Localisation 5 August 2026
After Localisation: The Work That Begins Once You Deliver, and the Feedback Loop
Localisation does not end when the product goes live. The update routine, the promotional copy, store visibility and the end-of-project review are what set the cost of the next version.
Localisation projects are generally treated as closed once delivery is made. The invoice goes out, the files are archived, the team disperses. Yet the final phase of the process begins precisely here, and it is largely this phase that sets the cost of the next version.
Contents
The sources call this phase post-localisation and count four main tasks: setting up the update routine, localising the promotional materials, increasing the findability of the product, and the end-of-project review (Jiménez-Crespo 2024, pp. 56-57).
This article looks at what each of these tasks means and at which of them you need to plan for as the party buying the translation. The aim is to show which line items a project that looks closed has in fact left open.
What does post-localisation cover?
What these tasks have in common is that they are continuous rather than one-off. As long as the product lives, the content changes; every change creates a new small localisation request. It has to be thought of not as a project but as a maintenance routine.
The second feature is that the tasks are spread across different teams. The update flow sits with the technical team, the promotional copy with marketing, the terminology upkeep with the language team. Because of this dispersal, post-localisation is left unowned in most companies.
The third feature is visibility. The work in this phase generates revenue directly: your product being found in the target market, its promotion being intelligible and updates arriving on time all show up in the sales figures.
The table below summarises the main line items in this phase and their timing.
| Work item | Timing | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Update routine | Immediately after delivery | A defined flow and an owner |
| Promotional copy | At the same time as launch | Local campaign content |
| Store and search copy | Within the first month | Title, description, keywords |
| End-of-project review | Two weeks after delivery | A list of lessons learned |
| Memory and terminology upkeep | Periodic | Current, clean language assets |
Setting up the update routine
The first task is to decide how future changes will flow. If a continuous or agile routine is being set up, this should be done immediately after delivery; otherwise new content piles up and comes back months later as a bulk job.
The basic elements of the routine are simple: where the new content will be taken from, who will approve it, and how often it will go live. When these three questions go unanswered, even the best technical infrastructure runs idle.
The commonest mistake in practice is tying updates to individuals. When the person responsible leaves, the flow stops and the localised version quietly begins to go stale. Making the routine written and transferable reduces that risk.
In small businesses a fixed monthly check may be enough. Gathering the changed content at the start of each month and sending it in a single package makes both the cost and the management load predictable.
The routine also has a measurement side. Tracking how many days behind the source version the localised version has fallen lets you see problems before they grow. If that gap keeps widening, the issue is not translation speed but a blockage in the flow.
Localising the promotional materials
Even where the product itself has been localised, the content around it often stays in the source language: promotional pages, social media posts, email newsletters, print and digital advertising. The sources explicitly count this work as part of the post-localisation phase.
This content calls for a different approach. Interface text is built on accuracy and consistency, whereas promotional copy is built on persuasion. A literal translation usually gives a flat result here; adaptation is needed.
That is why it is misleading to think of promotional content as sitting within the same order at the same price. Creative adaptation takes longer and usually requires a separate round of approval from the brand.
The support side should not be forgotten either. If the help pages, the frequently asked questions and the automated reply texts are not available in the target language, the product has been localised but the service has not. For the user there is no difference between the two; both are the experience of the same brand.
Findability: search and store visibility
The most directly commercial item in this phase is making the product findable in the target market. On the web side this work is called search engine marketing, and on the app side store optimisation (Jiménez-Crespo 2024, p. 57).
In both cases the keywords are not translated but determined afresh. The phrases users genuinely search for in the target market may not be literal translations of their source-language equivalents. This is work that calls for market knowledge as much as language knowledge.
Store copy also has character limits. Because the title and short description fields are narrow, translations that run long are cut off. Planning a separate writing round for these fields is more efficient than correcting them afterwards.
What also sets this item apart from the others is that the results are measurable. Because you receive feedback through impression and download figures, you can see in a short time whether the changes you made have worked.
This measurability also makes it easier to defend the localisation investment inside the company. It is hard to show the contribution of interface translation in figures; how search visibility in the target market has changed, on the other hand, is concrete data and will serve you at the next budget discussion.
The end-of-project review
In the sources this step appears as analysis and the end-of-project meeting. The aim is not to look for someone to blame but to make recurring problems visible. At which stage was there a delay, which file format caused trouble, which term was argued over?
