"We'll just translate the strings" is the most expensive sentence in international product launches. Real localization touches your code, your design system, your release process, and your QA. Here's how teams that actually ship to 100+ markets do it.
1. Get the architecture right first
Before a single string is translated, make sure your product can express other languages safely.
- Externalize every user-facing string. No hardcoded copy. Use ICU MessageFormat or a similar standard for pluralization and gendered text.
- Use Unicode (UTF-8) everywhere — database, APIs, files, headers.
- Plan for RTL. Arabic, Hebrew, Urdu, and Farsi need mirrored layouts, not just translated text.
- Avoid concatenating strings. Word order varies wildly across languages.
- Locale-aware formatting for dates, numbers, currencies, addresses, and phone numbers. Use the platform formatters; don't roll your own.
2. Pick the right URL strategy for the web
You have three real options, in order of SEO power and engineering cost:
- ccTLDs (example.de, example.fr) — strongest local trust, highest cost.
- Subdirectories (example.com/de/, example.com/fr/) — best balance for most companies. Easier to manage, all SEO authority flows to one domain.
- Subdomains (de.example.com) — middle ground.
Whichever you pick, implement hreflang tags correctly across every page, with a self-referential entry and an x-default for unmatched users.
3. Build a translation workflow that scales
Localization that survives growth has three properties: it's continuous, it lives next to code, and it has memory.
- Continuous. New strings flow to translators as soon as they're merged. No giant end-of-quarter batches.
- Next to code. Use a TMS that integrates with GitHub, Figma, and your CMS so engineers never copy-paste JSON files around.
- Has memory. A translation memory (TM) reuses every previously approved translation, lowering cost and improving consistency over time. A termbase locks brand and domain terms.
4. Translate for meaning, not for words
Real localization is closer to copywriting than to dictionary lookup:
- Transcreation for marketing copy — same message, new cultural reference.
- Native linguists who live in the market. A French-Canadian translator is not a French-French translator.
- Two-step QA — linguist + reviewer — for anything customer-facing.
- In-context proofing. Translators see the actual UI, not a spreadsheet of strings.
5. Plan for cultural and legal adaptation
Strings are the easy part. The hard part:
- Forms that ask for the right address fields, postcodes, and tax IDs per country.
- Names with one part, four parts, or non-Latin scripts.
- Imagery, color, and iconography that read differently across cultures.
- Payments, currencies, and tax handling per market.
- Privacy and consent rules — GDPR, LGPD, CCPA, and the rest.
6. Test like users in that market actually use it
Run linguistic QA in the live product, on real devices, in the locale's display settings. Watch out for:
- German strings that overflow buttons (German is ~30% longer than English on average).
- Chinese line-break behavior in cramped UI.
- Arabic and Hebrew layouts that look fine in LTR mode and break in RTL.
- Right-aligned numerals inside Arabic sentences.
7. Tie localization to SEO from day one
A localized site that isn't found is just expensive content. Plan localized keyword research, localized metadata, and localized internal linking from the start — not as a follow-up project. This is where our multilingual SEO program typically slots in next to translation.
8. Measure what matters
Per locale, track: conversion rate, support ticket rate, refund rate, and organic traffic vs. the English baseline. A "successful" launch should move these in the right direction within two quarters.
The bottom line
Localizing to 100+ markets isn't really a translation project; it's a product, design, engineering, marketing, and operations project that involves translation. Start with the architecture, build a continuous workflow, hire native linguists, and tie localization to SEO. Our translation and localization service exists exactly for this — talk to us.