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Zalon Translation Journey
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translation.md

Zalon Translation Jounery

2016

  • Zalon was only serving German speaking countries.

  • So we were already supporting 3 locales Germany (de-DE), Austria (de-AT) and Switzerland (de-CH)

  • Internationalization work was already done for our tools and the master copy for the apps were externalized.

  • Translation were managed in a tool named Transfix

    Workflow

    • The team (Product, UX, Tech) worked together on designing features and then product and UX briefed the copywriter about the feature and shared the master copy.
    • The copywriter shared the translation via mail or a spreadsheet.
    • Developers were responsible of putting in the master copy and translation into the system.

Issues

  • Initial WIP copy was a combination of English and German depending on who was working on it.
  • German copy was considered the master copy and source language. This made it challenging for copywriters who couldn't understand German,
  • Translations could evolve over time based on feedback, post release but the master copy stayed the same which made master copy and translation out of sync. (Problem)
  • Transifex didn't have the concept of branching.
  • Developers sometimes accidentally deleted WIP translation keys due transifex nature of overwriting keys instead of merging them.
  • Transifex is file based, which means the source copy (keys) should be managed externally example github and uploaded to Transifex to add new keys.
  • Copywriters were dependent on developers to update translations as a deployment was necessary for the latest translations to go live.
  • Transifex only allows a single fallback to the source language. fr-CH - de-DE

How we improved

  1. Copywriting team increased from 1 person to 4 people. (Team growth)
  2. They decided that the master copy should be in English. (Change in status quo)
  3. Every product team now includes 1 copywriter that acts as a liason between the team and the copywriting team. This person is involved from the very beginning of the feature development by provding input for the product team and also providing context for the copywriting team to write the final master copy. (workflow )
  4. Improved our tooling/dev workflow - externalized message file into another repo, commit, push to master, run scripts that ensure master is sync with local copy.
  5. The script manages the multi level fallback by merging translations.
  6. Setup autodeployment via lambda functions.
  7. The source copy is now provided in figma where complete flows for a feature can be better visualized.

2020

  • Zalon serves German, French, Dutch and Swedish speaking countries.

  • Supports 8 locales now Germany (de-DE), Austria (de-AT) Switzerland (de-CH), nl-NL, nl-BE, fr-CH, fr-BE, sv-SE

    Workflow

    • The team (Product, UX, Tech, Copywrite) worked together on designing features and then the team copywriter comes up with the source copy.
    • The team copywriter briefs the copywriting team and they deliver the master copy.
    • Devs start development with the source copy and updates the source copy when the master copy is shared.
    • The copywriters directly enter there locales copy in Transifex and notifies the team when its done.

Alternative Tool to Evaluate

  1. Phraseapp
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