scope.first
Nothing starts without a written scope
The languages, the screens, the work included, the deliverables, the full price in pounds sterling with tax inside it, and the timescale. Agreed first, in writing, and not added to afterwards.
about
One specialism: the words inside a product, and the screens they have to live in
SellLikeLocal LTD works on interface text and how it behaves once translated. That is the whole of it, and this page says what that means rather than telling a story about a company.
What the work is
Software teams reach a point where the product has to exist in another language. The obvious half of that is translation: the buttons, menus, forms, hints, notifications and error messages have to be rendered into words the new users read.
The less obvious half is everything the new words then do. Labels change length and stop fitting the controls drawn around them. Rows that held three actions hold two. Messages are cut where the layout, rather than the writer, decided to stop. A date written in digits means one thing in one market and something else in another. An address form asks for parts of an address the country does not have.
SellLikeLocal exists in that second half as much as the first. We translate interface strings, we work through what the translated text does to the designs, we check the built screens for what went wrong anyway, and where it is written into the scope we apply the changes in the code as well.
Who commissions it
Software developers, product teams and companies preparing a site, a web service or an application for a new language market. A project of this kind comes with a release date, a set of designs, a resource file of varying tidiness, and a suspicion that translating the file alone will not be enough. That suspicion is correct, and that is why layout adaptation is a separate line of work here, not an afterthought.
What is not claimed here
No languages, locales or markets are published on this site, because none has been confirmed and publishing an unconfirmed list would be a promise rather than information. No frameworks, file formats or tools are listed as supported. There are no case studies, no client names, no testimonials, no statistics and no awards, because there is nothing true to put in those places yet and inventing them is how a supplier becomes untrustworthy before the first invoice.
No growth in sales or conversion is promised anywhere on this site, and none should be promised to you by anybody selling localisation.
how.we.work
Four rules the work is run by
no.invention
Nothing is claimed that has not been agreed
No list of languages until each one is confirmed. No frameworks or tools named as supported. No case studies, no logos, no figures. Every screen on this site is invented and marked as a demonstration.
hypotheses
Suggestions are proposals, not findings
Where we suggest moving a control or rewording a label, that is a hypothesis about a screen. Testing it and measuring what it does are separate work, agreed separately.
queries
A question beats a guess
A string whose meaning depends on something we cannot see comes back as a query. Guessing produces a file that looks complete and a screen that is quietly wrong.