Overview
Founded in 2014, Gemini is a full-reserve custodian and exchange for cryptocurrency with millions of users in more than 60 countries. Over the past decade, they have built a business tailored for retail and institutional clients, but they continue to innovate and expand their reach to more users. Part of that expansion strategy is localization, providing their content and product materials in five languages.
Challenge
Localization had been an important aspect of growth at Gemini for years as they entered new markets. However, they faced major challenges with ensuring local understanding of their content because of the unique nature of language and terminology associated with cryptocurrency. Some of those terms need to be translated to meet the local culture, while others should never be translated and must remain in English to maintain their meaning.
“Crypto is still such a new industry that there are lots of terms that are industry-specific or super niche,” said marketing associate Gerda Naeter, who manages the localization program at Gemini. “One of our goals is making sure that whatever market we’re expanding into, that we are aligning with the colloquial language or terms that people in that market would actually use.”
This ambiguity led them to rely on human translators to ensure the niche industry terminology was translated properly. Even after enlisting the help of a third-party language service provider, this approach presented problems of its own. Slow turnaround time often led to delays in launches, which in turn delayed company growth.
The cost of relying solely on human translation quickly accumulated, stretching Gemini’s localization budget. They needed a faster, more cost-effective way to ensure that users around the world could relate to their product - one that would allow them to stay on track toward global expansion.
Solution
Smartling’s AI-Powered Human Translation (AIHT) provided them with an answer. This product cuts down cost and turnaround time by utilizing AI and machine translation features while retaining human-level quality. AIHT can complete in one day what would typically take a traditional human translation approach two days to finish. Paired with Smartling’s pre-built integrations for Contentful and GitHub, AIHT has allowed them to publish translated materials faster than ever.
“The biggest thing that we’ve seen with AIHT is that timeliness has improved. The overall timeline from submitting content to receiving it has shortened significantly which is a huge advantage as we grow,” Naeter said.
Today, 99% of Gemini’s content is translated with AIHT and, even with expedited turnaround times, the team remains satisfied with the quality and cultural nuance of their translations. By reducing costs, this solution also gives them the ability to translate more content, which keeps global customers engaged with the product.
With additional resources freed up, Gemini is now considering translating more elements of their user experience, like customer service. “It’s been an exciting new part of the partnership to have the ability to use all these AI translation tools,” Naeter said. “We’re excited to see where we can go next with Smartling.”
