Have your translation vendor develop and submit a glossary and style guide for each language early in the project. This will streamline subsequent reviews and will lay the groundwork for a good rapport between the translators and reviewers. Comprehensive glossaries enhance quality, consistency and overall efficiency.

Summary

As you can see, much of the work of localization starts well before you begin the process of localizing your site. As the localization manager or coordinator for your organization, you can make your job easier when localization actually begins by getting your web development team into the discussion early on. In fact, many LSPs will provide free assistance to support you in communicating this information to your development team even if you’re only contemplating the possibility of localized sites in the future.

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