Senior Localisation Specialist - French, Marketplace

Senior Localisation Specialist - French - Marketplace

Team description

The Localization team at Booking.com ensures that the company's products, content, and customer experiences are tailored to global audiences. They develop and implement localization strategy, manage relationships with translation vendors, set and uphold rigorous quality standards, and collaborate with internal partners like Marketing and Product. The team leverages automation and internal/external expertise to deliver culturally relevant, high-quality translations at scale across multiple languages and regions. Their work enables Booking.com to connect with users worldwide, drive engagement, and support strategic initiatives like the Connected Trip, all while maintaining consistency, accuracy, and effectiveness across diverse markets.

Role Overview

The Senior Localisation Specialist seeks to bring the best user experience to our audience in the French market, one of the company's key markets, through high quality localisation. The Senior Localisation Specialist will help ensure the localised and transcreated content provided into French to Booking.com and its sister companies is accurate, locally relevant and is adhering to brand and product instructions and requirements as well as internal language assets, thus supporting the success of global strategic ambitions, new product launches and various campaigns in the company's key markets locally.

The Senior Localisation Specialist is expert in quality and language asset management, as well as translation, localisation and transcreation, they are advanced users of translation management systems and possess the knowledge and skills required to train and critically assess quality provided by internal and external linguists in French as per the applicable quality framework.

The Senior Localisation Specialist is accountable for ensuring internally applicable quality standards are met and will provide local market insights and localisation consultancy and lead initiatives such as local competitor analysis, user research and experimentation to help identify and act upon opportunities to localize deeper for the local market.

Responsible for creating and maintaining language assets and language training resources, the Senior Localisation Specialist also supports the execution of localisation projects from a quality-process perspective.

The Senior Localisation Specialist will work with the team and may get involved at any stage of the end-to-end journey from the copy/brief creation of content to the localized copy quality assessment. The Senior Localisation Specialist has a strong ability to identify areas for improvement and come up with new initiatives to deliver better quality moving forward. Whenever possible, the Senior Localisation Specialist leverages localisation, local market insights and quality performance data, as well as stakeholder and end user feedback to identify areas for improvements with delivering better quality in French and one of the company's key markets.

The Senior Localisation Specialist will also collaborate closely with the Quality Management team and support regional and global quality initiatives.

Key Job Responsibilities and Duties

• Own and be responsible and accountable for the quality of the translations provided by internal and external linguists in French to ensure the localised content into French is accurate, adapted to the local culture and market and is adhering to brand and product instructions and requirements as well as internal language assets. thus supporting the success of global strategic ambitions in their key market locally;
• Create, manage and maintain internal language assets and French language and culture guidelines, including term bases, glossaries, translation memories, style guides to be used by internal and external linguists;
• Assess the quality of the copy transcreated as part of key-market campaigns into the local language. May get involved at any stage of the end-to-end journey from the copy/brief creation of content to the localized copy quality assessment.
• Perform regular quality assessments of the copy translated by internal and external linguists as per applicable quality framework and driving translated copy improvements based on stakeholder feedback;
• Provide quality coaching and training to internal linguists, external vendors and freelancers to maintain and/or improve quality of the content localised into French;
• Monitor quality performance metrics and output of internal and external linguists providing translations into French, identify and act upon opportunities for improvement identified by performing root cause analysis, quality deep dives and giving consistent feedback and training to internal and external linguists;
• Ensuring that existing and new quality processes, methodologies, and guidelines are followed and understood by vendor linguists and that applicable quality performance targets are met;
• Contribution to the documentation of internal localisation quality processes and knowledge base maintenances, in cooperation with the Quality Manager;
• Apply existing market and language knowledge and expertise to provide proactive localisation consultancy to the business to help ensure the localized content is locally relevant to the French market and drive market localisation opportunities collaborating with relevant stakeholders across the company;
• Work closely with key stakeholders, also at every stage of the copy/content creation process, as needed by providing local market insights and consultancy;
• Lead key market research such as competitor analysis, localisation SWOT analysis, market research and support local language copy AB testing. Apply available market insights, findings and localisation data in daily work to support company and regional localisation strategy in the French market;
• Support the Quality Management team, Localisation Program Office and Hub Manager with regional and global quality-related initiatives;
• Own checking the quality of the language test, creating training resources for internal and external linguists and sharing regular feedback on their quality as per applicable quality framework during and after external and internal linguists' hiring;
• Cooperate with the Quality Manager and support the development and execution of quality improvement programmes;
• Optimizing existing quality processes for French, initiating and implementing new ways to improve the team's work to support quality;
• Proactively sourcing for insights and current trends in the local market and field of localisation quality management and technologies and identifying opportunities to apply gained knowledge within the team and localisation track;

Role Qualifications and Requirements

• Bachelor Degree in Language, Translation, or related field
• Min. 5 years of experience in the localisation industry
• Min. 5 years experience in translation, transcreation, audiovisual translation and/or writing localized copy for the French market and or managing the localisation quality of French
• Native level French speaker with excellent knowledge of spoken and written English
• Experience in QA testing or Linguistic QA management;
• Experience in quality management including revision, editing, giving and receiving feedback on translation quality to internal and external linguists
• Terminology management for French
• Excellent proficiency with at least 1 translation management software
• MT post-editing
• Analytical skills and ability to interpret available quality and localisation data and market insights to support and maintain quality in French
• Excellent communication and networking skills with a strong ability to influence different stakeholders (virtually and in person)
• Proactive and initiative taker, both when working independently and in collaboration with a team;
• Stakeholder and vendor management
• Ability to provide quality coaching and continuous feedback effectively and objectively
• Understanding of internationalization, SEO, e-commerce, UX and marketing techniques
• Teamwork and ability to cooperate effectively with a local and international global team
• Prior experience as a Senior Localisation Specialist, Quality Manager or related roles is a plus
• Experience with e-commerce product localisation and marketing and creative content translation and transcreation is a plus

Inclusion at Booking.com:

Take it from our Chief People Officer, Paulo Pisano: "At Booking.com, the diversity of our people doesn't just create a unique workplace, it also creates a better and more inclusive travel experience for everyone. Inclusion is at the heart of everything we do. It's a place where you can make your mark and have a real impact in travel and tech."

Read all about DEI and the Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) at Booking.com here

Total Reward Philosophy:

• The benefits and perks offered by the company can be found here.

Career Development Opportunities:

• Learn more about Your Career Journey here.
• Become a Mentee and benefit from a mentoring relationship with a more experienced person to help you identify and achieve your professional and personal development goals.

Booking.com is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status. We strive to move well beyond traditional equal opportunity and work to create an environment that allows everyone to thrive.

Pre-Employment Screening

If your application is successful, your personal data may be used for a pre-employment screening check by a third party as permitted by applicable law. Depending on the vacancy and applicable law, a pre-employment screening may include employment history, education and other information (such as media information) that may be necessary for determining your qualifications and suitability for the position.