This is a post that I wrote a while back for the team I'm part of. Originally published on the Indie Localizers blog.
We are thrilled about the launch of our brand-new website and our blog!
We plan to regularly publish new articles that would be of interest to business owners, indie developers, fellow localizers, and just anyone interested in all things business, SEO, modern technology, video games, and, of course, localization.
In this post, we’d like to introduce our team and sketch out some of our core values and views.
Via: http://www.indielocalization.com
BLUE IS THE NEW COLOR OF INDIE
The main idea behind our team is that together we are more competitive than on our own. Our nouveau team wants to be more dynamic and reactive in today’s business landscape and, of course, we want to be more competitive. When we, freelance translators, work on our own, we stand little chance of getting a direct localization client since in most cases we can offer support for only one language.
As solo freelancers, we compete here with big companies that have the resources, and increasingly often the technology, to take on multi-language projects from top-bracket clients. Therefore, it’s much less headache for a client to hand over the job to a company that will manage simultaneous localization into several languages than to seek multiple translators from each target geography and manage all of them.
That is unless we work as a team. Then, with the right approach, indie translators stand a good chance.
“Freelance translators are small grains of sand in the vast virtual world, but they can be seen differently being part of a team. IL platform places together professionals with associated activities. As a team, they are stronger and can give a better result for both clients and themselves. Good rates, good colleagues partnerships, and interesting projects in a friendly environment are our aims.”
STEERING FREE
Our team was incepted three months ago out of the realization that things don’t have to be the way they are and out of the desire to be independent—take the helm of our careers in our own hands and not rely on anyone else’s whim or preferences. We know all too well that being mere freelancers in a pool of hundreds, if not thousands, of similar fellow translators employed by an agency, we are easily replaceable and our value, therefore, is diminished.
If we take a look deeper down, Indie Localizers embody a core principle which is a well-known old truth: Together we are more than the sum of us.
Our indie spirit has a liberating feeling to it, but we realize there are big challenges and risks associated with going solo.
“I think the IL project is innovative and challenging. I expect it will give me the opportunity to access more rewarding projects that I thought out of reach for a single freelancer, and reinforce the team spirit of freelance translators.”
LOCALIZERS, NOT TRANSLATORS
Because localization is a complex undertaking and there is a big room for very pricey errors, it should be done by localization specialists. As we say on our website, we are not translators, we are localizers. Individually, we all have years of experience localizing websites, apps, games, and such. Many of us are also experienced in translating marketing, legal, business, and other content.
Being indies, we have to be more than just localizers and manage all the workflow on our own. Therefore, many of us have more than one role.
Not Your Typical Agency
We’re sustainable, being a virtual team with no physical office. And with hoffices around the globe, you can get in touch with us day or night, and one of us will get back to you shortly
Self-Organized
Our team was created out of the desire to be independent. As a solopreneur or an indie dev, you certainly hear us. Let’s do something cool together
Self-Managed
We manage all the workflow on our own and have different roles: project lead, social media marketer, accountant, Twitter admin, client success manager etc
Versatile
To deliver a comprehensive service, we have to be web developers, copywriters, designers, and illustrators. And because we partner with SEOs and testers, we got that covered too
LOCALIZERS, SEOS, DEVELOPERS, TESTERS
Because localization is much more than pure, linguistic translation and can get quite technical we’ve partnered with experienced SEOs and developers. Their job is to advise you (and us), perform SEO on your product, and provide technical assistance when needed and as a premium feature. After all, being a localization team means being able to provide a comprehensive localization service so that you don’t have to look elsewhere.
“My role in the team is that of a specialist with experience in video gaming; to deliver to the client top French localization and localization testing, to help them grow their businesses in my country, and to provide language support at any time. They have the privilege of having a team that meets their needs and solves their problems.”
Initially, Indie Localizers were devised as a tight-knit team composed of translators passionate about localization. It was later on that we’ve on-boarded SEOs, testers, and developers to offer the client a more comprehensive service and give an extra edge to our indie team.
We want our clients come to us and not having to look elsewhere to cover their additional needs, such as SEO or dev support.
This is an important point and it was a nice move we made, as entering new markets is not just about localizing a client-facing UI and translating top-level marketing content into more languages. It’s about tuning up your product or service to new cultures in new locales, making it easily discoverable in SERPs by local people, grabbing their hearts and souls, and ensuring you are where your prospects are, or going to be, by localizing your online ads, social media profiles, landing pages, email campaigns etc.
All along we aim to make the whole localization project as smooth as possible, in part by ruling out an unnecessary hassle and extra time you would have to spend finding non-linguistic specialists when you need SEO or tech support.
LOCALIZATION AND SEO: INSEPARABLE TOGETHER
Localization without a proper SEO research seems unimaginable in the age when being on the first page of search results is equal to whether your clients will know about your existence or not.
Take keyword localization for app stores that so many language companies offer today. It’s clear that simply translating all keywords won’t work.
The idea is to research the best ranking keywords that local people actually use and then implement them in all localizations, website structure or store metadata, descriptions etc. Not just localize keywords from language A to language B. Therefore, the whole term “keyword localization” doesn’t reflect the reality, as keywords are not being localized, but rather researched and implemented.
“Keyword research and implementation in localization” seems to be a more proper term. And many language companies do not offer SEO service at all, or simply advise clients to “do their homework,” meaning do a research on their own or hire third-party SEOs.
While this can be done by a freelance localizer with proper SEO skills, it’s best to employ a market-savvy SEO expert who’ll share research results with the localizer and the localizer will deliver an optimized product to the client. This is the workflow that our dynamic team adopted and will be following.
Comprehensive doesn’t mean extensive: Although we offer a comprehensive localization, Indie Localizers do not currently support such services as voice-overs and redesign.
TRANSPARENCY
Besides the core services (l10n, SEO, l10n testing, and dev support), we offer something that few language companies do—total leverage over who is going to work on your project. You may visit our personal pages and actually review qualification of each localizer, SEO, developer, or tester and only then decide whether you want to award a project to us.
Also, we give you a way to pick the team members who in your opinion are best-suited for the project. And that’s a pretty cool thing about ILs. Our team is based on transparency and trust.
And because we don’t have offices with the numerous staff you don’t pay overhead. Be sure that the pricing reflects only services you seek and is not pushed up to cover the staff’s salary.
To learn more about us and see our faces, visit Our Team page on our brand-new website that we’ve built using exclusively our own talent and have recently happily launched.
The Indie Localizers Team,
One Team To Take You Global