Here is a transcript generated by otter.ai of The Content Mix podcast interview with Galyna Margolin, polyglot and localization marketing expert at Payoneer:

Shaheen Samavati 0:13
Hi, everyone, I’m Shaheen from The Content Mix and I’m excited to be here with Galyna Margolin, a localization team lead at digital payment platform, Payoneer, based in Israel. Thanks so much for joining us!

Galyna Margolin 0:24
Hi.

Shaheen Samavati 0:25
Hi, thanks for being here. So just to start out, could you tell me a bit about your background and how you got into the localization field?

Galyna Margolin 0:33
Sure. And my way in Payoneer was pretty long. And I came to Israel eight years ago and this was my first job. Since I’m a linguist—my education is linguist—I speak German, I speak English, so, also Russian and Ukrainian. I was in the beginning, a customer support representative, which is a tough job, but it gave me a lot of information about how planning works…about what customers want, about what customers understand, and don’t understand. So this was a very good school of life. After one and a half years in customer support, I was moved to business operation department. My position was very technical, which gave me an understanding of how our infrastructure is built, how our emails are being sent, how our content is being built. This was also interesting. And this is something that gave me a hint to move to localization field. This was very easy. We had someone who was leading this position before left the company, left the country and I applied myself, I suggested myself for this position. Since as I said, I have been, I am a linguist and I kind of have this sense of languages. They agreed, and this is how I started to lead this department. And this was something absolutely different from what I used to do. However, my background in customer support and in the technological position helped me a lot have to understand how binary looks like how structured

Shaheen Samavati 2:13
So, I guess you’re from Ukraine, is that right?

Galyna Margolin 2:17
This is correct.

Shaheen Samavati 2:17
Okay. Am I wrong? No, okay, good! But um so how did you like kind of break into this industry? And I mean, how did you get into Payoneer in the first place? I know something a lot of our listeners are interested in being a lot of people are international living abroad or looking to get their first experience abroad. So how did you get that first job? Like, how did you get your foot in the door?

Galyna Margolin 2:37
Well, my way to Payoneer was very typical for Israel. Every person who’s coming to Israel is supposed to study Hebrew to learn Hebrew summer. This little community which share your learning in is called ulpan. So in so this group of people is your first group you know, it’s like they are your first friends. They are the first people you meet in Israel and one of my friends found on the internet that Payoneer was hiring positions. So she was the first and then she recommended me. And this is how I started to work in customer support. It’s a very Israeli way.

Shaheen Samavati 3:18
Through connections.

Galyna Margolin 3:20
Yes, yeah.

Shaheen Samavati 3:22
Yeah, but it’s I think important everywhere right to meet the right people and and be ready for those opportunities when they come up, right.

Galyna Margolin 3:29
Yeah, hundred percent.

Shaheen Samavati 3:32
But so this was was your first job out of university…or?

Galyna Margolin 3:34
No, no, no, I worked. I used to live in Ukraine. I used to live in Austria. I used to live in Germany. I studied a lot. So I worked also in Ukraine, but this was less of… it wasn’t that much connected to linguistics. And then in Israel, I started my steps up to Payoneer and I’m really happy to have a possibility to lead this team.

Shaheen Samavati 4:03
So linguistics is something you had studied or had an interest in, and you worked your way to get to that through.

Galyna Margolin 4:08
Exactly. Yes.

Shaheen Samavati 4:10
I see. Very cool. So can you tell us what your day to day is like now in your role?

Galyna Margolin 4:15
Sure. My day to day looks like this: I have an amazing team. And we have several kinds of requests were receiving every day. Some of them are like very usual…translate this into this, translate that into that… this is very straightforward. And some of them are more complicated. The requests we’re receiving from customer support. When the customer is reporting whatever error… when customer is calling, saying, I’m confused what is written there, when the customer is panicking, scared, etc, etc. Just because he didn’t understand what we meant by our translation. It means that we need to roll the whole story back. We need to find this weird string which confused the user. We need to double check with the internal speaker that the string indeed doesn’t make sense. We need to find it using R&D to find where it sits, and to fix it the way it should be. And then we need to double check again with the native speaker to make sure that out looks good and it is not confusing. So this is also kind of a detective work sometimes. And additionally, we also have… I also have the project of constant proofreading, because we need to make sure it’s not only enough to translate the user interface, and to let it there, we also need to always make sure that it makes sense, that it looks up to date, that the person who translated it indeed understood what he’s translating. So this is also constant improvement work.

