When a project involves the localization of a website or software, who is responsible for its technical aspects? Find out what role Localization Engineers play in preparing websites and software for translation.
What does LE stand for? LE stands for localization engineering, which is another important role on some of the projects. So what exactly does a localization engineer do?
Localization engineers work closely in tandem with project managers. Now, why is it like that? Because project managers, some of them, they can barely copy paste in an efficient way. So if you ask project manager to localize a website, you probably have a good idea how that would go. It wouldn’t go very well, because the project managers, they’re not there to focus on the little technical details. They are there to focus on the bigger picture and work with the whole team, work with the customer, while localization engineers are there, mostly to focus on the technical details.
So, they will be the ones who would look at the website and prepare it for translation. So that’s one of the key things that localization engineers do. They take a product where it’s website or software source, and they prepare it for translation. And so as it gets translated, which is a slower translation, then they take the translations and put them back to the website. So, now the website is localized. And it can go to testing, for example.
So, once this goes to testing, and the testers, they would report, let’s say box. And the purpose of the localization engineers is then to crush the box, which is a process we know as book fixing. Okay, localization engineers prepare more technical projects, then they get them back to the built, the website or software. And then when the testing comes, because they’re the ones who know the inside out of the software and website, they’re the ones who can also solve the technical defects and fix them.
Finally, something which we talked about before the magical acronym, I8TN, which stands for internationalization, the more advanced localization engineers can be there to consult the customer, the development team on the best practices of internationalization, so the localization can be done effortlessly. This is what I think is the main role of localization engineer. So they are there mainly being responsible for more technical aspects of localization projects. That’s is localization engineering.
