Latvian Lokalise makes it easier to get your app international


    Ever had to blush in front of your boss after the student you hired used Google translate to make a Russian version of your app? Latvian Lokalise knows how challenging it is to manage translation projects and offers to take the pain away. Originally used by serial entrepreneurs Nick Ustinov (founded inbox.lv, Double Coffee) and Petr Antropov (one.lvodnoklassniki.ru,megogo.net) to translate their Roamer app , Lokalise was released to public last month and already gathered 150 teams using it.

    Lokalise is a translation management tool with a translation editor built for software developers, startups and teams planning to localise or already managing several language translations in their projects. It lets fellow translators work together while keeping the whole project  team in the loop. With a few clicks Lokalise imports strings from your iOS, Android or web project, lets you invite collaborators and do the translations. Lokalise supports various file formats, including Apple Strings (.strings), Apple Xliff (.xliff), Android Resources (.xml), Java Properties (.properties), JSON (.json), Gettext (.po, .pot), PHP Arrays flat (.php), PHP ini (.ini), YAML (.yml), Excel (.xls, .xlsx).

    “The main advantage of using Lokalise is that the translations remain consistent,” explains Lokalise founder Nick Ustinov. “No more sending Excel files over email or losing data. The editor has it all in one place, topped up by lots of features that make software translator’s life easier. For example, translation memory, placeholder validation, string limit check, Google/Yandex translate and many more. There are various services with similar functionality, however when studying the market we came to conclusion, that all have pitfalls – some are too expensive, some lack the required functionality and none offer as easy to use yet powerful string editor.'”

    Below you can see an image of founders using Lokalise to translate their other project, Roamer app:

    This is not to say that Lokalise is the first company to come up with an online collaboration tool for translators. There are general translator services like WordBee that focus on people translating documents and even solutions particularly targeting mobile app, website and game developers like OneSky. In fact, our first Google result was a string of suggestions for collaborative translation solutions offered by fellow translators at this Quora request (including Lokalise, by the way).

    Although as Einstein put it, “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” So even though there are many solutions out there, the rich variety of vendors named in response to that Quora request suggests that none of them is mature enough to be the solution yet.

    Lokalise is self-financed and is growing organically, however, the team is looking for around €100,000 in angel investment to kick-start the sales and accelerate growth.

    If you are a startup trying to expand in Europe, you may be happy to find out that Lokalise pricing starts with a free plan, limited to 1000 hosted keys. According to Nick, this is usually more than enough for a mid-size website or app. They also offer paid plans starting as low as €14 a month, which come with 5000-unlimited hosted key allowances, API access and over-the-project Translation Memory (History) functions. This is less confusing than the word count-based pricing of OneSkyApp or Transifex and pretty similar to POEditor pricing.