Eventbrite & Transifex

Eventbrite, recognized as the world’s largest self-service ticketing platform, experienced strong global adoption even before the company had a dedicated international team. While their product was meeting the many needs of organizers around the world (tickets were being sold in 150 countries at the time) Eventbrite wanted to provide a more authentic, localized product for select markets.

When it came time to pick a localization system, Eventbrite had an extensive requirements document. “It was important to be able to manage, translate, and review strings through a single UI,” explains Patrick McLoughlin, Eventbrite’s Senior Localization Program Manager. “We don’t want to send files to translators and worry about where the strings are. We want to be able to get everything out of the code, make sure the HTML tags are rendered properly, and then work with translation agencies.” Having a developer-friendly system was also a priority for Eventbrite. “The APIs and the integration at the code level has to be manageable for the developers and something that can easily fit into their daily tasks.”

An additional need was for the Translation Management System to work well with Wagtail, Eventbrite’s CMS for managing landing pages. Transifex’s API turned out to be a great solution for this challenge. 

Now, after 9 years of localizing with Transifex, Eventbrite came across another big challenge; a complete redesign of the translation backend. Duplicating strings from one large project to multiple small resources, without any interruptions, and with zero expenses, is an ambitious task, to say the least. 

Last, but not least, looking for specific strings across projects was another big deal, especially if we take into account that Eventbrite is localizing in 26 languages!

Eventbrite integrates with Transifex via the API, automating the translation process from new content detection to translation to publishing. The Transifex system provides Patrick with peace of mind as he’s been able to automate translations for the web UI in particular. “Our translators know they have to pick up every Thursday and Sunday. It’s a continuous process that I could completely leave on autopilot if I wanted.” Within Transifex, Patrick gains quick visibility into translation process, able to easily search for strings by filters so he can make sure his team is focused on the right translations – it’s always clear which languages and projects need to be worked on.

With the Transifex API, Wagtail, our support team, as well as with Eventbrite’s awesome engineering team, Eventbrite is now able to publish landing pages in all 26 languages! 

As mentioned above, redesigning the translation backend was another big challenge. Eventbrite faced it by using Translation Memory to leverage more than 10 million words across 14 languages! And all that without the website going down for maintenance! 

That aside, searching for a specific translation across 26 languages is far from easy. That’s why Patrick’s favorite feature is “Search Strings”, which allows you to search for strings across all projects. 

Implementing an automated localization process saves the Eventbrite team a significant amount of time per week, and has made it possible for the company to support 16 locales in addition to the United States. As Eventbrite continues to grow and attract global interest, they plan to leverage Transifex which gives their localization team the flexibility to scale, easily adding new locales and languages when they’re ready. Eventbrite’s methodical expansion strategy is based on the company’s belief that localization is more than translating digital content, it’s making sure new users have an authentic and delightful experience when interacting with their brand.

Update: Eventbrite has now been localizing with Transifex for a decade! Since then, they have managed to: 

• Add 10 more languages, totaling 26 now
• Seamlessly translate their website, without having to take it down for migration projects
• Leverage more than 10 million words
• Further improved automation by using TM autofill and Amazon Translate
• Created a workflow where the localization team can seamlessly interact with the engineers, without slowing each other down