Podcasts

Technical writers have long been the quiet workhorses of the software world, documenting features nobody reads, chasing developers for context, and generally operating in the background. But something interesting is happening. In the localization space, tech writers are stepping into a role nobody quite planned for them: they’re becoming the connective tissue that holds multilingual product experiences together. In a recent episode of The Agile Localization Podcast, host Stefan Huyghe sat down with Ian Cowley, Technical Writer at Salto, who lives at the crossroads of language, technology, and user experience. Based in Spain’s Basque Country and fluent in English, Spanish, and French, Ian brought a grounded, real-world perspective on why the people who write your UI strings might just be the most important players in your localization pipeline.

When most of us think about localization, we picture someone quietly working through spreadsheets, swapping words from one language to another. Aydin Gür’s reality couldn’t be further from that image. As an Apple Retail Globalization Editor for the Turkish market, he’s reviewed and signed off on over 10 million words of customer-facing content, and his team hasn’t had a single escalation since 2018. In this episode of the Agile Localization Podcast, host Stefan Huyghe sat down with Aydin to unpack how he pulls that off, and the stories he shared were equal parts illuminating and entertaining.

When we think about shipping a product, documentation often gets treated like an afterthought, something tacked on right before the release, or worse, weeks after it. But what if the docs are the product? And what if the moment you start writing them is already too late for localization? In a recent episode of The Agile Localization Podcast, host Stefan Huyghe sat down with Rutva Safi, Senior Technical Writer at Gantner India, to explore exactly this. Rutva brings a unique lens to the conversation. With over eleven years in IT, spanning roles from developer to business analyst, quality analyst, and even law, before finding her true calling in documentation.

When most companies think about localization, they picture a translation team tucked away in a corner, handling strings after the real product work is done. Gideon Hod sees it completely differently. At Turo, the peer-to-peer car-sharing platform operating across five markets and three languages (with more on the way), localization is a product operations competency that keeps engineering moving fast and users happy worldwide.

For as long as most of us can remember, the localization industry has run on a single, stubborn unit of measurement: the words. You count them, you price them, you invoice them. Simple. But what happens when a large language model can draft thousands of those words in seconds, and a post-editor can process them by the hour? That’s the uncomfortable question at the heart of a recent conversation on The Agile Localization Podcast, where host Stefan Huyghe sat down with Diego Cresceri, Founder and CEO of Creative Words, to talk about what comes after the per-word era.

Every week, Hypixel Studios pushes new content to its player base across nine different languages (now even more). Not once, but every single week. For most game studios, this would be a logistical nightmare: a cascade of translation delays, quality inconsistencies, and frustrated international players waiting weeks for localized content. However, Mewen Page, the Lead Gameplay Programmer at Hypixel Studios, has built a localization system that doesn’t just keep pace with weekly releases but actively harnesses community energy to improve translations while maintaining editorial control. In this episode of The Agile Localization Podcast, Mewen joined host Stefan Huyghe to discuss the intersection of game design and localization in the development of Hytale.

Translation management systems used to be the center of everything in localization. If you wanted to translate, review, manage, or ship content, you went through your TMS. However, in The Agile Localization Podcast, Jourik Ciesielski, CTO at ELAN Languages, makes it clear that this model is starting to break. AI hasn’t just added new capabilities. It’s exposed deeper limitations in how TMS platforms are designed and how teams think about them.

Shipping multilingual content is rarely ‘translate and done’. Pages change, UI space is tight, legal terms must be exact, and markets never sleep. In The Agile Localization Podcast, host Stefan Huyghe talks with Putri Kumala (AI Localization Operations Team Lead) and Arshaad Mohiadeen (Senior AI Engineer) from Deriv about how they run 20+ languages with automated, AI-driven workflows while staying in control of quality, brand, and compliance.

When B2B SaaS companies talk about going global, what they often mean is: send content in, get translations out, and hope for the best. In reality, that approach breaks the moment you try to scale. In this episode of The Agile Localization Podcast, host Stefan Huyghe is joined by Nicola Calabrese, the Founder of Undertow, to dive into how B2B SaaS companies can build structured, scalable localization programs powered by AI. With more than a decade in software localization, SEO, and process design, Nicola makes one thing clear: AI doesn’t fix chaos. It amplifies it. Here’s how to avoid that trap.

When teams talk about localization, it’s often framed as a finishing step. Ship the product, extract the strings, translate, and move on. However, as Szymon Metkowski, Language and UX Consultant at Metkowski Translations, explains in this episode of The Agile Localization Podcast, that mindset is exactly what causes broken interfaces, confusing microcopy, and lost user trust. In this conversation with host Stefan Huyghe, Szymon unpacks what UX-aware localization really looks like in practice. From why microcopy failures can quietly kill conversions, to how AI can help or hurt depending on how it’s used, the message is clear: if language isn’t considered during design, no amount of post-launch fixes will fully save the experience.

If you work in localization, global marketing, or brand storytelling, you already know the risk of getting it wrong. In culture-driven industries like outdoor and action sports, poor localization does not just create friction. It breaks trust. In a recent episode of The Agile Localization Podcast by Crowdin, host Stefan Huyghe speaks with Martina Russo, Founder of The Action Sports Translator, about what changes when localization is done by people who actively live the sports they translate for. The conversation moves beyond workflows and tools into authenticity, cultural credibility, and why generalist translation models fail in industries built on experience, risk, and identity.

If you work in localization, UX writing, or global product design, you already know the pressure: shipping software across languages while keeping experiences usable under real conditions. When that software supports workplace safety, mistakes don’t just create friction. They create risk. In a recent episode of The Agile Localization Podcast by Crowdin, host Stefan Huyghe spoke with Anna Barcons Folguera, Localization Executive at SafetyCulture, about what changes when localization decisions directly influence how frontline workers act under pressure. The conversation moves past translation workflows and into how language clarity, tone, UX constraints, and cultural nuance shape behavior in moments that matter.