| CASE STUDY Bringing Lokalee to Europe in Five Languages Platform & Website Translation and Proofreading Across German, French, Spanish, Italian & Brazilian Portuguese |
| 325K Words Translated & Proofread | 5 Target Languages | 2 Services (Translation & Proofreading) | 100% Quality Benchmarks Met |
Client Overview
Lokalee is an AI-powered travel and experiences discovery platform designed to help travellers find and book the best local activities, attractions, and hidden gems in destinations around the world. By curating personalized recommendations for everything from fine dining and cultural experiences to adventure activities and wellness retreats, Lokalee positions itself as an intelligent travel companion for the modern, experience-driven traveller.
With a strong foundation in English-speaking markets and the Middle East, Lokalee set its sights on expanding into the major tourism markets of Europe, a region that accounts for a significant share of global travel spend and is home to some of the world’s most active and discerning travellers. To capture this audience effectively, Lokalee recognised that a translated platform was not enough: the content needed to feel native, culturally resonant, and natural in each target language.
Entering five distinct European language markets simultaneously required a translation partner capable of managing multilingual complexity without sacrificing the warmth, personality, and inspiration that define the Lokalee brand voice. That is the challenge our team was engaged to meet.
Project Overview
Lokalee engaged us to translate and proofread their platform and website into five European languages: German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Brazilian Portuguese. The scope covered the full breadth of Lokalee’s digital presence, including destination descriptions, experience and activity listings, UI strings, navigational elements, marketing copy, help and support content, and terms and privacy documentation.
Travel and tourism content presents a distinct set of translation challenges. It is simultaneously descriptive and persuasive, factual and aspirational. The language must inspire action (encouraging a traveller to book an experience) while remaining accurate, trustworthy, and consistent with the platform’s tone. Across five languages and a 325,000-word scope, maintaining this balance demanded both linguistic skill and a deep understanding of how each target audience engages with travel content.
The choice of Brazilian Portuguese, rather than European Portuguese, also signalled Lokalee’s intent to reach Latin American travellers specifically, requiring a dialect-aware approach that went beyond standard Portuguese translation conventions.
| Services Provided Translation | Localization | Proofreading |
Scope at a Glance
• Total Volume: 325,000 words
• Target Languages: German, French, Spanish, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese
• Content Types: Platform UI, destination & experience listings, marketing copy, help content, legal pages
• Services: Translation, Localization and Proofreading
• Dialect Requirement: Brazilian Portuguese (distinct from European Portuguese)
• Domain: Travel, Tourism, Hospitality & Experiences
• Engagement Type: Full platform and website localisation for European market entry
Target Languages & Markets
• German: Primary market: Germany, Austria, Switzerland (DACH), one of Europe’s largest outbound travel markets
• French: Primary market: France, Belgium, Switzerland, travellers known for high engagement with experiential and cultural tourism
• Spanish: Primary market: Spain and Spanish-speaking Europe, covering a broad and diverse travel-active population
• Italian: Primary market: Italy, a nation of avid domestic and international travellers with strong aesthetic and cultural expectations
• Brazilian Portuguese: Primary market: Brazil, Latin America’s largest outbound travel market, requiring dialect-specific localisation distinct from European Portuguese
Our Workflow
Localising a travel and experiences platform across five languages simultaneously required a workflow that balanced speed, quality, and cultural sensitivity at every stage. Our process was designed to ensure that each language received the same standard of care, while allowing content-type-specific handling, so that inspirational marketing copy was treated differently from legal pages or UI strings.
