Hi. I built out the localization and internationalization tech and teams at a bunch of startups, including Medium, Lyft and Notion. Here is a primer that is aimed at early stage companies and start ups about technical best practices and issues to be aware of that I thought I would share here.
One thing I have seen in my career is that few companies have prior experience with this, typically put off dealing with it for a long time, and by then they have accrued a lot of tech debt that is expensive, time consuming and boring to fix.
Lyft was a case in point. By the time I joined, they had been operating in English and the US only for years. They had tons of US and English specific assumptions baked into code. It took nearly two years to get the product in a state where it could work in other regions and languages. By then Uber was already in dozens of countries and languages and ate our lunch.
Notion, on the other hand, got things mostly right. The founder is from China, so he understood the importance of building a product that would work for users in their language. Today roughly 70% of their users are outside the US and the product is available in 19 languages and dialects.
The primer is at loctechpartners.notion.site so feel free to have a look. If there is a topic you’d like to see coverage for, feel free to call that out. If you read anything on the site, be sure to read the article Future Proofing Your Codebase For Global Readiness.
Nowadays I advise early stage companies on localization and internationalization and am happy to do Q&A, 1:1 sessions and give talks to EPD teams. So feel free to get in touch or ask questions here.
briansmcconnell•20h ago
One thing I have seen in my career is that few companies have prior experience with this, typically put off dealing with it for a long time, and by then they have accrued a lot of tech debt that is expensive, time consuming and boring to fix.
Lyft was a case in point. By the time I joined, they had been operating in English and the US only for years. They had tons of US and English specific assumptions baked into code. It took nearly two years to get the product in a state where it could work in other regions and languages. By then Uber was already in dozens of countries and languages and ate our lunch.
Notion, on the other hand, got things mostly right. The founder is from China, so he understood the importance of building a product that would work for users in their language. Today roughly 70% of their users are outside the US and the product is available in 19 languages and dialects.
The primer is at loctechpartners.notion.site so feel free to have a look. If there is a topic you’d like to see coverage for, feel free to call that out. If you read anything on the site, be sure to read the article Future Proofing Your Codebase For Global Readiness.
Nowadays I advise early stage companies on localization and internationalization and am happy to do Q&A, 1:1 sessions and give talks to EPD teams. So feel free to get in touch or ask questions here.