Localization

Introduction

Localization team collaborates with the Marketing, Sales, Product and Engineering divisions, as well as external partners (vendors) and the wider community of translators, to enable GitLab’s global reach and user experience across key pillars: Marketing (about.gitlab.com), Editorial (blogs), Product, Documentation, and Enablement (support, customer success, etc.).

The key initiatives around strategic localization of content and materials include increasing our non-English blog publishing cadence and performance, enabling localization of docs.gitlab.com, launching our comprehensive terminology management system, deploying cutting-edge Generative AI and machine translation solutions, and expanding into customer-facing programs including Support content localization and training & certification materials.

Our ability to support regional teams with localized product documentation, marketing content, and customer success materials directly impacts GitLab’s ability to grow in international markets.

Meet our team

• Daniel Sullivan, Director, Globalization & Localization
• Oleksandr Pysaryuk, Senior Manager, Globalization Technology
• Megumi Uchikawa, Senior Localization Content Manager
• Rasam Hossain, Senior Fullstack Engineer
• Lauren Barker, Staff Fullstack Engineer
• María José Salmerón Ibanez, Senior Localization Program Manager
• Noriko Akiyama, Localization Specialist, Japanese*
• Maud Leuenberger, Content Manager, French*
• Hendrik Breuer, Senior Content Manager, German*
• Emi Kimura, EN-JP Linguist*

*temporary service provider

Localization technology management

The Localization team is managing the rich technology stack comprised of:

• Several commercial translation management systems for product, marketing and technical documentation content localization
• The Localization Request Management system and its suite of integrations and microservices
• The GitLab Translation Service
• Integrations and automations between TMS (translation management systems) and GitLab systems and projects
• AI-powered capabilities and solutions for machine translaiton and localiztion-adjacnt tasks
• Solutions for context-enhanced translation of product user interface text, using Crowdin

Localization Program Management

Localization Engineering

Contact us

The Localization team manages general localization-related, language-specific and partner-spacfic Slack channels:

• #localization: Central channel for translation and localization questions, requests, and collaboration with the Localization team.
• #tech-docs-localization: Channel for quick communication and interactions between, mainly, the Localization team and the Technical Writing team.
• #blog-localization-content: Channel for communication around our international blogs
• #translated-team: For communication with our language services provider, Translated.
• #spartan-software: For communication with our technology partner, Spartan Software.
• #oban-international: For communication with our copywriting and digital marketing agency, Oban International.
• #crowdin_gitlab: For communication with our technology provider for product UI text localization, Crowdin.
• #argos_multilingual: For communication with Argos Multilingual, our language services, solutions and technology provider for product and technical documentation.
• #terminology: For communication with our terminology consultant, vendors (Translated and Argos Multilingual) and the technology provider of the terminology management system, Kaleidoscope.
• #japan_localization_gitlab: For localization questions and collaboration between Japanese-speaking team mates, stakeholders, and language specialists from Translated.
• #french-localization: For collaboration between GitLab and language specialists from Translated.
• #german-localization: For collaboration between GitLab and language specialists.
• #italian-localization: For collaboration between GitLab and language specialists.
• #portuguese-brazil-localization: For collaboration between GitLab and language specialists.
• #spanish-localization: For collaboration between GitLab and language specialists.
• ##french-localization: For collaboration between GitLab and language specialists.

Labels

Localization request status labels

Labels for our main localization pillars

Locale labels

Localization Processes

Primary Method Submit an issue through our Localization Issue Tracker when your content is ready for localization or review.

Additional Support For general localization questions:

• Join our #localization Slack channel
• Add the L10n-attention label to issues, epics, or merge requests
• Here you can view the status of current localization requests: Issue Tracker Board

Note: While you can contact the Translated or Argos Multilingual team directly via Slack, we prefer submission through the Issue Tracker.

When to engage with us

We recommend connecting with the Localization team early in your project, especially for global initiatives affecting users across all regions that have a specific timeline. While we can’t begin translations until content is finalized and approved, early collaboration during planning and ideation will ensure success.

Internal Reviews

We are currently moving the internal review process over to language leads and contractors, so that our in-market GitLab teams can focus on their normal duties. Please note, however, that we may need to engage the internal review team from time to time, as our new teams ramp up and build the context they need to successfully localize our content in a way that aligns to GitLab and local expectations.

At the moment, our internal reviewers are volunteers. We completely appreciate that this task is on top of your day job and will continue to respect that. Both translation and reviews are conducted in Translated tooling; processes for review are currently a work in progress.

List of Localized Websites

Marketing Localization

Our website is now available in 6 languages. While we’re still in the process polishing existing page translations and expanding into getting more parts of the website localized, you can verify what translated pages are live on production by viewing our Buyer Experience sitemap @ https://about.gitlab.com/buyer-experience/sitemap.xml.

The translated congent of our website pages is stored across our CMS and the Buyer Experience repository:

• German: buyer-experience/-/tree/main/content/de-de
• French: buyer-experience/-/tree/main/content/fr-fr
• Japanese:buyer-experience/-/tree/main/content/ja-jp
• Spanish buyer-experience/-/tree/main/content/es
• Italian buyer-experience/-/tree/main/content/it-it
• Brazilian-Portuguese buyer-experience/-/tree/main/content/pt-br

You can go to the Digital Experience’s Localization Best Practices team Handbook page for further technical details on localizing content.

Translating content for campaigns

The Integrated Marketing team typically drives which translations are required, based on current campaigns and regional need. Localized campaigns currently follow the integrated campaign process. The Integrated Marketing team is responsible for content localization for integrated campaigns.

Language preference segmentation

In order to offer content and events in preferred languages where available, we have a Language Preference Segmentation created in Marketo. Only Marketing Ops can edit these segments. Available languages for this segmentation can be found on the Marketo page. A person will be added to a Language Preference segment if they complete a form on our website or respond to a campaign that was offered in one of the available languages.

Translated URL structure

All translated pages live in a sub-folder dedicated to a specific language. These sub-folders use ISO 639-1 codes.

hreflang tagging

Search engines use the hreflang tag to determine a canonical version for translated pages. We’ll use hreflang on our translated pages.

hreflang tags start with declaration <link rel="alternate", adds URL href={{url}}, and ends with hreflang={{language ISO}}

Example of a hreflang tag for a URL translated to German.

<link rel="alternate" href="https://about.gitlab.com/de-de/warum/nutze-continuous-integration-fuer-schnelleres-bauen-und-testen/" hreflang="de" />

The canonical version of our site will the United States English version on about.gitlab.com. We need to add all versions of a page under the page title and link to each one with the appropriate language noted. Google provides this example:

<head>
 <title>Widgets, Inc</title>
  <link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-gb"
       href="https://en-gb.example.com/page.html" />
  <link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-us"
       href="https://en-us.example.com/page.html" />
  <link rel="alternate" hreflang="en"
       href="https://en.example.com/page.html" />
  <link rel="alternate" hreflang="de"
       href="https://de.example.com/page.html" />
 <link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default"
       href="https://www.example.com/" />
</head>

It’s important to note we need to declare the default page from our repository as the canonical version to avoid penalties across Google properties.

Aleyda Solis maintains a great tool to build hreflang tags we can use for reference as well.

International Blogs

GitLab’s blog is available in Japanese, French and German, with a dedicated content manager:

docs.gitlab.com Localization

We’re working on localizing GitLab product documentation. To learn more, head to our Docs Site Localization project.

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