| 1 | Content Audit & Categorisation | The project commenced with a full audit of Lokalee’s platform and website content. All materials were categorised by content type: UI and navigational strings, destination and experience descriptions, marketing and promotional copy, help and support articles, and legal and privacy documentation. Each category was assigned distinct guidelines regarding tone, register, and formatting requirements, and prioritised based on Lokalee’s go-live roadmap for each language market. |
| 2 | Linguist Briefing & Style Guide Development | A comprehensive briefing was developed for each of the five language teams, covering Lokalee’s brand voice (warm, inspiring, knowledgeable, locally authentic), tone guidelines for different content types, platform-specific terminology, and any proper nouns or brand elements that were to remain untranslated. A shared style guide was produced and adapted per language to account for structural and cultural differences in how travel content is conventionally written in each market. |
| 3 | Translation by Travel-Specialist Linguists | Translation was carried out by native-speaking linguists selected for their combination of target-language fluency and direct experience in travel, tourism, or hospitality content. This domain expertise was non-negotiable: translating experience listings and destination copy requires an instinct for the rhythm and persuasiveness that motivates a traveller to act, not merely an ability to render English text accurately in another language. |
| 4 | Brazilian Portuguese Dialect Management | Brazilian Portuguese was handled as a dedicated workstream, distinct from any European Portuguese baseline. The assigned linguists were native Brazilian Portuguese speakers with awareness of the vocabulary, idiom, and cultural reference points that resonate with Brazilian travellers. Terms, expressions, and colloquialisms that differ between the two dialects were reviewed and standardised in a dialect-specific glossary before translation began. |
| 5 | Proofreading | Each language’s translated content was reviewed by a separate native-speaking proofreader, independent of the translation team. The proofreading stage assessed grammatical correctness, punctuation, spelling, formatting consistency, and overall fluency. Special attention was paid to UI strings (where awkward phrasing or truncated text can directly undermine user experience) and to marketing copy, where the inspirational quality of the source text needed to be preserved in the target language. |
| 6 | Internal QA & Cross-Language Consistency Review | Our internal QA team conducted a final quality audit across all five languages, checking adherence to the style guide, consistency of recurring terms and phrases, correct handling of brand names and untranslated elements, and formatting integrity. A cross-language review was also performed on shared platform terminology to ensure that equivalent concepts were rendered consistently across languages where relevant. |
| 7 | Delivery & Post-Delivery Support | All translated and proofread content was delivered in Lokalee’s required file formats, structured for seamless integration into their platform CMS and website. Our team remained available for post-delivery queries, clarifications, and any revision requests arising from the integration process or internal stakeholder review. |
Challenges & How We Overcame Them
Localising a travel and experiences platform for five linguistically and culturally distinct European markets presented a set of challenges that went well beyond standard translation work. Below is a detailed account of the key challenges encountered and the specific measures taken to resolve them.
| Challenge | Our Approach & Resolution |
| Preserving Brand Voice Across Five Languages: Lokalee’s platform has a distinctive voice, warm, inspiring, locally knowledgeable, and gently conversational. Maintaining this tone across five structurally different languages, where direct translation often produces stilted or overly formal output, was a central challenge throughout the project. | We developed a language-specific brand voice guide for each of the five teams, informed by examples of how the tone manifests in the source English and equivalent examples of that same register in each target language. Translators were explicitly briefed to prioritise feel and naturalness over structural proximity to the source. Proofreaders were given specific responsibility for flagging any output that felt literal, flat, or out of character with the Lokalee brand. |
| Brazilian Portuguese vs European Portuguese: A common pitfall in multilingual projects is treating Portuguese as a single language variant. Brazilian and European Portuguese differ significantly in vocabulary, idiomatic expression, formality conventions, and even spelling. Content produced for a Brazilian audience using European Portuguese conventions would feel foreign and misaligned. | Brazilian Portuguese was established as a fully independent language pair from the outset, with its own dedicated linguist team, glossary, and style guide. No European Portuguese content or resources were used as a baseline. All linguists assigned to this language pair were native Brazilians with travel content experience, and a dialect review was built into the proofreading stage to catch any European Portuguese interference. |
| UI String Translation with Character and Format Constraints: Platform UI strings (buttons, labels, navigation elements, error messages, tooltips) cannot be translated freely. Many have strict character limits or display constraints that, if exceeded, break the interface layout. Languages like German, which tends to produce longer words and compounds, are particularly prone to this issue. | UI strings were extracted and managed as a separate, priority workstream. Translators working on UI content were briefed on character limits and visual context for each string where available. German UI translations in particular were reviewed for length and, where necessary, shortened through approved alternative phrasings without sacrificing meaning. A dedicated check for UI string length compliance was included in the QA stage. |
| Cultural Adaptation of Destination & Experience Content: A description of a beach experience, a culinary tour, or an adventure activity that resonates with a British reader may not land the same way with a French, German, or Italian audience. Each market has distinct cultural associations with travel, leisure, and local experiences. | Translators were encouraged to adapt rather than translate where cultural context demanded it, replacing culturally specific examples, adjusting the emphasis in descriptions to reflect what resonates with each target market, and using locally familiar travel vocabulary. This light-touch transcreation approach ensured that the content felt written for each audience, not translated for them. |
| Maintaining Consistency Across 325K Words & Multiple Linguists: With five language teams working in parallel and content spanning multiple distinct types, ensuring consistency of terminology, tone, and formatting across the full 325,000-word scope required systematic management. | Platform-wide glossaries were established for each language before translation began, covering recurring destination names, experience categories, feature labels, and brand terms. Translation Memories were maintained for each language pair, ensuring that previously approved translations of recurring phrases and UI elements were applied consistently throughout. A final cross-document consistency check was conducted by the QA team before delivery. |
Results & Outcomes
The engagement delivered a fully localised platform and website for Lokalee across five European language markets, meeting all defined quality benchmarks and delivery milestones. The combination of travel-specialist linguists, a culturally sensitive workflow, and systematic quality management produced output that was not only linguistically accurate but market-ready and on-brand across every language.
