Stories from the Blok #10 Happy Holiday Harmonies - Website Localization: Unlock the world and grow faster in 2023
Storyblok is the first headless CMS that works for developers & marketers alike.
In the second presentation of our Stories from the Blok #10 Happy Holiday Harmonies, we turned things over to Kevin Davidson (Senior Demand Generation Specialist @ Storyblok) and Sergio Vidangos (Craftmaster Software Development @ Virtual Identity). They walked us through how to leverage website localization to maximize your reach in 2023.
You can watch the video segment below, or continue reading for a written recap of the presentation.
Watch Stories from the Blok #10: Website Localization - Unlock the World and Grow Faster in 2023
To kick things off, Kevin and Sergio established the importance of providing a shopping experience in a user's native language. They introduced a solution called DeepL, a program with an open-source app coming soon to the Storyblok App Directory.
Sergio walked us through how to add, activate, and calibrate it with settings like folder-level translations, the ability to change workflow status post-translation, and assigning different translations to different user roles. After that, he showed us how easy it is to then translate according to those settings – maintaining the formatting the whole time.
Then, the pair went into the finer points of difference between localization and translation. Translation, they explained, is a direct one-to-one copy of the content in a different language. It can occasionally result in mistakes thanks to differences in context or connotation. By contrast, localization refers more to creating content specifically designed to reach different locations.
After that, Kevin and Sergio dove into a discussion of plugins as an affordable solution, especially for organizations that are just beginning their translation efforts. Sergio confirmed that DeepL was an ideal starting point as an open-source, budget-friendly, effective tool – but these same traits are just as applicable to more advanced projects as well.
He then led a discussion of the translation memory feature. Translation memory lets you edit a translation that it completes. Then, it will apply that change to all other translations going forward. The more you edit, the more it learns.
Sergio and Kevin left us with advice: when you're expanding, embrace the culture of the audience you're trying to reach and keep an eye on the exciting developments of translation and localization technology.
