3 things to keep in mind when creating our localization budget

It turns out that in the end, it's not all bad what this global WFH experiment we are immersed in these last 2 years is bringing!

For example, the time I used to spend commuting to the office, I use it now to go to the gym. I did also a small renovations to make my home more cozy and comfortable. I have been able to spend more time with my kids and get more involved in their life at school, and another benefit is that I have attended more localization events these last few months than ever!

It's true that by attending from home, we lose that socialization component that even though platforms like Remo try to imitate on a virtual level, there are things that are irreplaceable from physical events; like for example a karaoke night after doing a presentation at the last face to face LocWorld we had in Lisbon 🥳

But we get many other things, we gain the possibility to attend events that are far away, and that would be not easy to find the financial resources or the time to participate. This year I have had the opportunity to attend inspiring talks remotely: GALA, the Game Global Forum, Nimdzi Insights, or Smarcat, to name a few of the most recent ones I joined.

Today on my blog, I want to stop and reflect on the LocFromHome event organized by Smatcat.

If I remember correctly, this is the 5th edition. The first one was in April last year when the worst of the pandemic was happening.

Under the inspiring title Stronger by sharing, the Smarcat events team created back then a series of presentations that filled a gap that all of us were suffering from.

At its core, the localization industry has always been very much in WFH mode, even before COVID. The very nature of our job means that we work with clients and language service providers worldwide. The remote working part of the job ? yeah, we have that under control! But those physical events we had until early 2020 gave us a real buzz! The opportunity to network, meet new colleagues, and catch up with old friends was a very enriching experience. It made us all feel part of something as big and beautiful as the Language Industry. That was cut short at the beginning of last year, but Smarcat came to the rescue and organized a LocFromHome online event that has been gaining momentum throughout its various events.

In the first edition of LocFromHome, I was fortunate enough to be invited to speak about The content journey.

Last week I was invited again to a panel discussion. A panel discussion on a very relevant topic such as the topic of budgets!

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And this topic is always a hot potato, not only for LSPs but also for buyers. So when Belén Agulló from the Nimdzi team asked me if I would like to be on a panel discussion about budgeting, I didn't hesitate and told her that I would love to participate. So last Thursday, together with other localization leaders of the industry from the buyer side, such as Valeria Nanni and Julio Leal, we discussed what to consider when creating a budget, what strategies we should think and what mistakes we have made along with our career.

I really enjoyed the talk we had.

In my post this week, I wanted to share and expand on one of the questions that Belen asked us and that I found very insightful; this question was if we had to choose 3 things to consider when creating a budget, what would we choose?

A localization budget is composed of multiple things, but if I have to choose 3 variables when creating the budget this is my top 3 things to consider

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1.- Languages/markets to cover.

Understanding which markets are essential to your organization is fundamental when creating your budget as a buyer of localization services. Language prioritization is a factor to consider when making your forecast. When building our budget , we must include enough money to cover important languages for our company. We should first identify the markets we want to reach and then set up our strategy accordingly (and link the localization budget to deliver that strategy).

Which market to focus on is one of the questions that sooner or later any Localization or Marketing team has to face

That is why taking the time to analyze whether there are any new markets we want to enter is worthwhile. In this analysis, we should consider opportunities in untapped markets and whether the markets in which we are present produce the results we expect. So the first variable I feel essential when creating my localization budget is the languages to cover, both the potential new markets and the current ones in our everyday language coverage policy.

2.- Content prioritization

Content prioritization is the second variable I like to consider when creating a budget.

The content we want to localize has different levels of visibility. Therefore we must take the time to analyze the content and its level of visibility. For example, marketing content has high visibility, so probably we want to give it the best possible localization quality and partner with a localization agency specialized in transcreation. Marketing content or legal content should be localized error-free.

That localization approach for that particular piece of content will have a higher cost than technical documentation or FAQ. That English content tends to be "flatter" and less challenging to get the tone or style right. Probably, Machine Translation will do for tech English. And, since the cost of localizing marketing or legal content with expert localizers will differ from MT, it is important when creating our localization budget that we take the time to analyze the type of content we need to localize and how we are going to localize it.

The more visible the content, the more attention we need to pay to it in our localization strategy, and that more attention usually means a higher cost.

3. Innovation/Technology

The third variable that I cannot overlook when creating a budget to cover localization expenses is to set aside some money to experiment with ways to bring our localization strategy to the next level—and taking it to the next level in this context means-testing tools, testing new processes, investing in innovation. That innovation undoubtedly has a cost associated with it that we must plan for.

An anecdote I told during the panel is that a couple of years ago, I was in a situation where I wanted to explore a tool to automate screenshots for the LQA phase for one of our games, and I did not have money in my budget to run a pilot and assess if that tool could reduce the manual work we were doing during our LQA phase. I forgot to include money in my forecast for experimentation.

So, in the end, I couldn't do what I wanted to do. From that moment on, I never forget to analyze and look into the future to anticipate something I want to try from a localization technology point of view.

Budgeting in our industry is a complex activity as it depends on many factors. It is a year-round exercise as we constantly have to cross-check between what we think we will spend and what we are spending. And as I often say, a localization team does not control demand. We adapt to what we are asked to do. Although multiple variables affect the cost of localization, languages to cover, content prioritization, and leaving money to invest in innovation, I consider it so important that that's is my top 3.

I hope you found this post interesting, and don't hesitate to visit the Smartcat site, recordings of all the sessions will be available soon!

@yolocalizo