The infrastructure behind localization management

Localization management has to do with the structured process of adapting content, products, or services to meet the linguistic, cultural, and technical expectations of users in different markets across the globe. It’s about the coordination of this adaptation process, and is connected with business aspects like operations, technology, content strategy, and project management. This is the definition, in short, but here’s what you need to know to do it the right way.

Strategy first

You can’t do localization without a strategy. What is localization supposed to achieve for your business? That’s the first question you need to ask yourself.

Sketch some clear business objectives. Your goals shape everything from what you localize to how fast you move and how much you spend. Don’t jump into new languages without tying them to business outcomes, otherwise you might end up wasting time and money.

You also need to understand market readiness and whether your organization is even set up to support those users. Choose what you need to localize (not everything needs to be localized, by the way) and segment your content. Focus on the pieces that drive revenue, retention, or legal compliance.

This is just the basics. Before you scale, you also need to decide how you’ll measure success. That means looking at numbers, tying localization to KPIs like reduced churn in a target region, increased free-to-paid conversion rates in localized onboarding flows, shorter time-to-market for new features in all locales, and improved SEO visibility in local search engines, among others.

Core components of localization management

The pillars that define localization management as we know it today are the people, processes, technology, and content infrastructure.

The people

People matter most, because you can’t do localization without a strong localization team. You need people that know how to create, execute and manage your strategy. These professionals often include:

• Localization managers. They are the ones who oversee timelines, budgets, stakeholder coordination, and strategic alignment. They also collaborate with the product and marketing teams.
• Translators and linguists, either in-house or freelance. They’re responsible for the actual language adaptation.
• Engineers and localization QA. They work to integrate the localized assets with the software stack and perform functional and linguistic testing.
• Vendors or LSPs (language service providers), the partners who provide scale, specialization, or geographic reach that in-house teams may lack.

The process

A localization workflow is the step-by-step process of translating and adapting content for different languages and cultures. It determines how fast and how well you can scale, how much manual overhead you carry, and how cleanly your localized content makes it into the product or platform.

The process starts with with content creation and extraction. As previously mentioned, you need structured, externalized content so it can be tracked, versioned, and extracted automatically. From there, the content moves into your translation pipeline, where your localization management system sits.

Once the initial translation is done, you need to review your content. This is the step where you’re catching grammar issues, and also where cultural and brand alignment gets enforced. After review, the content is approved and pushed back into your system (product codebase, website, or support platform).

The technology

Localization management software encompass a range of tools and systems used to coordinate, automate, and support the process of adapting content for different languages. This includes translation management systems (TMS), terminology databases, workflow automation tools, and integration solutions that work together to manage all aspects of localization.

A TMS can be seen as the foundation of localization management. It’s where your localization workflows live, from assigning translation tasks and managing glossaries to tracking progress and integrating with your content management system or codebase. It’s a great tool to use if you want to automate your localization and keep everything in sync.

Computer-Assisted Translation tools are often used by translators. They leverage translation memory, terminology databases, and quality checks to maintain consistency and cut down redundant work. These tools make the localization process smarter and faster, especially when you’re dealing with high volumes or ongoing content updates, but they don’t replace linguists.

Then we have the APIs that bring everything together. Through them, your product, marketing, and support platforms can connect directly to your TMS. You can thus automate the flow of content in and out of your localization process. The tricky part is to learn how to “wire” all these localization management tools together.

The content

Is your content actually localizable? Content often sprawls across design files, codebases, CMS platforms, and marketing systems. As such, if your content isn’t structured properly, you’re going to have a hard time localizing it. Infrastructure encompasses the capability to define content data structures and to manage content items through a structured workflow that includes saving, approval, and publication.

The first thing you need is separation. Keep your text separate from your code, and your layout separate from your words. UI strings should live in files or tools that aren’t buried in your product code. Your marketing content should be built from components, not just raw HTML or custom layouts for every region.

Version control is another important consideration. Your content’s going to change, especially in fast-moving products or marketing teams. If you don’t have a way to track which strings were updated, what’s already been translated, and what needs to go out again, you’ll either miss important updates or keep redoing work you’ve already paid for. A good setup helps you reuse what works and only retranslate what’s changed.

Finally, at some point, you may need to scale. You might be able to wing it with two or three languages using manual processes, but it won’t last. Once you hit five or ten markets, everything cracks if your content isn’t structured. That’s why this work matters up front. The more organized your content is, the easier everything else becomes.

Using POEditor for localization management

We built POEditor around managing translation across multiple languages. You can import strings directly from your codebase using localization files (e.g., JSON, XML, YAML, or .properties) or integrate it with your version control system via GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket. That means you can keep your product text in sync without constantly uploading and downloading files by hand.

The interface is clean, and the learning curve is low, which makes it great for teams that need to loop in developers, translators, and product managers without a ton of onboarding. You can assign languages to individual translators, track progress per language, and set up notifications for when translations are missing or updated.

There’s built-in translation memory and glossary features, which help with consistency if you’re managing large sets of content. While the automatic translation support (Google Translate, DeepL, and Azure AI Translator) can be helpful for lower-priority content or quick drafts, we also offer human translation (Gengo and TextMaster) for more accurate translations.

POEditor gives you the structure to manage localization at scale without locking you into rigid workflows. It’s a great fit for fast-moving teams that want visibility, control, and collaboration in one place, especially if you’re translating product interfaces, app content, or web copy. But don’t trust us—give it a go and see for yourself.