Castlight Health Creating a Truly Global Employee Experience
Serving Castlight Health in expanding their service
Castlight Health is a health navigation platform, developed for corporations that provide digital tools for employees to manage their healthcare. The company offers solutions that encompass an entire health journey from clarifying health benefits to discovering care providers and supporting employees’ wellbeing journey. Castlight approached BLEND to assist them in internationalizing and localizing their services for clients with an international workforce, so that they could provide the same high-quality wellbeing content to all staff, regardless of location.
The selection process for translation suppliers was rigorous, as Castlight required suppliers with a great deal of health experience that could handle this major challenge. A team of Castlight engineers vetted BLEND, which had already been working with Jiff prior to the acquisition, and selected BLEND as one of their language service providers based on industry know-how, process, and localization experience. After BLEND exhibited real leadership under duress, Castlight Health chose to trust BLEND with the entire project, which involved translating millions of words for customers and employees around the globe, in multiple markets, with a minimal operational hassle.
The Challenge: Expanding to serve global workforces
In 2017, Castlight Health acquired Jiff and its powerful wellbeing app to further enrich the services Castlight Health offers corporate clients. As one of Castlight’s goals was to expand their services for organizations with global workforces, it was critical for the app’s content to be equally available to each employee, in his or her preferred local language. This required localization into 17 different languages.
Castlight Health initially began translating the app with an alternative major LSP of choice. However, upon examining app test scripts, they were severely disappointed with the results. It was then that Chris Maddox, Project Manager, Internationalization and Localization Implementation, turned to BLEND localization services. He approached Solomia Vysotska, Head of Project Management at BLEND, and her immediate response was: “How can we help?” The two reviewed the app texts together and Solomia understood the problem right away. She and her localization team immediately took over and began delivering excellent work. “Solomia and team stepped right up and really helped us out…we couldn’t have done it without BLEND and I am grateful to them” Maddox comments. But this was only the beginning of the relationship. The real challenge of delivering the whole project still lay ahead.
The Process:
Increasing operational efficiency Castlight Health manages its content on the Memsource translation management system (TMS). Translating a project of this scope demands an organized process on the part of the translation service provider as well; the project would include, at the very least, 17 different professionals who would be outputting mounds of translated text – about which there were bound to be questioned.
BLEND created a tailored localization workflow that suited Castlight Health’s KPIs and goals. Translation content was synced to Memsource and could be directly pulled from there by each translator, reducing project turnover times and operational bandwidth.
Once a translation was complete, it underwent a rigorous QA process for factors such as grammar and spelling, accuracy, and adherence to client instructions. Any material that did not pass was returned for retranslation.
Instead of using Google Docs to manage projects, as other suppliers had used with Castlight Health in the past, BLEND introduced their project management portal. Maddox described it as an exceptionally professional, well-thought-out, and easy-to-use system. Each of the translators’ comments and interacts on his or her own page; there, they ask questions, and the client can quickly respond to keep the project moving forward. BLEND’s translator portal made it easy to complete the project on time and within budget.
“I have a good working relationship with them. They are always willing to help out when we need an extra effort. I am very, very happy that we used them as a vendor.”
Chris Maddox, Internationalization & Localization Project Manager, Castlight Health
Success: Native app translations that resonate with users worldwide
The result of Castlight Health’s first project with BLEND was a world-class wellbeing app that could be used by employers with employees in more than 17 different locations around the world. The text was not only translated and grammatically correct, but it was idiomatically relevant to each of the employees in his or her native tongue. At the same time, the text was identical enough that employees in each region had an equal interaction with the app – and with each other, further assisting Castlight Health’s clients in creating truly coherent and integrated international workforces.
“Prospective customers know that we have the global capability and that we can provide an app to their foreign subsidiaries. So, it provides us with one more thing – a bonus. People can look at it and say, ‘this is nice!’ This offering makes Castlight Health attractive to clients who may not have considered us in the past.”
Chris Maddox, Internationalization & Localization Project Manager, Castlight Health
API-driven translation at scale
Castlight Health continues working with BLEND on a regular basis, translating between 10 to 20 thousand words a month, which are gleaned from about 20 different sources in the Castlight Health app. Maddox pushes relevant text strings through to BLEND, and when the tasks are completed, they are returned to the Memsource database, using the same well-oiled system perfected in the launch. Similarly, Castlight Health is adding 2 new languages to their core 17, which means going back and localizing the entire application. Castlight Health reports satisfaction with the fact that they have been able to complete the complex process of adding a new language in about 5-6 weeks, which assists them in their business objectives.
Bonus: A 70% decrease in localization costs
BLEND suggested optimizing Castlight’s localization process even further by introducing neural machine translation and post-editing (NMTPE) services. “It’s [NMTPE] a much more efficient means of translation, and also less expensive, which was something very important to us. It introduced significant cost savings.” Neural Machine Translation combines the best of both worlds: a collaboration of the wisdom and insight of human translators, with the learning abilities and speed of machines. Transferring to this service was relatively quick, and the process was up and running in a few months. Maddox provided the machine with translation memories and test content to train the translation engines. After the machine translates the text, it is transferred to human translators for editing, and this editing in turn continues to train the machines for even better results.
BLEND’s rigorous QA process ensures that the language flows and that the translated texts match the accompanying images. Maddox summarizes the results: “Our customers haven’t complained yet!”
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