Comunica is now a Crowdin Agency Partner. This means we can now offer direct integrations with the systems our clients already use in order to reduce manual work and enable the implementation of intelligent workflows.
Crowdin is a localisation management platform that connects translation directly to the places where content is created and managed. It offers over 700 apps and integrations – giving us a very broad range of options for connecting with content management systems, repositories, help centres, design tools and much more.
In practical terms, the partnership will mean less time exporting, emailing, downloading, uploading, copying and pasting – on both the client’s end and on ours.
Content can instead flow from existing systems directly into the translation workspace and, once completed and approved, back to where it belongs. Instead of treating every update as a separate translation project, we can simply help clients create a more continuous setup that keeps pace as their content changes.
And while the technology takes care of moving and organising the content, the core expertise at the heart of our work remains the same: our translators are still responsible for the language choices that add value to our work.
What Does This Mean in Practice?
Let’s say you manage a multilingual website.
In a traditional workflow, you might export the pages that need translating, send the files to us, receive the translations via email and then upload or paste everything into your CMS. When the source content changes again, somebody will need to manually work out what has changed, which translations are still current and what needs to be sent back for another round.
For a site that changes once or twice a year, this kind of setup may well be manageable. But for websites that change more often, the manual tasks quickly pile up and become a time drain. Not to mention, there is also a risk that gaps may open up if content is missed.
An integration changes the flow.
For example, content from a website or help centre can be sent directly into the translation workflow and returned to the same system once it has been translated and approved. New or updated content can then follow the same route, without somebody having to export and re-upload files each time.
And websites are only one example. Crowdin can connect with tools used for software development, product content, customer support, documentation, design and marketing. The integrations available include platforms such as GitHub, Figma, Contentful, Zendesk and Intercom, among many, many others.1
The result is a workflow built around where your content already lives, rather than another system your team has to manually feed with files.
Keeping Language Consistent as Your Content Grows
Connecting your content is only part of the picture. Crowdin also gives us a way to connect the linguistic knowledge that builds up around it.
Translation memories, glossaries and style guides can all be shared across projects, meaning the decisions made for one part of your content don’t have to stay in that one place. The terminology agreed for your website, for example, can also be drawn upon when we translate your product, help centre or future campaigns.
This becomes increasingly useful as your multilingual content grows. Previous translations provide a reference for similar content, while glossaries help us keep important terminology and your preferred wording consistent across different channels and projects.
And none of that knowledge needs to be locked away inside Crowdin. Translation memories and glossaries can be exported in standard formats, so the language assets you build up remain portable at all times.
Technology Does the Lifting. People Make the Language Decisions.
One of the biggest advantages of Crowdin is that it can take care of much of the repetitive work around translation: moving content between systems, organising resources and keeping projects moving.
That means you can focus on more important tasks, our project managers can better look after your needs, and our translators can focus on the parts of the job that still require human judgement and cultural expertise.
They interpret context, resolve ambiguities, make stylistic choices and consider how a text will actually land with the people reading it. Those are the decisions that turn a technically correct translation into one that feels clear, natural and appropriate for its audience.
Crowdin also gives us more options for incorporating AI and machine translation, with human post-editing where appropriate. For suitable content, these tools can improve efficiency, but we use them selectively and with the right level of human review and quality control.
Does Every Project Need an Integrated Translation Workflow?
No, not every project will need an integrated workflow. For example, if you have a report or a brochure that you get translated about once a year, a fully integrated setup might not be necessary. However, that is not to say that Crowdin can’t still add value for standalone projects.
Translators can work with screenshots and in-context previews, while automated QA checks flag potential issues with terminology, placeholders, formatting, numbers and tags. Crowdin also supports a wide range of file formats directly.
Clients can also follow progress and answer translator queries in the same workspace, while translation memories and glossaries start building useful assets from day one.
Integration becomes especially valuable when content changes frequently, appears across several systems or needs to stay current in multiple languages.
As a Crowdin Agency Partner, we can help you identify where the platform would genuinely add value and find the right setup for the way you work.
The starting point doesn’t need to be a big overhaul of your existing setup. It can simply be a conversation about how you already work today – and whether there’s an easier way to get things done.
If you’d like to explore whether Crowdin or an integrated setup could make sense for your organisation, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. We’d be happy to take a look at your current setup and talk through the options.
Click here to read more about Crowdin or check out this link to see if it connects with the tools you already use.
[1] If you’re interested in the technical details, Crowdin provides detailed documentation on how these integrations work: https://crowdin.com/features/data-sync
