Ecosystem Expanded: Crowdin

Every prospering business wants to scale in the future, which can, in many cases, mean adjusting its content strategy and the content itself to other international markets. It’s a really exciting process, and we at Storyblok crossed our paths with an enterprise that can make this journey extremely user-friendly, streamlined and agile: Crowdin. In our eyes, it’s not only a company’s name: it’s a synonym for innovation and excellence in the software localization area. This company shapes new standards in the context of making companies multilingual and helping people connect with the world. We are really proud to collaborate with them within our Technology Ecosystem initiative and help people manage content all over the world.

Meet Crowdin localization software!

Crowdin is an enterprise that helps companies manage multilingual businesses. They offer their clients a cloud-based tool that is packed with agile features to support localization of software, apps, websites, games, chats, help center articles, marketing materials, and any other user-facing content. With Crowdin you can make your whole company multilingual.

Always close to their clients and willing to extend differentiated functionalities in a way that helps companies be localized in a unique and perfectly-tailored way. If we could describe Crowdin in 3 words, they would definitely be: innovation, precision, and agility, as Crowdin shapes multilingual businesses in a new way, with best-of-breed technologies, and excellent client support systems.

On the way of localizing the business world

How did it all start? The story began years ago, with a developer who created a mobile application and wanted to translate it to make all the features accessible for the multilingual audience. Soon after, it was realized that not only the product itself must be translated, but also other components - such as shop listings, ticket tools, and other functionalities. How did it evolve? We can definitely compare it to a snowball effect. The company has been gradually extending its features, depending on what was needed to streamline its clients’ multilingual projects - always relying on users feedback. Starting with supporting small mobile application localization, it broadened its horizon to other multilingual projects like websites, software, support services, and computer games.

Crowdin was growing rapidly while inviting on board players like marketers, project managers, or support teams. To streamline the processes and create new possibilities, the company decided to extend its functionalities by creating new integrations and building innovative applications (available on their Crowdin Store) in order to integrate their ideas with any tools or technical solutions. What is important, Crowdin always has in mind the customers’ opinion - their voice always matters for the enterprise. Localization is all about breaking barriers, and this company really knows how to make it possible in the business’s area context, with user’s feedback in mind.

What makes Crowdin exceptional for your translation & localization projects?

Diving among the ocean of localization technologies, we are amazed with a lot of unique features Crowdin has to offer. What makes them stand out in the crowd the most, is the fact that they not only enable localization of the product itself, but all the company’s content can become multilingual. They are aware of all the content repositories an enterprise might have. How engenius, and simple at the same time is that?

You can localize any type of project - starting with websites, mobile apps, going through support service features, chatbots on the website, games, creative content repositories, landing pages, emailing and much more. Just think of any type of content your enterprise deals with - Crowdin is there for you and happy to help you.

Agile localization workflows

You can upload your files manually or use one of 600+ integrations Crowdin offers. Here’s where the fun begins: It’s not just automated sync of source and translation files, you literally can set the process steps on your own, to make it all in your style, according to a project’s needs. The steps can consist of source text review, source language switch, pre-translation by translation memory or machine translation engine, human translation, review,quality assurance, or external vendor’s support - in any combination. You can even add custom code to create your own workflow steps. Or, for example, in some language options you could opt only for automated localization processes, or, exceptionally, human translations. You can also set it all to be automatic - following your own content translation vision. Here we can see an example of a workflow diagram:

Nestable components

There might be projects during which you would like to follow a certain workflow’s parts. The idea is - you decide how your localization process looks like. The translation components are reusable, which means that you can use them in your next project. You can also modify it in a needed way, adjusting it to a particular project. Especially exciting is the fact that the access to particular projects can be granted or rejected by a project owner as requested, which enables other team members to work on it simultaneously. We, at Storyblok, love this idea as it reminds us of our own component approach that we offer to our customers when creating content!

All in one place

Even if a company doesn’t have insourced translators, Crowdin offers an expanded marketplace where you can find external translation vendors such as professional localization agencies, or freelancers. They can be included into the workflow as well. Speaking of translators, Crowdin makes their digital experience user great as well. The translators’ UX can feel like home for them, as they can perform localization actions directly in the app using CAT (computer-assisted translations software) -alike translations tools.

Use cases: Proud clients and streamlined internal communication

Crowdin has over 2M user accounts and 176K+ localization projects. Companies creating multilingual experiences with Crowdin include Trustpilot, GitLab, Calendly, Discord, Kickstarter and more. One of the projects supported by Crowdin was the localization of the well-known computer game Minecraft by Mojang. Thanks to the platform designed in the hub form, translators can join the project by googling it or from a direct link - after short procedures they can start translating. For this moment, they have more than 3000 translators there, who can work independently, comment on each other’s work, and ask questions. All the progress can be seen in real-time. Before submitting the translations they have a proofreading step, which is also included in the Crowdin workflow. It’s a case of an open project, but there’s also the possibility of taking advantage of the restricted access option when the project owner doesn’t want the data to leak. Private projects can only be accessed via a personal invitation from the project owner or manager.

Another amazing use case is the possibility of integrating machine translations in chats. For example, when a client wants to talk to a customer or support team, Crowdin suggests message translations and detects desired language automatically. Messages can be translated instantly, making the communication with customers speaking different languages user-friendly, and, most importantly, localized as well.

Crowdin X Storyblok

We at Storyblok, within our Technology Ecosystem, love to collaborate with tech partners who have the same values as we do, and share a common denominator in terms of helping users create amazing digital experiences. With Crowdin, we can really see that we have a lot in common! Flexibility, agile workflows, component approach, and user-friendly UX are some of the things that connect us and give a real value for both content creators’ and developer’s world. The outcome of the mentioned similarities and shared values is the integration, built by Crowdin, in the form of a Storyblok App. Users can localize different content types existing in Storyblok - websites, landing pages, gated contents, applications, support channels and much more. How does that work? It’s really easy - first, the user installs the Storyblok app from the Crowdin’s Marketplace level. Then, it is possible to start using it right away, either with manual or automatically set translation workflow, synchronizing content with Storyblok files and content repositories. Marketers who use this integration love Storyblok’s Visual editor, which enables them to see performed actions in real-time.

Key Takeaways

We are excited and proud to have such an amazing player like Crowdin be part of our Technology Ecosystem. Sharing similar values with our partners is really important to us. That’s why we think this integration is a really great match and can contribute to companies’ digital experience success. Storyblok’s and Crowdin’s products can be perceived as game changers for agencies and our clients themselves, but what we create and develop collaboratively is a real cherry on the cake. We believe that together we can transform localization and CMS industries, break the barriers, and make content creation and its localization an amazing experience - in any language.
Feel free to contact Crowdin directly to learn more about how the integration can boost your business.