This guide is part of the Localize the World series—host Linh Nguyen (Localization Program Manager at PayPal) with Stas Kharevich, Head of Localization, Alconost. For the full framework, see A Practical Localization Strategy for Growing Products.
Localization begins with content
When localization is added only before launch, teams often discover hard-coded strings, layouts that cannot fit longer languages, content scattered across systems, and source text still changing during translation. Localization should begin when the product’s content, architecture, and operating processes are being planned—not when files go to translators.
Without content, there is nothing to localize. The first localization decisions are usually content decisions: what the product will contain, who creates and approves it, where it lives, how often it changes, how it reaches the localization workflow, and which content to localize first. A well-structured source-content process makes localization easier; a fragmented one forces manual exports, duplicate files, and repeated troubleshooting.
When should teams begin planning localization?
Localization does not begin with the first translation request. It begins when the company starts designing product content and deciding how that content will be created, stored, and managed. In the clip below, Stas Kharevich explains why localization strategy should enter the conversation earlier than many product teams expect.
On when to start planning, Stas Kharevich puts it this way:
Whenever this idea of creating a product, which has some content, springs to your mind, that's about the right time you start thinking about localizing it. Localization is an integral part of the development process—and it all revolves around your content.
Internationalization and localization are connected
Internationalization designs a product to support different languages and regional conventions without major engineering changes. Localization adapts the product and its content for a particular market or language. The two are distinct but interdependent.
A translation team cannot easily solve technical limitations such as:
- Hard-coded interface text
- Fixed text containers
- Unsupported character sets
- Assumptions about word order
- English-only plural rules
- One date or time format
- One currency format
- Text embedded in images
- Concatenated sentence fragments
- User fields that reject local formats
When internationalization is considered early, localization becomes a repeatable process. When it is ignored, every new language may require engineering workarounds. See also shipping two languages early to stress-test architecture before scale.
Create a localization-ready content plan
A content plan should document more than topics to publish. For localization, it should map each content type to its source of truth, owner, update pattern, and market-specific requirements.
| Plan element | What to define |
|---|---|
| Content types | Interface strings, website pages, onboarding, emails, help-center articles, marketing, app-store listings, legal content, multimedia, support templates |
| Source of truth | Where each type lives—code repo, CMS, support platform, design files, controlled documents |
| Ownership | Who approves source text, answers context questions, and signs off localized versions. See what to keep in-house vs. outsource for how ownership fits a hybrid model |
| Update patterns | Whether the workflow should be continuous, batch, or scheduled—and whether integrations or MT are needed |
| Market requirements | Dates, currencies, address formats, payment methods, legal notices, images, and support expectations beyond translated text |
When the source of truth is unclear, translators receive outdated or duplicate versions. Content that changes daily should not use the same manual process as content updated once a year. Market requirements can influence product design long before launch.
Design content for translation
Source content quality strongly affects localization quality. Clear, consistent text is easier to translate accurately and efficiently.
Avoid ambiguity
Short interface strings like “Open,” “Order,” “Book,” or “Save” often lack context. Translators need to know whether a word is a noun or verb, where it appears, what happens when the user selects it, and which screens are involved. Descriptions, screenshots, and character limits can prevent errors.
Avoid concatenated sentences
Developers sometimes build sentences from reusable fragments—for example, “You have,” a number, and “new messages.” That structure may work in English but fail in languages with different word order, pluralization, or grammatical agreement. Complete messages are usually easier to localize correctly.
Plan for text expansion
Translated text is often longer than the English source. Buttons, menus, dialog boxes, navigation items, and mobile layouts should allow flexibility—fixed-width components create truncation and overlap.
Separate text from images
Text embedded in graphics requires additional design work for every language. Whenever possible, keep text in editable layers or render it through the interface.
Support local conventions
Avoid designing around one market’s assumptions. Systems should handle local names, addresses, dates, times, numbers, currencies, units, sorting, and plural forms—part of creating a usable local experience.
Bring localization into the product workflow
Localization should be connected to the same planning cycles as product development and content production. See how a localization process runs end to end for a reference workflow.
