"I needed an hour for all translations prep within a spreadsheet for a batch of keys and languages, but now that only takes about 15 min with Lokalise tasks feature."
Webgains is an experienced B2B affiliate marketing network headquartered in London. The company was founded in 2005 and has additional offices in locations including Nuremberg, Munich, Bristol, Paris, Madrid, and Milan. Webgains’ innovative platform is available in 14 markets worldwide, enabling advertisers to manage their partner programs efficiently. The performance marketing network supports customers in 195 countries and advertised over 20 million products in the online sector in 2017, resulting in a gross sales value (GSV) of EUR 1 billion.
Webgains priority focus has been the UK, since launching its new platform in 2017. Also, because their headquarters are located in the UK, and the first language on Webgains’ online platform is English, there wasn’t a dedicated person responsible for the translation. With an increased interest in providing their various country teams with a localized product, the need for proper localization became apparent.
Webgains has recently invested heavily in new technologies, including its publisher and advertiser platforms, with a view to creating versions that could be used by local teams. The switch to Lokalise happened in tandem with developing the new advertiser software platform. Before that, Webgains were translating internally: their product and delivery teams would download CSVs with the English copy, add their translations and upload the files again. In addition, a large part of the 14 languages that had been set up needed managed translation and review work.
Just capturing and managing all copy for every languages in one place was a big improvement for Webgains. The team has created a new project with the four languages they are currently focusing on, but has kept the old project with all 14 languages as a backup copy. Webgains' localization manager is making sure that localization comes into play early on when new features are in the wireframing stage. With the Lokalise localization software, it's possible to make sure that the translation work happens alongside development, as well as setting up a workflow of controlled translation deployment.
Webgains' localization team has established a continuous localization workflow. As a first step, external translators will translate new strings and review existing human and machine translations. After that, there is at least one round of internal reviews. The translation and review of existing translations are both carried out in small batches which are managed using the task feature in Lokalise. The aim of Webgains' localization manager is to segue from waterfall to agile localization.
The fact that the Webgains team is using Lokalise in the early stages and that there is a dedicated person managing its use, led to localization/internationalization as a whole being more visible within the company. In the beginning, some developers would still randomly create new keys without making sure they didn’t already have the copy in Lokalise. Reassessing the user permissions and getting the translation work started parallel to the development work helped streamline this part of the process.
Features that Webgains' localization manager enjoys the most:
"Through spreadsheets to the stars: the story of TransferGo"
"How Lokalise is helping Bending Spoons to bend spoons faster"
