Toolkit

Localization is the process of adapting content, interfaces, and user experiences to reflect the language and culture of a community. It goes beyond literal translation by considering tone, visuals, navigation patterns, and more.

Effective localization helps ensure that people can access services in a way that’s clear, respectful, and usable. However, localization involves more than simply running content through a translator. 

This toolkit provides government agencies and project teams with practical steps to implement localization in digital services. It offers guidance on making content available to people with limited English proficiency (LEP), meeting legal requirements, and improving public service delivery. Whether you're building a new service or localizing an existing one, this guide will help you prepare your content and integrate localization into your agile workflows. Localization is easier to do well if you start early and iterate often.

Why localization matters for government services

Meeting legal requirements

Executive Order 13166 and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act require federal agencies to ensure meaningful access to services for LEP individuals.

Expanding service reach

With over 25 million LEP individuals in the U.S., localized content is essential for broader service delivery.

Enhancing user experiences

Culturally relevant, localized content makes digital tools more intuitive and easier to understand for all users.

Improving efficiency and effectiveness

When digital services are intuitive and usable, it helps reduce call center volumes, mistakes in benefit applications, and more. All of this contributes to more efficient and effective services.

Getting started with localization

1.  Prepping your source content 

Before you dive into localization, it’s essential to prep your English source content. Begin by ensuring your content is written in plain language. This means writing in short sentences, using active voice, and swapping jargon for familiar words. For localization, it’s especially important to make sure your content doesn’t use culturally specific references. 

Pro tip: If you’re new to writing in plain language, reference plainlanguage.gov for more robust guidelines. 

To ensure your content is consistent, we recommend developing a style guide and/or glossary. Glossaries provide definitions for key terms, while style guides outline your content’s voice, tone, and grammar usage. For examples of existing government glossaries and style guides for multilingual audiences, visit digital.gov. 

2. Understanding your audience's language needs

To ensure your localized content is human-centered, it’s important to understand your audience’s needs. We recommend analyzing demographic data for your service area, which you can find on one of the websites below: 

• Census.gov - American Community Survey (ACS): annual data on language spoken at home, English proficiency, and detailed demographics

• DataUSA.io: provides census data in a visual format, with language and demographic breakdowns by state

• Languages in the United States - Statistical Atlas: interactive maps showing demographic patterns, including languages across states

Demographic data and information on the size and needs of your population can help you identify priority languages. Based on your findings, it’s important to document the languages you will target for your project.

3. Choosing your translation resources

Once you've conducted research into your audience's needs, you'll need to choose your translation resources. It's critical to work with trained translation professionals and linguists, not just native speakers. While fluency is important, professional translators possess specialized skills in conveying meaning, tone, and cultural context. Using untrained linguists or translators can result in poor quality translations that confuse users or misrepresent your content. 

Consider these options based on your situation:

• Individual translator or linguist: best suited for small projects with limited language requirements, tight budgets, or a need for specialized expertise in a particular subject matter. This option works well for one-time translations or low-volume content.

• Translation service provider (TSP) agency: ideal for large-scale projects, multiple languages, or ongoing translation needs, especially when you lack internal translation capacity. TSPs offer quality assurance, project management, and scalability.

• Internal staff: most effective when you have bilingual team members with translation skills, if you require quick turnarounds, or if you are working with highly technical content that demands in-depth institutional knowledge. This is a good choice for maintenance updates and culturally sensitive content.

• Translation management system (TMS): recommended for organizations with regular translation workflows who manage multiple content types or need translation memory — a database of previous translations that teams can reuse to improve quality and consistency across the project over time. A TMS can streamline localization for front-end engineers. It can also automate almost every step of localization if a team fully utilizes all its features. However, in practice, most projects achieve significant — but not complete — automation.

When working with any professional translator, make sure to:

• Provide context and reference materials

• Allow time for questions and clarification

• Involve translators in user research whenever possible

• Give feedback on translations to improve future work

If you are working with machine translation, we recommend:

• Using it as a starting point, not the final product

• Always having a person review machine translations

• Building a translation memory

• Considering cultural relevance, not just literal translation

4. Evaluating the translation 

Next, you’ll need to decide how to evaluate translation quality and who will approve it. Begin by creating a straightforward internal workflow that suits your team and project needs. For quality evaluation, consider having a second, qualified translator review for accuracy and cultural appropriateness, testing the translated content in context to ensure functionality, and asking team members to verify specialized terminology. Identify a primary approver, such as a project lead or content manager, who understands the source content and target audience, along with secondary reviewers or end users. 

You’ll likely need to make content updates in the future, so it’s helpful to map out a workflow for how you’ll update content. When evaluating, approving, and updating localized content, we recommend involving cross-functional team members from content design, development, translation, and product management. This will help your workflow fit well with your existing processes.

5. Localizing your user research 

Once you begin localizing your content, it’s important to localize your user research process too. This will help you get more meaningful feedback from people who will actually use the localized content. To localize your user research, we recommend:

• ​​Recruiting participants who speak the target languages. Reach out to them through community partners.