Shaheen Samavati 5:47
This is like localization of the app itself is mainly what you’re doing? Or also because I know that you’re part of the marketing department. So, are you also doing other things outside of the app? Like, or is it mainly…?

Galyna Margolin 5:59
Yes, yeah. We are translating all kinds of user communication. Let’s say the emails which users receive, the SMS which users receive, the messages which users receive in My Account. Also, we translate the whole user interface, which you can see when you log in into your account on desktop. Mobile App is another thing which we also localize which needs to be, which is a bit tricky because it needs to be short, because you know, mobile is not the same as a desktop, all the buttons are small, and the translation should be very small, as well. And another big part of our work is marketing, like blogs, all kinds of surveys. This is also something we translate and this requires a different approach⁠—different approach, design… so it’s, it’s actually, it might only sound easy, but generally speaking, it’s a lot of work.

Shaheen Samavati 6:51
Yeah, absolutely. Sounds like a lot to coordinate. And how many different languages are you working in?

Galyna Margolin 6:56
Payoneer is currently providing their website in twenty-one languages. And we have seven main strategic languages–our biggest markets–and we’re slowly moving forward to make this group bigger so that our strategic markets are growing as well.

Shaheen Samavati 7:16
So, I mean, the app is actually it’s global, right? It’s anyone can use it from anywhere? And it’s meant to…I mean…who you trying to reach, I guess? Who’s like the target market?

Galyna Margolin 7:29
Oh, this is a very, this is a very hard question because the specter of our customers is very wide. It can be… we are working with the sellers, we are working with freelancers, photographers, we’re working with vacation rentals. So it’s anything any any kind of customer which you can think of is luckily using Payoneer as a payment solution.

Shaheen Samavati 7:58
Yeah, like any kind of business that’s being done online, basically.

Galyna Margolin 8:02
Yes!

Shaheen Samavati 8:03
Or even individuals I imagine use it sometimes as well.

Galyna Margolin 8:06
Yes. Under certain conditions.

Shaheen Samavati 8:08
Yeah, I see. Cool. Yeah, so I mean, what do you think is… what makes great localization? Or what needs to be taken into consideration to really localize something well for a market?

Galyna Margolin 8:24
It is very important to listen to all signals. It’s very important to listen to the customers– not to ignore when anyone is flagging anything. It is very sensitive, because of anything… political situation, geographical situation, religious situation. It is a very sensitive tool. So it’s important to be careful, gentle. Yes, and to work all together because we need a lot of efforts from R&D, they help us a lot so it’s also teamwork.

Shaheen Samavati 9:00
I guess, do you find any markets more challenging than others? As you probably know, that we’re we’re focused on on Europe and people working in European markets. I imagine Europe is a big part of what you’re focused on. But yeah, so any particular challenges in Europe or compared to other places, other languages you work in?

Galyna Margolin 9:20
Well, I think it’s not a secret. But currently, the main one of the main marketing directions, business directions, is China. So this was not easy to find a way to make sure that our interface is clear to our Chinese customers. And this was a challenge and we found a solution. What we did–I can even share this because this is not a secret and this is isn’t very genius–we found great freelancers which are translating for us. They know our products. They are our customers. They know Payoneer from inside as a customer–from outside as a customer I’m sorry–so…this is how we kind of moved forward with this complicated and huge challenge.

Shaheen Samavati 10:20
So kind of building a specialized team who’s going to be overseeing the whole process and who really knows both your product and market, it sounds like.

Galyna Margolin 10:28
Exactly, yes this people are always available, they are always ready to help. They’re like one WhatsApp…or whatever…Viber…WeChat message away from you. So this is a great idea, great people, and this is a good solution I can only recommend

Shaheen Samavati 10:46
Because, obviously like, I also work in localization and I know that like the farther away the language is from your own, the harder it is to really tell… to be able to control the the quality and output and to know how well it’s doing, right? Or how well it is adapted to the market. So yeah, for Chinese, like personally, I only work in European languages, so I don’t deal with Chinese very much. But I imagine that’s a whole other level of challenge, I don’t know…complication.

Galyna Margolin 11:18
Yeah, I think this solution can be applicable for any other language. Let’s say: Portugal, Portuguese, and Portuguese, Brazilian. I never imagined that this language can be so different. And I never even considered this to be an issue. However, now apparently, we are working on splitting this because this turned out to be two separate things.

Shaheen Samavati 11:39
Yeah, I guess you learn a lot in your role, like constant learning.

Galyna Margolin 11:44
I do, yeah, this is great. Every day something new indeed.

