Transforming a Manual Localization Process
Over 40 million people in 189 countries are already learning languages with Memrise. The company localizes its app and all content into 24 languages to engage and further grow its user base. To achieve that, Memrise works with a team of 22 translators across different countries and timezones to deliver timely localization of all UI copy and marketing materials.
Their manual localization process was relying heavily on spreadsheets and struggled to keep up with the weekly release cycles. By utilizing Phrase – an all-in-one, web-based localization platform – Memrise successfully integrated localization into their development process and pushed their efficiency to new heights.
Results
- Elimination of manual localization
- Scaling of project management process
- Responsive customer support relationship for continuous assistance
Memrise by the numbers
Challenge
The manual localization process
For software companies like Memrise, a quick time-to-market of new features is crucial to keep up with the demand for new functionalities and updates. If localization has to match this pace, it needs to become an integral part of the development process. However, at Memrise, localization got pushed to the very end of the release cycle causing a serious deceleration of output. “Translations were the bottleneck of every release until we started using Phrase” comments Mario Pluzny, Localization Manager at Memrise.
The developers pushed new strings manually to the translation tool once branches had been QA’ed and merged to master. Once the translations were ready, they would pull them back out of the translation tool. This barely allowed a few hours for the localization team to translate and proactively test the non-English versions. It was a very manual process, and developers were not always available to push and pull the strings. This would jeopardize their weekly releases.
Mario Pluzny explains: “We needed to allow the localization team to own the process from a much earlier stage and remove dependencies from developers.” Memrise’s team saw a huge potential to automate tasks and streamline the localization methods.
Solution
Establishing process ownership
Memrise was looking for a solution that would let the localization manager and internal as well as external resources control the localization workflow instead of relying on necessary developer input. A former team member recommended Phrase, and soon Memrise was up and running with their new software localization platform.
“After the transition to Phrase, we no longer needed to wait for a developer to finish coding a new feature in order to push strings to the tool,” recalls Mario Pluzny. “As soon as a feature specification is reviewed by the localization team and its copy is approved, we can add all keys to Phrase and get them translated even before the actual code is written.”
Phrase’s ability to manage processes all on one platform streamlined the localization process and allowed for better tracking and scalability. The localization team was now able to control the process from a much earlier stage. Mario Pluzny points out: “That gave us complete ownership of string management and much more time to get things ready when the localization testing phase arrives.”
Also, Memrise’s developers found Phrase easy to use and were able to incorporate it seamlessly right into the build process for iOS, Android, and Web. The detailed documentation, together with plenty of useful, easy-to-find information in the Phrase tool made this possible.
Above all, Phrase’s responsive and helpful customer support and its quick response to client product requests stood out. Both have helped Memrise to further boost their efficiency.
All CRM messaging and other marketing communication is now done via Phrase, while it was still largely spreadsheets before.
Benefits
Transformation to efficiency
Phrase’s solution has completely transformed Memrise’s localization process. With the help of the tool, Memrise successfully localized important marketing communication around two significant company changes. One was the split-off of community-created content into a new set of products (website, iOS app, Android app) called Decks by Memrise. The other was the rebranding of their apps to a fresh new design. Now that Memrise’s team can track all localization tasks with Phrase jobs, they were even able to scale their weekly project management process to levels they had never seen before.
With Phrase’s efficient localization platform, Memrise can now finish their weekly release cycle on time, without undue stress and time pressure for the entire team. The tool has quickly become indispensable to meet their growing localization needs, with new products and rebrands. It not only transformed and optimized the process but also allowed for faster communication and easier task management.
Features used
Key Phrase features that help Memrise localize at scale
