Should you localize your docs?
Not every project needs multilingual documentation. Here's how to tell whether yours does — and whether now is the right time.
Signals that say yes
You already have international traffic. Check your analytics. If 30%+ of your doc visitors come from non-English-speaking countries, they're reading your docs despite the language barrier. That means there's demand you're not fully serving. The developers who show up in your analytics represent a fraction of the ones who bounced. CSA Research's "Can't Read, Won't Buy" study — 8,709 consumers across 29 countries — found that 76% prefer products and content in their native language, and 40% will never purchase from sites available only in English.
Your GitHub issues come in multiple languages. If users file issues in Spanish, Chinese, or Japanese — or apologize for their English before asking a question — your community has outgrown your documentation language.
Your competitors offer localized docs. If the other tools in your category have Chinese or Japanese documentation and you don't, you're conceding those markets by default. Developers evaluating tools will pick the one they can read. When Slack localized into Japanese, they saw 249% user growth and 63% more paid conversions in that market. Revolut grew users 186% after expanding to 31 languages.
You're entering a market with low English proficiency. Japan, China, Korea, Brazil, France, and much of Southeast Asia have large developer populations with moderate-to-low English proficiency. If these are target markets, English-only docs are a barrier to adoption.
Your docs are the primary onboarding path. If developers evaluate and adopt your product primarily through documentation (as opposed to a sales team), then docs in their language directly affect conversion. A Chargebee analysis of 6,452 SaaS companies found that even cosmetic localization — translated UI, localized pricing pages — correlates with roughly 40% higher growth. ProfitWell found similar numbers across 457 SaaS companies.
Signals that say wait
Your docs are still changing rapidly. If you're rewriting documentation weekly, localizing now means paying for translation twice. Wait until your docs are relatively stable — at least at the structural level. (That said, automated translation with change detection makes this less of a concern than it used to be.)
You have fewer than 20 pages. Very small doc sites may not justify the setup overhead. A README and a getting-started guide might be better served by community-contributed translations.
Your audience is exclusively English-speaking. Some developer tools genuinely serve only English-speaking markets. If your analytics, community, and sales data all point to 95%+ English users, localization isn't a priority.
You don't have a stable deployment. Translated docs need to be hosted and maintained. If your documentation site itself is in flux (migrating frameworks, restructuring URLs), stabilize first.
The cost question
The traditional barrier to doc localization was cost. Human translation runs $5–15 per page per language. For a 200-page site in 5 languages, that's $5,000–15,000 upfront — plus ongoing costs every time content changes.
That math has changed. Automated translation with terminology consistency and structure preservation now costs $0.05–0.15 per page per language. The same 200 pages in 5 languages: roughly $50–150. Updates cost even less because only changed content gets retranslated.
At these price points, the question shifts from "can we afford to localize?" to "can we afford not to?" Lingoport estimates that companies retrofitting internationalization into an established product spend $500K–$2M — versus a fraction of that when building it in from the start.
The maintenance question
Cost isn't the only concern. Stale translations are worse than no translations — they erode trust. If your English docs say v3 but your Japanese docs still describe v2, developers will learn to distrust the translated version.
This is why manual translation processes fail for documentation. They work for marketing pages (translate once, update rarely) but not for docs that change with every release.
The answer is automation: detect changes in the source, retranslate only what changed, redeploy automatically. If your localization process can't do this, it will fall behind within months.
A simple decision framework
Answer these three questions:
- Is there demand? (International traffic > 20%, non-English issues, competitor docs in other languages)
- Are your docs stable enough? (Not rewriting the entire site every month)
- Can you maintain it? (Automated pipeline, not manual re-engagement per update)
If all three are yes, localize now. The longer you wait, the more potential users you lose — and the more expensive a retrofit becomes when you eventually do it.
If #1 is yes but #2 or #3 are no, plan for it. Stabilize your docs, choose a localization approach with built-in maintenance, and execute when ready.
If #1 is no, revisit in 6 months. International developer adoption can shift quickly, especially after conference talks, viral blog posts, or integrations with popular tools in non-English markets.
Getting started
If the answer is yes:
- Open source projects: Apply to our Founding Partner Program. We translate and maintain your docs at no cost for select projects.
- Commercial projects: Contact us for a free sample translation. See the quality before committing.
- Want to see examples first? Browse any of our 19 live demo translations to see what the output looks like.