Include localization in requirements
Product requirements should identify:
- Which languages are affected
- Whether new strings are being introduced
- Whether existing strings are changing
- Whether layouts need language testing
- Whether screenshots or context are available
- Whether market-specific behavior is required
This makes localization work visible before development is complete.
Include localization in release planning
Teams need enough time for translation, review, queries, engineering, testing, and corrections. A release date that considers only source-language completion creates unnecessary pressure and quality risk.
Create a string-freeze policy where appropriate
A string freeze limits source-language changes after a set point so translators are not working on moving targets. Continuous products may not use a full freeze, but they still need clear rules for handling late changes.
Connect source systems to the localization workflow
Manual file transfers may work during an early pilot. As volume grows, integrations should remove real, repeated bottlenecks—copy-and-paste work, version confusion, missing updates, formatting errors, and delivery delays.
Test localized content before launch
Translation review alone is not enough. Localized content should be checked inside the product for:
- Truncation, overlap, and broken layouts
- Incorrect variables, placeholders, and missing strings
- Navigation, links, display direction, and font support
- Contextual meaning in the actual user flow
Testing should be part of the release process, not an optional final step. See LQA vs. proofreading for what in-context review catches that file review misses.
Decide which content to localize first
Planning early does not mean translating everything immediately. It means making deliberate decisions.
A company entering a new market might prioritize:
- Registration and onboarding
- Core product workflows
- Pricing and checkout
- Main website pages
- App-store content
- Essential support articles
- Customer communications
- High-performing marketing pages
Lower-priority archives or internal materials can follow later. For SaaS products, SaaS localization has its own sequencing and content priorities.
This phased approach helps the team validate demand and improve its workflow before expanding the content scope.
What happens when localization starts too late?
Late localization often creates hidden costs across engineering, content, design, and production: extracting hard-coded text, rebuilding layouts, rewriting ambiguous source copy, reworking images and UI components, and retranslating when source changes mid-project. Compressed timelines reduce review and in-product testing time. Launches slip, and some product areas ship translated while others do not.
Starting early does not necessarily mean spending more. It often means avoiding rework that makes localization the visible bottleneck when the underlying cause was planning that started too late.
Build a minimum viable localization setup
Startups do not need an enterprise-scale system on day one.
A minimum setup might include:
- One internal owner
- One target language
- A clearly defined content set
- A translation provider or language team
- A shared glossary
- Basic style guidance
- A repeatable handoff process
- Product-level testing
- A feedback loop
The objective is to create a process that can be repeated and improved.
A pilot should reveal:
- Where content gets stuck
- Which teams need to participate
- Which questions translators ask
- Which files are difficult to manage
- Which product components break
- How much review is required
- Which tasks should be automated
These lessons are more valuable than attempting to design a perfect global workflow in advance.
Practical takeaway: Localization readiness is a content and systems problem before it is a translation problem. If ownership and source of truth are unclear, every new language multiplies the mess.
Seven questions to answer before translating the first word
Before beginning localization, teams should ask:
- What content does the company have? Create an inventory of product, marketing, support, legal, and educational content.
- Where does it live? Identify the source system and source of truth for every content type.
- Who owns it? Assign people who can approve source text and answer contextual questions.
- How often does it change? Determine whether the workflow should be continuous, scheduled, or project based.
- How will it move? Define how content will be sent for translation and returned to the product.
- What quality does it require? Match the workflow to the content’s visibility, risk, and purpose. See human vs. machine translation workflows for a decision framework.
- How will the team test it? Plan linguistic and functional checks in the final context.
Answering these questions creates the foundation of a scalable localization strategy—and treats localization as part of product design, not a downstream content service. A localization-ready product does not need to launch in every language immediately; it avoids decisions that make future expansion unnecessarily difficult.
For a broader framework covering content profiling, human and machine translation, outsourcing, and localization maturity, see A Practical Localization Strategy for Growing Products. Related guides cover human vs. machine translation workflows and what to keep in-house vs. outsource.
Stas Kharevich has spent more than 16 years at Alconost and leads localization for product and software teams—SaaS, games, and marketing content among them. The video clip in this guide is from his conversation with Linh Nguyen on the Localize the World series. Read more from Stas on how Alconost runs localization.
