Localization Manager
Al Tayer Group
Total years of experience :27 years, 11 Months
• Cooperate with the Online Content Marketing manager to define and roll out a company-wide linguistic strategy for all Arabic content.
• Manage and deliver the Arabic localization strategy to successfully drive demand and ultimately drive revenue.
• Plan, write, edit, test and improve Arabic content for website, mobile, newsletter, all digital marketing paid campaigns and make sure it’s written with the right tone, SEO friendly and appropriate for the target country audience.
• Set up translation procedures, workflows and best practices.
• Take ownership of translation quality for Arabic and develop and drive initiatives to enhance linguistic quality across the different brands.
• Work with outsource translation teams to ensure all copy and product translations are clear and concise and localized where relevant.
• Manage whole set of linguistic resources: translation memories, term databases, machine translation engines and filters
• Do ongoing assessment and management of localization and linguistic accuracy, timeliness and consistency of content as applicable to all Arabic content.
• Ensure both tools and localization vendors perform according to agreed SLAs regarding time, quality, and budget.
• Edit and translate the product pages according to in-house style guides; checking accuracy of copy against images as well as grammar and spelling.
• Work closely with brand, marketing and editorial teams to ensure alignment of the brand is preserved and marketing tactics are executed accordingly.
• Support the digital marketing, content and merchandising teams to provide insights, transcreations and execution to drive sales growth across websites, affiliates, SEO, PPC, social media, and email sales channels in Arabic.
Accomplishments:
• Launching Gap website in Arabic in UAE https://ar.gap.ae/.
• Launching Nisnass mobile app on iOS and Android followed by the website https://ar.nisnass.ae/ in Arabic in the Gulf region.
• Providing Arabic translations of the product copy for all Al Tayer digital brands Ounass, Nisnass, Mamas and Papas and Gap.
Independent Arabic translator and copyeditor. Creative translation or transcreation for marketing content is one of my favorite specialties. I used to transcreate/edit press releases, websites, brochures, and online content covering multifarious industries including include marketing, finance, technical, travel & hospitality. My main task is to translate a copy that looks as if it was written in Arabic language not just translated. I also work as an Arabic language specialist and expert for major companies in the field of Internet and travel and tourism. I work on the localized Arabic products, perform linguistic quality control, manage terminology and style guides, and collaborate with different teams.
Leading Arabic content team and working with them on the Arabic content production of noon website and app platform. Setting up and building all aspects of Arabic content management and workflow systems to create the best in class experience to our customers.
Job Duties:
• Helping to define tone of voice, guidelines, DO’s and DON’Ts for every department/category (Fashion/Kids/Toys/Electronics/Home/Beauty/etc.).
• Owning and leading all Arabic content-driven activities related to uploading the product content to Product Information Management system.
• Managing the work of the outsourced translation agencies and giving them feedback.
• Ensuring that the translation agencies create Arabic content that complies to our guidelines and SLAs.
• Helping to evaluate and hire translation agencies, freelancers and in-house copywriters.
• Managing an in-house team of copywriters/translators/editors.
• Implementing keyword research for SEO purpose.
• Managing invoicing, contracts and costs of the translation projects/agencies.
• Liaising with the industry leaders of translation technology and services to choose a suitable translation management software system for our Arabic content.
• Working closely with the English Content Management team, Development team and other business teams to create and publish engaging content.
• Being the point of quality control of the Arabic product content.
• Editing and developing accurate and compelling editorial content intended for use in press releases, on websites, social media sites and other platforms as required.
• Testing the website and mobile app to fix any linguistic, content-related and functional errors and maintain the consistent look and feel of the Arabic content before launch.
Accomplishments:
• Building in-house Arabic content team.
• Building Arabic glossary.
• Creating guidelines for Arabic content transcreation.
• Partnering with translation agencies.
• Liaising with the industry leaders of translation technology and helping in the selection of a translation management system.
• Building a network of freelancers.
• Managing the transcreation of 7+ million words with high quality in less than 5 months for almost 100, 000 products of multiple categories for noon e-commerce website.
• Localizing noon mobile and desktop wireframes.
• Creating the Arabic content for different departments like Sellers’ FAQs, Customers’ FAQs, Canned responses, PowerPoint presentations, …etc.
• Creating the Arabic taxonomy of the website.
• Brainstorming and creating Arabic keywords for enhancing the search on the website.
• Enhancing the Arabic beta version of noon shop mobile app after reporting multiple bugs detected while testing the app.
Copywriter at Corporate Communications - Customer and Marketing Communications Department
o Editing and developing accurate and compelling editorial content intended for use in press releases, on websites, social media sites and other platforms as required
o Gaining deep understanding of Alshaya’s brands core messages and target audiences through liaison with colleagues (Corporate Communications, Brands, Corporate Marketing)
o Ensuring that all copies supplied for review are edited as appropriate to reflect Alshaya’s individual brand’s positioning, tone of voice, and key messages
o Writing clear, persuasive, original copy appropriate to the intended usage where required
o Ensuring the highest level of social media content quality and helping digital team to devise innovative and unique content strategy to engage fans
o Proofreading all content to ensure relevancy and accuracy of spelling and grammar
o Ensuring all content reviewed or developed is aligned to Alshaya’s/brands’ guidelines and is appropriate to the market
o Delivering output against the agreed SLAs
o Writing clear, persuasive, original copy in Arabic
o Working effectively with colleagues within the Internal and External Communications staff, brands and the wider Alshaya business
o Writing as a contributor in “Connect”, Alshaya’s internal magazine
My roles in Google included:
o Being in direct contact with marketing and public relations teams, in Cairo & Dubai, helping them creatively translate/edit copies of advertisements, press releases, brochures, websites and blog posts in Arabic language
o Working closely with Google Arabic Localization Manager on improving the Arabic translations of Google Consumer and Monetization products:
• Ensuring compliance with company terminology, consistency of translation, and typographic and grammatical accuracy
• Maintaining Google Arabic Style Guide
• Managing and training translation teams
• Resolving translation quality issues.
o Taking part in initiatives related to enriching Arabic content on the Internet.
o Taking responsibility for performing linguistic and functional testing of Google products prior to their launch on desktop and mobile devices:
• Following test plans/cases during performing LQA tasks for Google products (e.g. Motorola Xoom tablet and Samsung mobile phones)
• Fixing, reporting and monitoring localization bugs resolution.
Onsite Independent Arabic Linguist at Google Cairo office
• I was in direct contact with marketing and public relations teams, in Cairo & Dubai, helping them to creatively translate/edit copies of advertisements, press releases, brochures, websites and blog posts in Arabic language.
• I worked with Google Arabic Localization Manager on improving the Arabic translations of Google Consumer and Monetization products to ensure compliance with company terminology, consistency of translation, and typographic and grammatical accuracy, maintaining Google Arabic Style Guide, managing translation teams, resolving quality issues and providing training to them. I also participated in initiatives related to enriching the Arabic content on the Internet.
• I was also responsible for performing linguistic and functional testing of Google products on desktop and mobile devices such as tablets and mobile phones before launching.
I am entirely responsible for managing the quality control process for a range of translation projects, each of which required me to apply knowledge and experience gained within a different industry. The role also involved editing style guides for the Arabic language, approving glossaries, giving constructive feedback and comments to different teams, providing auxiliary support to translators in different fields and responding to a variety of different language inquiries, contacting clients and language specialists globally, managing people, ...etc.
I have also a Diploma in English and Arabic Translation (General Grade: Very Good), Cairo University, Post Graduate Studies in Faculty of Arts, English Department
