Standard Localization Process

The standard localization process includes the following steps:

1. Setting up project goals. Defining a clear target, milestones, and acceptance criteria. Make them understood by different stakeholders.

2. Evaluation of the resources, effort, and tools required for localization. Making effort and schedule estimates and dependency analysis based on the evaluation.

3. Cultural, technical, and linguistic assessment. Making sure that all aspects are analyzed.

4. Check of software architecture and localization of the code.

5. Text extraction from original files/content. Using appropriate tools for getting all translatable text out of raw materials.

6. Statistics and analysis of the source materials for getting baseline to start translation and final workload estimations.

7. Reusing existing translations, creation, and maintenance of terminology glossaries.

8. Translation to the target languages by internal or external translators.

9. Adaptation of the user interface to match translated texts and other localization-related differences (e.g., button sizes, text direction).

10. Localization of graphics and any media containing visible text, symbols, etc. that cannot be localized in previous steps.

11. Compilation and building of the localized files for testing. The results can be reviewed instantly and previous steps run.

12. Linguistic quality assurance, double-checking consistency, style, and fluency of translations.

13. Functional testing and verification, making sure that software behaves or content looks like it should.

14. Project delivery of localized software or content to customer.

15. Launch of localized software or content to end users.

The steps above are applicable for software localization but can be followed with any type of localization.