| 325K Words Delivered Full platform and website localised across 5 languages | 5/5 Languages On Time All language pairs delivered within agreed project timelines |
| 100% Quality Benchmarks Met All content passed internal QA and client review across every language | Zero Dialect Errors Brazilian Portuguese delivered free of European Portuguese interference |
| 5 Market-Ready Language Versions Each language validated for cultural appropriateness and brand voice | Full UI String Compliance All interface strings delivered within character and formatting constraints |
Broader Business Impact
A high-quality, culturally attuned localisation of a travel platform into five major European languages creates business value that extends well beyond the words on the page. For Lokalee, the impact of this engagement is felt across every stage of the European user journey:
• Credible European Market Entry: A platform that reads as though it was designed for each local audience (rather than translated from English) immediately establishes Lokalee as a credible, committed player in each European market, rather than an international brand that has simply added a language toggle.
• Higher User Engagement & Booking Conversion: Travel decisions are emotional. Users presented with inspiring, fluent, culturally familiar content are significantly more likely to engage deeply with the platform, explore more listings, and ultimately convert to bookings. Translated content that feels natural removes friction from the decision-making journey.
• Improved Multilingual SEO Reach: High-quality human-translated website content in German, French, Spanish, Italian, and B
razilian Portuguese is indexed by local search engines, dramatically expanding Lokalee’s organic discoverability among travellers searching for experiences in their own language.
• Reduced User Drop-Off from Localisation Gaps: Awkward translations, literal phrasing, or UI strings that overflow their containers are common causes of user drop-off on localised platforms. By addressing these risks proactively (particularly in German UI content) the engagement protects Lokalee’s conversion funnel from avoidable localisation-driven friction.
• Reusable Localisation Assets for Future Growth: The glossaries, style guides, and Translation Memories developed for each of the five languages represent a durable asset base. Any future content additions or platform updates in these languages start from a position of terminological and stylistic consistency, reducing both cost and time-to-market for ongoing localisation needs.
• Latin American Market Accessibility: The decision to localise specifically into Brazilian Portuguese (rather than generic Portuguese) demonstrates strategic intent toward Latin America’s largest travel market. The quality of the Brazilian Portuguese output positions Lokalee to compete authentically for Brazilian travellers, a rapidly growing and high-value segment of global outbound tourism.
Key Takeaways
• Travel Content Demands Inspiration, Not Just Accuracy: Translating travel and experiences content is as much about preserving emotional resonance and persuasive energy as it is about linguistic accuracy. Linguists who understand the travel domain instinctively produce output that moves people, and that is ultimately what drives bookings.
• Dialect Specificity Is a Strategic Decision: The choice of Brazilian Portuguese over European Portuguese is not a minor technicality, it is a market positioning decision. Honouring that choice with a fully independent, dialect-aware workflow demonstrates the respect for each target audience that successful localisation requires.
• Brand Voice Must Be Translated, Not Just Text: The most technically accurate translation can still miss the mark if it fails to carry the brand’s personality into the target language. Investing in language-specific voice guidance and briefing linguists on tone (not just terminology) is what separates good localisation from great localisation.
• UI Localisation Is a UX Discipline: Translating interface strings without accounting for character limits and visual context is a recipe for broken layouts and frustrated users. UI content must be managed as a dedicated workstream with its own constraints, not treated as ordinary copy.
• Five Languages Means Five Distinct Audiences: German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Brazilian Portuguese speakers do not simply speak different languages, they engage with travel differently, value different aspects of experiences, and respond to different cues. Effective localisation acknowledges this and adapts accordingly, rather than applying a one-size-fits-all translation approach.
• Localisation Infrastructure Compounds in Value Over Time: The glossaries, Translation Memories, and style guides produced during this engagement are not one-time deliverables, they are investments. Every future update, new feature, or content addition Lokalee produces in these five languages will be faster, cheaper, and more consistent as a result of the infrastructure built here.