January 24, 2025
5
min read
Revolutionizing Localization: Our Journey, Challenges, and Ambitions

As you might know, at Gleef, we're about to make a breakthrough in localization software. Let me share where we stand, what we've learned, and honestly, why this pivot isn't really a pivot at all.

Yes, we changed our identity, logo and website, but this feels as a natural move, professionalizing our brand, reflecting our wide ambition.

Our core belief hasn't wavered since we started 9 months ago. We deeply understand and believe that words carry immense power in business. Sometimes it's obvious - like directly driving e-commerce revenue. Other times it's more subtle, with your copywriting shaping company culture, values, and brand identity, ultimately influencing everything from recruitment to aspects we often overlook.

From the beginning, our focus has been creating intuitive, powerful tools that save time and boost copy's impact across digital products. We kicked off with an A/B testing tool delivering straightforward, actionable insights on any website through a Chrome extension. Why this approach?

Looking back: why we started with A/B testing

It was perfect for challenging our team, quickly shipping something ROI-focused, and theoretically easy to sell. Plus, it helped prove our point about copy's impact. With an average 27% conversion uplift just from wording changes, the results speak for themselves.

This first product - which you can still try for free - isn't going away. It perfectly demonstrates our vision and will play into our long-term strategy.

However, commercializing it has been trickier than expected. Here's the thing: most people struggle to believe A/B testing copy drives results... and changing minds takes time. We've noticed two camps:

  1. Those who already use A/B testing tools or want comprehensive solutions for testing everything (colors, buttons, etc.).
  2. Those who don't test at all. Ironically, people tend to trust color changes more than copy changes. Test both - you'll be amazed.

We've even sold our plugin to many teams, some without any A/B testing tool, others frustrated with complex A/B testing platforms who wanted something simpler alongside tools like Optimizely or AB Tasty.

Truth is, we've had our eyes on the localization space from day one, but we needed time to develop the perfect strategy for revolutionizing both the technical and translation aspects. We want to integrate A/B testing and much more at its core, which explains our journey.

Now, it's time for our major move. We're thrilled to unveil a new tool that automatically generates translation keys. Better yet? It's a Figma plugin, and it's completely free.

Why Localization Became the Obvious Next Step

From the start, we saw copywriting as a holistic process. Antoine's experience at Lydia, particularly in word choice and localization, highlighted a key need: the connection between copywriting and localization is too often overlooked.

In conversations with designers, developers, and PMs, two clear points emerged:

  1. Localization is a complex topic with its own unique challenges
  2. Copywriting is essential to creating impactful user experiences

To truly optimize the process, we needed a tool. And that's when we realized we could go beyond the existing localization tools, which are often complex and disconnected from real user needs. The current landscape is fragmented across multiple stakeholders - designers, developers, product managers, translators, localization managers - each working in their own siloed tools. This creates endless back-and-forths, lost context, and inefficiencies at every step.

What We've Learned from Talking to People

After hundreds of conversations, the localization landscape revealed glaring issues. The most striking? No tool offers true contextual localization with a simple interface. Ever tried translating "share" without knowing if it's a button or title? Or "free" without knowing if it's about price or availability? Context is everything, yet it's consistently missing.

The workflow is painfully fragmented:

  • Designers and developers waste time on endless back-and-forths.
  • Product teams resort to building internal tools, burning resources only to create new problems.
  • Existing solutions are rigid and contextless, leading to poor translations
  • Key management is a constant headache, eating up valuable development time. If you don’t know yet what is a localization key, you should have a look at our previous article introducing the subject Localization Keys: The Critical Infrastructure Behind Global Software Localization

Even companies investing in localization tools struggle. Their teams juggle between different platforms, losing context at each handoff - designer to developer, developer to translator, translator to reviewer. The result? Slower delivery, inconsistent messaging, and frustrated teams.

The biggest pain is definitely the lack of context, and still using external human translators, who are no expert on your brand identity, tone of voice, legal requirements, marketing expertise... Asking an Italian intern to translate your website in Italian might sound as a great idea and a huge money saving. It's not.

Why a Free Tool Designed for Developers and Designers?

Our conversations with developers, designers, and PMs revealed a universal pain: translation key management devours time. The current process? Slow, tedious, and riddled with friction. Teams resort to DIY solutions or struggle with inflexible tools that don't match their workflow.

The daily reality looks something like this:

  • Developers spend hours manually creating keys, only to face conflicts when teammates create similar or contradictory ones
  • Designers work blindly, unable to see which keys connect to their designs. When text needs updating? Good luck tracking down where that key actually lives

This fragmented approach bleeds productivity at every step. And here's the kicker - translation keys are the foundation of localization. They're the bridge between design, development, and final content. That's exactly why revolutionizing key management is our first step. Fix the foundation, and everything else becomes possible.

Figma, a Strategic Choice

Choosing Figma was natural. It's where designers and developers meet, where copy decisions live, where iterations happen. For modern product teams, it's the standard - almost everyone we talk to uses Figma. Perfect starting point for immediate impact.

Here's what we're aiming for:

  1. Make translation keys visible and accessible directly in Figma to save time and improve collaboration
  2. Build a tool that not only automates key creation but also simplifies their management, all within a Product-Led Growth approach
  3. Offer a free product so as many teams as possible can test, iterate, and share their feedback

What We Envision for the Future

But this Figma plugin is just the beginning. Behind the scenes, we're already building the next revolution: fully contextualized, automated translation that actually makes sense. Think AI that understands your brand voice, product context, and user flow - working alongside humans at the right moments, not replacing them. No more lost context, no more back-and-forths between tools.

To be transparent, building a complete localization tool takes time, and we're doing it step by step. Each piece needs to work flawlessly before we move forward. Starting with Figma lets us solve real problems now - better collaboration, less friction, saved time - while laying the groundwork for something bigger.

The Endgame

Making localization feel effortless. Where translation keys manage themselves, content flows smoothly between teams, and every stakeholder has the context they need, right where they need it. We'll keep you posted on every step of this journey - because transparent is how we roll.

Building a startup is all about taking it step by step, learning at every iteration, and adapting your course to stay aligned with your long-term goals. We saw an opportunity to unite these workflows in one place, heavily automated yet keeping humans in the loop where they add real value. Our goal? To offer something new, simple, and powerful that brings everyone together - from design to deployment - while automating the tedious parts that slow teams down.

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