We work as a tight-knit team across disciplines within tech and product. We've refined our processes to do high-quality work at a healthy pace.
Our workflow
The localisation workflow can vary depending on the product, project, or content. In general, the process follows these steps:
- Prepare. Work with localisation to prepare your content. Finalise the content before you make a request.
- Request. Fill out the localisation request form.
- Draft. Content owner creates first draft and shares it with the Localisation Team.
- Feedback. The Localisation Team gives feedback on the draft to prepare it for localisation.
- Finalise. Content is finalised by the content owner by incorporating feedback from the Localisation Team.
- Create. The Localisation Manager creates the content in Phrase Strings or Translation Management System (TMS).
- Localise. Specialists and freelancers localise the content.
- Sign-off. Local market reviews and gives sign-off on the content.
- QA and close. The localisation does a quality assurance (QA) check as a final review before the request is closed.
Visit the "Work with us" page to get localisation support for your projects.
Timeline expectations
In contrast to traditional translation agencies, Deliveroo’s Localisation Team does more than respond to and complete requests. So, we can’t guarantee specific turnaround times. Our turnaround times depend on the...
- Number and priority of projects in our backlog,
- Length of content and amount of words that need localised,
- Complexity of the project, and
- Quality of the brief provided to the team.
We'll do our best to clearly communicate the expected timelines with you.
Below is a rough estimate of how long each main step takes when the overall workload is low to moderate. The times are based on how long it takes from the moment the Localisation Manager picks up the request and starts working on it—not the moment the request is submitted.
Typical workload
| Effort level* | File prep | Localisation | Local market review |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🟢 Low | Up to 0.5 days | 2–3 days | 2–3 days |
| 🟠 Medium | Up to 1 day | 2-5 days | 3–4 days |
| 🔴 High | 1-2 days | 5+ days | 4-5 days |
*Effort level is determined based on e.g. the number of words, complexity of content/flow, availability of visual references, quality of the English copy, quality of the localisation brief.
High-demand workload
The Localisation Team supports many teams at Deliveroo. That means the number of requests can get quite high. In high workload times, each step of our workflow may take longer, and it may take up to a week before we can start to process requests. During high-demand periods you can get updates on the team's capacity in our Slack channel #localisation-team.
Localisation tools
We rely on a key piece of translation software called Phrase. Phrase helps us automate, manage, and translate all Deliveroo’s content into our supported languages.
It has two key components:
- Phrase Strings is for all product content, and
- Phrase Translation Management System (TMS) is for everything else.
When we get a request from a content owner, we upload the English content to one of these tools. Then, we assign the job to the relevant Localisation Specialists and/or freelancers. Once finished, if the translation is for Product, it’s synced with GitHub. Otherwise, it’s downloaded and shared with the requester.