How often have you heard “It does not fit in, this language is too long”, “just release in English, we will get the translations later” or “can you use google translate?”…
Historically, localisation is a thought-after process, something you don’t need to think about until the very end. It can often be seen as a bottle-neck for product release.
Well, I wanted to change that mentality.
It all started with a coffee and a Swedish cinnamon bun with Aimee Quantrill, our Content Design Lead. We envisioned a type of bridge that would connect our design tool, Figma and our localisation…
Designs are done, content is finalised, engineers have worked on the internationalisation process and you’re ready to start localising in one or several languages…What’s next?
What’s translation memory?
Maybe you outsource localisation, maybe you do it internally — whatever you do, linguists are going to ask about reference material and translation memory (TM).
Translation memory is a database of previously translated content. It contains segments (units of text such as sentences or paragraphs) in your source (original) and target (translation) languages.
Translation memory divides segments into different match levels:
- 101% match
- 100% match
- 95–99% match
- 85–94% match
- 75–84% match
- 50–74% match
- 0–49% match
- …
Or how to translate your content.
You have designed a great product and you’re ready to translate it. How hard could it be?
Hint: Pretty hard.
Words as simple as “Enter” can translate to come or go somewhere in particular, enter a competition or become a member of an association. “Clear all” can be masculine, feminine, singular or plural. So how do you get high quality translations for all your content?
Translation, localisation or transcreation? What’s the difference?
The translation world comes with its own jargon: translation, localisation, transcreation, back translation, editing, proofreading…So what do we do at Deliveroo? …
AnneSophie Delafosse
Localisation Coordinator at Deliveroo
