Once you add translations and internationalization to the mix, you add a whole slew of potential challenges to overcome. One of the biggest is translation drift, which happens when the main language for a page gets updated but the translations do not. Having more people on the team typically means more content is updated, and things can fall through the cracks. Eventually, the Spanish page, for example, could have content vastly different from the English page.

Since translation teams are usually separate from the initial content teams, extra steps are required to ensure everyone is communicating and that all of the dots are connecting.

SOLUTIONS

• Checklists for content updates. This is also a good idea for other areas of content publishing, but it helps particularly with translations. Shared checklists inside your project management tools work great. You can also set up some PM tools to auto-generate sub-tasks and assign them whenever you update content.
• Automated notifications. Emails, Slack integrations, and more can help keep things like this from falling through the cracks. You don’t want to overdo it, though, or else you risk everyone ignoring these notifications.
• Integrate a proper workflow. Translations can be part of the workflow, or once the main translation is updated, it can be placed within a separate workflow just for the translation team. Ideally, this happens automatically.