In-House Localization

In the 1980s and early 1990s many product developers hired in-house teams of translators and engineers to work on product globalization. This model worked best for large companies, but by the late 1990s this model had become increasingly rare for a variety of reasons.

Advantages of in-house localization include:

• Direct control of all aspects of the process. In-house localization allows developers to reap all technology benefits and ensure that internal standards and protocols are met.
• Integration of localization into other processes. In-house localizers could become expert in organization-specific products and business models, thus allowing them to deliver high quality and interface with developers to resolve problems.

These advantages, however, were offset by serious disadvantages for all but the largest of globalizers:

• Investment in non-core business areas. While globalization should be an aspect of an organization’s core business goals, localization itself is seldom a core business process. In-house localizers thus required dedicated staff and management that did not otherwise further business goals.
• Higher costs. In-house localization requires that staff be paid and available, even when demand for their services is low. In order to meet peaks in demand, in-house localization departments tended to be overstaffed for much of the time, resulting in high overall costs.
• Inability to scale. In-house localization staff cannot be easily scaled to meet unexpected peaks in demand, meaning that high-volume projects often ran a serious risk of missing deadlines and that various departments were often in competition for staff time.

While very large organizations can balance staff loading and hire sufficient staff to achieve advantages from in-house localization, most smaller developers found the in-house model to be simply too expensive and inflexible to suit their needs. As a result most have moved to an outsourced business model for localization.