The meeting does not have to be long. A half-hour discussion and a five-point note are usually enough to stop the same mistakes recurring in the next version.
It is worth including your supplier in this review as well. The bottlenecks they see are in places you cannot see: files that arrived incomplete, approvals given late, instructions that stayed vague.
Where the notes are kept matters too. A review left in a personal email inbox turns into a document nobody can reach on the next project.
A few simple measures are enough to make the review concrete: the planned and the actual delivery dates, the number of errors found at the testing stage, and the number of rounds of corrections. These three pieces of data show beyond argument where you need to invest on the next project.
Terminology feedback from users
The least used resource of the post-localisation phase is the user. Once the product has gone live, which term was not understood and which phrasing was read the wrong way become visible in the support records.
Large technology companies have been collecting this feedback systematically for years. In one example, a company sought the views of its user community on preferred equivalents through a portal that opened its product terminology to the public (Jiménez-Crespo 2024, p. 71).
The logic behind this is that technology terms are in motion. Which equivalent will settle for a new concept often cannot be predicted in advance; local usage makes its own choice, and that choice changes over time.
The same thing can be done on a small scale. Reviewing the questions that come in to your support team every three months and updating your term list is the cheapest way to close the language gap between you and your users.
Maintaining the language assets
What a project leaves behind is not only the localised product; the translation memory and the termbase remain as well. Without maintenance, these two assets lose value fast. Old product names, phrases no longer in use and wrongly approved translations accumulate in the memory.
The maintenance work is not complex: updating the terms that change after each version, flagging the entries that have fallen out of use and exporting the memory regularly is enough.
Ownership should be settled at this stage too. The memory and the termbase are your language assets; the fact that they can be exported in a standard format ensures that what you have built up stays with you if you change supplier later.
A well-maintained memory comes back as a direct discount on the next project, because repeated content is not translated again.
The hidden benefit of maintenance is consistency. If two contradictory equivalents sit in the memory, which of them comes up on the next project is left to chance. Periodic cleaning means dealing with quality control at source rather than after the event.
The Türkiye context
On products entering the Turkish market, the post-localisation phase is often left half-finished. The interface is turned into Turkish, but the support content, the campaign copy and the store descriptions carry on in English. The user uses the product in Turkish and looks for information about it in a foreign language.
Search habits differ as well. In Turkish searches, users frequently drop the suffixes or use the English term just as it is. Doing the keyword work by literal translation therefore produces no result; you have to look at local search data.
On the terminology side there is a constant tension between the Turkish equivalent and established English usage. Reconciling the phrasing users have adopted with the corporate language preference is work that requires feedback to be collected regularly.
What does this mean for you?
When the post-localisation phase is not budgeted for, it turns into work that surfaces of its own accord and is done in a hurry. When it is planned, it extends the life of your product in the target market. The following steps help:
- Set aside a separate localisation budget for the twelve months after delivery.
- Define the owner of the update flow as a role, not as a person.
- Plan a separate writing round for the store and search copy.
- Keep the end-of-project notes in a shared place and add them to the next briefing.
- Export and archive your translation memory and term list at least once a year.
We describe our periodic maintenance and update work on our translation services page. If you would like to set up a routine for the post-localisation phase, get in touch through our contact page and share your current content flow with us.
Frequently asked questions
Should post-localisation be a separate budget item?
It should. The work at this stage is invisible within the translation order but continuous. Setting aside an annual budget for updates, promotional copy and maintenance is more predictable than obtaining a quotation from scratch each time.
Why are store and search copy handled separately?
Because they serve a different purpose from the text inside the product. The title, description and keywords that let the user find the product are written according to search habits in the target market, not by literal translation.
Does the end-of-project review really work?
It does, because it makes recurring problems visible. Once it has been written down which file format cost time and which term caused argument, the same problem does not arise in the next version.
Should user feedback change terminology decisions?
Not always, but it should be taken into account. In technology terminology, local usage changes fast and the equivalent users have adopted may differ from the one in the dictionary. The decision has to be weighed together with brand consistency.
Sources
Jiménez-Crespo, M. A. (2024). Localization in Translation. Routledge, pp. 56-57, 70-71. · DePalma, D. and Kelly, N. (2011). “Project Management for Crowdsourced Translation”. Translation and Localization Project Management. John Benjamins. · Bowker, L. (2020). “Terminology Management”. Routledge Handbook of Translation and Technology.