Mirela
In the localization process, translation alone doesn’t guarantee quality. You need an additional step to turn that raw localized content into a functional, usable, and context-aware experience. And that’s called localization quality assurance, or LQA. It exists to prevent mistranslations, interface issues, and many other problems which may arise during localization. In this article, we’re breaking down how the process works.
What is localization quality assurance?
LQA is the process of evaluating and verifying localized content to ensure it is linguistically accurate, functionally reliable, culturally appropriate, and consistent with the original product’s intent and user experience.
Consequently, it answers several questions like:
- Is this grammatically correct?
- Does this make sense to a local user?
- Does it feel native?
- Does the functionality hold up in this language version?
- Are there any cultural pitfalls or inappropriate references?
Why LQA matters
Assumptions are dangerous. You might think your in-house translators or vendors have handled everything perfectly, but this is not always the case. Without LQA, you risk embarrassing translations, cultural faux, and numerous functional errors.
LQA helps you maintain brand consistency in all markets, it allows you to give your users a product that feels tailor-made for them, and it also protects your business legally (especially in regulated industries).
What LQA actually involves
With LQA, you get three layers: the linguistic layer, the functional layer, and the cultural layer. At the linguistic level, you’re asking whether the translation is not only correct but also idiomatic. The functional layer focuses on behavior and performance, so it’s about confirming that the product behaves as intended in the localized version. As for the cultural layer, this is perhaps the most overlooked (because it’s also hardest to automate). It demands sensitivity, regional knowledge, and attention to detail.
The process of LQA
LQA is embedded in the localization workflow. Right from the beginning, you should define clear expectations about language style, terminology, and layout constraints. Style guides and glossaries are essential. You want your testers to understand how the translated content will be used, where it will appear, and how it fits within the user journey.
Once you have the groundwork in place, the actual testing environment must be set up. Whether you’re testing on a staging server or in a local sandbox, the key is to make the test environment mirror real-world usage as closely as possible. Reviewers need to see the language in motion: how it behaves inside buttons, forms, dialogs, tooltips, menus, or across different screen sizes and devices.
The first layer of review typically focuses on the language itself. During this phase, native-speaking reviewers go through the product in its localized form and examine whether the language is grammatically correct, fluent, and idiomatic. They assess the naturalness of the phrasing, adherence to the brand’s tone, and alignment with the defined style guide and glossary.
As previously mentioned, there’s also a functional validation layer. In this step, you check whether the product actually works after localization, because language can break your code. Look for string overflows, truncated text, layout breakages, broken navigation paths, encoding issues, and dynamic content failures. Of course, you also need to verify that system-specific conventions (e.g., date and time formats, number separators, plural forms, text direction, and so on) are properly implemented.
In this end, there’s a final round of review and, when everything meets the defined quality threshold, a formal sign-off. This is to certify that the localized version of the product meets or exceeds the quality of the source version, and not just in correctness, but in usability, coherence, and native fluency too.
Final thoughts
Proper localization quality assurance takes time, money, and people. But it shouldn’t be seen as a cost, because it’s actually an investment. If you don’t do it, the localized version risks looking careless… or straight up disrespectful, if you’re really unlucky. And sadly, every missed error, every broken flow, every awkward sentence erodes trust in your brand. LQA helps with risk management. It exists to catch these points of failure before your users do, so don’t skip out on the process.