How the localization team at Trustpilot scaled global translation without adding headcount

Overview

Trustpilot is a global review platform that helps consumers and businesses build trust through transparent feedback. With millions of reviews and customers across multiple markets, Trustpilot’s localization needs span a wide range of content types, from product experiences and marketing campaigns to support documentation and legal communications.

As the company has expanded, so has its need for consistent, high-quality translation, despite its small localization team. Serving both B2B and B2C audiences across up to 22 locales, Trustpilot required a unified localization program that could scale across departments, integrate with its growing Salesforce ecosystem, and significantly reduce time-consuming manual processes.

Herausforderung

Though Trustpilot is a large company with more than 1,000 employees globally, its localization function is a small team supporting the entire organization. Additionally, the localization team had inherited a clunky, fragmented system and wide operational scope, spanning marketing, product, support, legal, HR, and the company’s trust and content integrity materials. The team soon realized their existing solution lacked the automation, visibility, and integration they needed to comfortably support enterprise-wide scale at their size.

Translation memories were fragmented across more than 130 separate databases, with little consolidation or reuse across repositories. The result was a system that couldn’t deliver even the most basic localization functionality. “We would be translating ‘okay’ buttons 20 times,” said Isabel Teodoro, head of localization at Trustpilot. “It was like every file was completely new, from scratch. Because translation memories weren't connected and changes weren't captured, we couldn't fully leverage our past work or ensure consistent terminology.”

Manual uploads dominated the workflow. Nearly all non-product content required file-based processes, and there was no centralized workflow or project automation. Internal reviewers worked outside the system, and version control was difficult to manage. For marketing teams running campaigns in multiple markets, this meant extensive manual work. A single campaign could require creating more than 230 individual email events across seven languages, with each needing the translated copy individually inserted into a template and reviewed. Reporting was also limited. “Even for something as simple as daily total word count, our old solution just wasn’t able to give us those metrics,” Isabel explained, “let alone give us metrics for a more complex report.”

Integrations, particularly with Salesforce, were especially important. With marketing, support, and knowledge content deeply embedded across Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Knowledge, Trustpilot required a solution that could integrate directly into these systems without heavy engineering dependency. “The challenge with having a small team is you really need the integrations and automations to do the heavy lifting,” Isabel said, “otherwise there just aren’t enough hours in the day.” The scope of translations also extended to Trustpilot's internal trust team, which manages sensitive material like consumer disputes and moderation cases. These workflows required exceptionally high linguistic accuracy, given the legal implications and potential damage to Trustpilot’s reputation if translations were improperly handled.

"The challenge with having a small team is you really need the integrations and automations to do the heavy lifting, otherwise there just aren’t enough hours in the day."

— Isabel Teodoro, Head of Localization, Trustpilot

Knowing this, Trustpilot’s wishlist for a new partner was clear. The team needed advanced translation management capabilities, improved project and version control, strong data privacy and security features, and reliable Salesforce integrations. They also wanted to reduce operational costs by increasing translation memory leverage and introducing AI-driven machine translation, while maintaining linguistic quality.

Lösungen

Trustpilot selected Smartling to serve as a centralized translation management system capable of consolidating its fragmented processes under a single, integrated platform. With Smartling, the localization team was able to rebuild Trustpilot’s translation infrastructure into a scalable, enterprise-grade program without expanding their headcount. Smartling’s advanced automation, workflow configuration, and connector ecosystem aligned directly with the team’s stated requirements.

“The idea was that we needed a solution that would give us an umbrella cover for everything we wanted to do,” Isabel said. “We didn’t want to buy other translation systems. We wanted to consolidate the technology as much as possible. Smartling gave us that.”

“We didn’t want to buy other translation systems. We wanted to consolidate the technology as much as possible. Smartling gave us that.”

— Isabel Teodoro, Head of Localization, Trustpilot

Smartling’s out-of-the-box connectors enabled Trustpilot to integrate localization directly into its core systems without heavy engineering support. The Contentful connector streamlined website content. The GitHub connector unified product and app localization across repositories. Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Salesforce Knowledge connectors automated email and help center translation workflows. To further Trustpilot’s business goals, Smartling also committed to building a Salesforce Service Cloud connector to support email-to-case and web-to-case workflows, reinforcing Trustpilot’s long-term Salesforce strategy. “The Salesforce connectors were super important to us,” said Isabel. “The business has invested heavily in Salesforce, and we needed to know that our localization could sit directly inside that ecosystem.”

For marketing teams, working with Smartling eliminated the need to copy and paste translated content into email templates or manually coordinate native-language reviews. Translations are now reviewed and approved within Smartling, then returned directly to their originating systems, ready for deployment.

For their help center, updates flow back into the knowledge base automatically, with no manual handling required. Because previously translated content is now automatically reused through connected translation memories, teams no longer need to translate the same content multiple times. "We had translation memories before, but we couldn't really make use of them — we could be translating the same thing dozens of times," said Isabel. "Now we have our internal reviews directly in the platform, and all those changes are captured in the translation memory." That efficiency has built something harder to quantify: organizational trust. Other teams now route their requests through the localization team rather than working around it with ad hoc solutions.

Smartling also delivered the reporting and control Trustpilot previously lacked. The team can now track translation memory leverage, measure on-time delivery, monitor quality through change reports, and analyze overall volume and cost metrics. With connected translation memories and centralized review workflows, Trustpilot has already achieved approximately 40% leverage, reducing redundant work. “In some cases, we’ve saved days from the moment we’re told something needs translation to when it’s live again in the repository,” said Isabel.

Warum Smartling?

With Smartling and several natively built integrations in place, Trustpilot achieved measurable improvements across its localization program:

• Nearly 100% reduction in manual file uploads through connector-based integrations
• 40% translation memory leverage, reducing redundant translation work
• Consolidated 140 unique translation databases into just 10, a 93% reduction
• Days saved in turnaround time from translation request to live content deployment
• Enhanced quality monitoring through in-platform review and change reporting
• Increased stakeholder satisfaction through streamlined Salesforce publishing

By consolidating its localization technology under Smartling, Trustpilot transformed a disjointed system into a scalable global program that supports every department while easing the operational burden on a lean team. The result is faster publishing, stronger consistency, and a localization engine designed to grow alongside the business.