Get Your Money Back Optimizing Localization RoI

Get Your Money Back! Optimizing Localization RoI
Timing Trade-Offs For Localization Investments
Accepted wisdom says that any necessary investment should be made as close as possible to
the launch of a product, and that all possible revenues should be collected as soon as possible
after launch. That way, you avoid tying up investment too early and having to wait for returns,
whose value will be eroded by inflation over the time you have to wait for them. However, there
are other factors that you should consider too:
● Internationalization, which is the preparatory work to make your app or website ready for
any specific localization afterwards, is often best designed in from the start. Just like
security and quality, it is often more difficult to add in or layer on internationalization at a
later stage, and the results may not be as good, either.
● The basics of internationalization, such as the separation of content and the use of
functions to automatically format units and quantities for foreign languages, may also
need relatively little effort, when they are done at the same time as the development of
the code.
● Localization itself, meaning the translation or “transcreation” of text and other content,
can be then be done shortly before the planned launch date of a version of your app or
website in a given language. So, if you are planning a launch of a Spanish-localized
version of your app in April, you might wait until February before spending time and
money on getting translations done and running quality checks, thus keeping this part of
the investment closer to the launch date.
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