3 Best Communication Practices of Top Global Localization Teams

Localization, fundamentally as a practice, requires coordination across departments, time zones, and languages. During a time where the world has reached a peak level of global connectedness that brings with it both great advantages and severe challenges, this coordination is more important than ever before.

Luckily, after a decade of working with the fastest-moving global companies and being a global team ourselves, we’ve observed the top practices that the most successful cross-market localization teams employ. And it all starts with communication.

In this blog post, we break exactly down how the top localization teams are using communication to effectively localize their content and product to take their businesses global.

1. Alongside prioritizing communication, they prioritize the use automated workflows wherever possible.

While it does start with communication, this communication is built on a technical software foundation that helps localization teams automate whatever they can. This means investing in and implementing a top-notch localization platform that is not only easy-to-use for all localization team members, but also (very important!) helps you to better organize and prioritize all content and product for localization.

Successful localization teams typically use automated localization workflows that leverage techniques such as Machine Translation (MT)  to translate “lower tier” content (i.e., all of the baseline content that doesn’t need intensive translation precision or extensive copywriting). Transifex is a favorite of global companies using automated workflows because it covers all MT and content needs, through integrations with translation and business services from Google, Microsoft, and Amazon.

2. They reduce response times and roadblock resolution times by maintaining project transparency.  

Communication is a vital part of any successful business activity, and it should feel like a natural extension of all the tasks you are doing (not like an additional task or burden!). Increased project transparency not only helps to communicate the progress and impact of your team’s localization efforts across the company, but also makes the lives of developers, translators, and localization managers much easier … which means less time, energy, and cost.

To make communication seamless across business functions, teams, and time zones, top localization teams prefer to use a localization software that can easily integrate with their existing communication methods. For example, Slack is a favorite amongst fast-moving technology companies — and the Transifex Slack integration helps teams to easily and automatically bring localization into daily team communication. Teams using the Slack integration are able to see significantly noticeable increased response times to project updates, clearing of project roadblocks.

3. They over-communicate … and use integrations to do it.

As we’ve seen from above, communication is the key that unlocks visibility across teams, and visibility is important for rapid team coordination and deployment. Successful localization requires every stakeholder in the localization loop – from project manager to the translator to the developer – to be in sync. Localization teams will only be able to efficiently localize if they are able to overcome common challenges such as project status management, multiple workflow management, and quality control.

Successful localization teams know that effective communication takes place across all channels and platforms. To effectively communicate (and over-communicate), these teams use a localization software that has built-in integrations (from Slack and LexiQA to GitHub and KantanMT) that allows for easier collaboration and more transparent project status visibility across teams. (Check out this full list of the integrations that fast-moving companies are using to optimize their localization efforts).

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The Transifex Community is here for you in supporting all of your cross-market and cross-language communication efforts. To connect with other global teams and localization professionals and discuss how teams are managing cross-language communication during this challenging time across the world, visit and join the Transifex Community.