• Localizing your research materials. Translate and adapt key documents like consent forms, moderator scripts, and testing prompts so non-English speakers can participate fully.

• Conducting usability testing in the target language. Work with bilingual moderators to test the localized content with native speakers. Focus on usability (is the content easy to understand and use?) and linguistic accuracy (does the language feel clear, natural, and appropriate?).

6. Starting small and iterating

To get the most out of localization while reducing risks, we recommend starting small and iterating as you gather feedback. Begin with one type of content and one language, then conduct usability tests with native speakers. Their feedback will enable you to iterate on the content. Building strong, continuous feedback loops with testing participants will enable you to identify bugs and make glossary updates as necessary. Eventually, you’ll be able to expand to more content types and languages.

7. Preparing your code

It’s helpful to prepare your code so your software can accommodate multiple languages. 

• Use proper text encoding (UTF-8): this ensures your application correctly displays characters from a wide range of languages, including accented characters, non-Latin scripts (like Arabic and Chinese), and special symbols. Without proper encoding, users might see garbled or unreadable text. Learn more here. 

• Design flexible layouts: build your interface to allow for text languages where the translation might make the text get longer (like German) or shorter (like Chinese).

Avoid hardcoding your text: instead of putting text directly into your code, store it in separate files or a TMS. This makes it easier to manage translations, update content, and support multiple languages without modifying your codebase.

Integrating localization into agile processes

Integrating localization into agile processes can enable you to develop translated content in parallel with product features, which reduces delays and rework. Aligning localization with sprint planning helps teams deliver inclusive, user-centered experiences in every language from the start. By documenting the localization workflow and including it in sprint planning, teams can anticipate translation needs, avoid delays, and maintain a consistent experience across languages without slowing down development.

1. Documenting your process

Documentation is key to success in any agile organization. When localizing content, we recommend holding a kickoff meeting to review your localization process and get feedback from stakeholders. This creates alignment among everyone involved. 

To ensure your process works, you should test it in a small pilot. If you notice areas where you can improve on the process, iterate and test again. Throughout your project, plan regular check-ins to evaluate how well the localization process is working. 

2. Planning your sprint

Sprints are generally two-week intervals that enable agile organizations to break work down into digestible tasks. At the beginning of a sprint, it’s crucial to hold a sprint planning meeting. In sprint planning, a team delineates what they’ll accomplish over that sprint. It helps keep everyone on track and mitigates capacity issues. 

For your localization project, include localization tasks in sprint planning with dedicated story points, or time estimates for how long certain efforts will take. Take the amount of translation time into account when establishing delivery estimates and definitions of “done.”

We recommend:

• During development, collecting and preparing your content or text strings for translation 

• Using modular components that work across languages, like U.S. Web Design System (USWDS) components that are accessible and localization-ready

3. Testing and iterating

Testing your localized content is an essential step in agile methodology. Your tests will likely surface ways to improve your content, enabling you to iterate, test again, and repeat. When testing your content, it’s important to establish clear ownership over the testing process. We recommend using a DACI decision-making framework when establishing ownership and roles. 

Once you’ve established a DACI, you’re ready to dive into testing. Here are some useful testing methods:

• If you are using a TMS, consider setting up automated content tracking to detect new or modified content.  

• Gather user feedback through usability testing or user interviews 

• Run regular quality checks* 

• Track metrics on how many people are using the localized content and how effective they find it**

*When running regular quality checks, we recommend: 

• Verifying that text displays correctly without truncation or overflow

• Confirming language-specific formatting (dates, currency, etc.) appears correctly

• Testing language-switching functionality

• Validating form submissions in all languages

• Ensuring error messages are properly localized

Here is a quality framework we recommend using when running quality checks:

• Accuracy: Does the translation convey the original meaning?

• Cultural relevance: Is it appropriate for the target audience?

• Consistency: Is terminology used consistently?

• Readability: Is it easy for native speakers to understand?

• Functionality: Does it work properly within the interface

**Tracking impact metrics

To track and measure the impact of your localized content, we recommend using a multi-layered analytics approach. You can combine quantitative and qualitative insights using Google Analytics or Amplitude to track user engagement, pain points, and task completion metrics. For example, you might track:

• How many people use the localized version

• Drop-off points by language to understand engagement

• Number of benefit applications submitted in languages other than English

• Long-term indicators like reduced support tickets 

Review your impact metrics every month to track progress. You can also schedule quarterly meetings to make strategic changes that aim to improve the user experience. Don’t be afraid of making changes when needed; your organization and your users will appreciate it. Similarly, your data will help you show how your localization efforts are supporting your overall company goals or return on investment (ROI).

Conclusion and additional resources

Localization is crucial to building human-centered digital services that are respectful, clear, and usable. By learning how to properly localize content and integrating it into your agile workflow, your team will be well on its way to delivering excellent services for LEP individuals. 

Here are some more resources to get you started on localization:

• USWDS Language Selector Patterns — learn how to use USWDS to implement a language selector feature. 

• Digital.gov Multilingual Guide — access more resources on localizing your content for multiple languages.