Localization state survey 2022

Localizely conducted research about the state of localization for 2022. The aim was to detect the current trends in software localization and areas for improvement. The data collected from this survey should provide a better understanding of software localization practices, the tools used, and things that need to be improved for better productivity.

Read on for more great insights about software localization and trends in our annual report.

Survey respondents

The Localizely survey was conducted on 2,024 respondents of various occupations from all over the world.

Departments

Most of the participants in the survey were from Marketing, Localization, and Product departments. Such composition is not surprising, knowing that people from these departments are most often involved in the software localization process.

• Marketing
• Localization
• Product
• Engineering
• Management
• Other

Continents

When it comes to continents, most of the participants in the survey were from Europe, Asia, and America.

Europe	49%
Asia	28%
North America	12%
South America	5%
Australia / Oceania	3%
Africa	3%

Survey results

Below you can find the results of the localization survey for 2022.

Number of target languages

A majority of the respondents (52%) stated that they usually have 2 - 10 target languages in their projects.

The number of target languages in projects can depend on many factors: target market (country, global), project type (blog, e-commerce, etc.), available resources, and much more. With all that in mind, we are not surprised by the results of the survey either. In a way, they represent the mean value of all the mentioned factors.

2 - 10 languages	52%
11 - 20 languages	23%
21 - 49 languages	19%
50+ languages	6%

Popular target languages

Below you can see a list of the 10 most popular target languages, sorted in descending order. According to it, the most popular target language is German, followed by Spanish, French, Russian, and others.

• German (most popular)
• Spanish
• French
• Russian
• Italian
• Arabic
• Portuguese
• Dutch
• Chinese
• Japanese

Translating for regional languages

Most of the participants (61%) declared that they do not do translations for regional languages (e.g. en-US, es-MX), but just for plain languages (e.g. en, es).

Yes	39%
No	61%

Translation tools

When it comes to what tools they use for translation, most of them (78%) say that they use some kind of TMS.

TMS	78%
Excel sheet or similar	22%

Work with a language service provider

The majority of participants (65%) said that they work with language service providers.

Yes	65%
No	35%

Machine Translation usage

When it comes to machine translation, the results are divided. Nearly half of the respondents (45%) do not use any form of machine translation. The other half, which uses machine translation, most often performs proofreading after machine translation usage.

Yes, without proofreading	17%
Yes, but always with proofreading	38%
No	45%

Localization priority

When asked whether localization is sufficiently prioritized in their companies, most of the respondents (68%) believe that it is.

Yes	68%
No	32%

Localization improvement

As for the aim to improve localization in 2023, most respondents said they would like to improve quality, simplicity of workflows, level of scalability, and speed.

• Quality (level, consistency, ...)
• Simplicity of workflows
• Level of scalability
• Speed
• Efficiency
• Cost

Conclusion

In this localization state report for 2022, you have seen the various stats, the most popular target languages, tools, ways of working, and similar. Also, you have seen what needs to be improved in the future to make localization even more enjoyable. Let's hope that 2023 will bring us some novelties and make localization even more pleasant.