Shaheen Samavati 11:47
Yeah. So, well, let’s see… I mean, well has the current situation of the of the global pandemic we’re facing like impacted you at all in your role? Or, in general?

Galyna Margolin 12:02
It didn’t. It didn’t impact me in my role, again, because we, first of all, because of the amazing technologies we currently have. Any meeting, any call, as everyone else is not a problem anymore. It’s can be Zoom, it can be Teams…easily solved. Since our freelancers are with us, it is also easy to solve. So I wouldn’t say that my team expected any problems, faced any problems due to this COVID situation.

Shaheen Samavati 12:39
Yeah, that’s great. And I guess, yeah, being a business also is a something that people still need in this. And can still use. It’s totally online.

Galyna Margolin 12:48
Exactly, yes, the world changed, but it changed in a good way, probably in certain points.

Shaheen Samavati 12:56
Absolutely. Well, I was wondering if you have any examples of projects you’ve worked on or that you’re particularly proud of, or that you think, you know, was a challenge that you overcame with in terms of localization? I mean, you mentioned in China, but any other examples?

Galyna Margolin 13:18
Yes, I remember as Amazon knocked into our door, and we had to localize something for them very quickly into all languages. This was anything but easy. Back then, we didn’t work with freelancers yet. So all the translations had to go through internal proofreading. It means that we had just a bit of time for translation, and then upload and then proofreading and then correction. So this was hard, however, this is something you can really be proud of. Amazon is a big thing. Everyone knows them, and I’m happy to have had a possibility to ever localize for them.

Shaheen Samavati 14:01
So they’re like a partner of Payoneer?

Galyna Margolin 14:04
Yes, yes.

Shaheen Samavati 14:05
Okay. So you’re not only localizing your own app and marketing materials, you’re also localizing for partners?

Galyna Margolin 14:14
Amazon wanted something specific they wanted. They wanted their page pages, their interface on Payoneer basis to look a bit different than their than the usual one. Some partners want this. This is called branded version. And they wanted their content to be different from the rest.

Shaheen Samavati 14:32
Okay, I see. Very cool. I didn’t know that that service existed.

Galyna Margolin 14:37
Yes.

Shaheen Samavati 14:38
Yeah. Nice. Okay, well, I guess about…I mean, about your advice… like that you would have for, for other people who work in localization or who are looking to get into the field. What kind of qualities do you think are needed for doing a job like yours?

Galyna Margolin 15:00
Attention and concentration. And in the same time, you need to keep your eyes open, open every time. Every time we hear about new possibilities, every time you hear about new technical solutions, every time you hear about a new amazing tool, which was born just over the night, because the because current technologies are amazing, and because they help to save a lot of money, which is also important because they help to save a lot of manual work. So…yes, and a good team! This is also important.

Shaheen Samavati 15:41
So you’re saying you have both in house editors and and you work with freelancers as well. Yeah. And so you’re the one kind of like coordinating all of those.

Galyna Margolin 15:52
Yes, me and my team. And of course the main, last but not least, is the passion… something with you. If you really want to change something, only understanding that all these people are looking at result of your work, is amazing… it’s like having wings. If I now translated into Chinese, someone in a small village will actually understand it in Chinese instead of translating it in English. It’s nice to feel that you’re helping people. You need to love it. And then you will succeed, in any field. In any field.

Shaheen Samavati 16:21
Yeah, and what what made you interested in this field? Like, where did that come from?

Galyna Margolin 16:27
My education. First of all, the study, which I did. I always liked languages. And probably I was the one who really struggled when reading something in French, not understanding it. And I, I wished this could be translated into Russian and I probably faced this situation several times. And when I saw the position of a localization manager, I was like: “Ah, I will translate everything so no one will ever struggle!”

Shaheen Samavati 17:00
So how many languages do you speak?

Galyna Margolin 17:02
As a Ukrainian, I speak Russian and Ukrainian because this is what you get. And then I studied English and German in university. After I came to Israel, I didn’t have any choice but studying Hebrew, of course. And since Hebrew I already know I decided to make one more step forward, and I’m now learning French by myself. This is the first time I’m learning the language by myself via application. But somehow, somehow I’m moving. This is very interesting, and I can’t wait for the borders to open so I can go to France and impress them with my French!

Shaheen Samavati 17:42
Very cool. So yeah. So you think how important do you think it is in this field to speak multiple languages? I mean…

Galyna Margolin 17:50
This is very convenient. Because this is what I can tell you…because one member of my team speaks Polish and German on the native on the native level. And I speak Russian and Ukrainian. So whenever we have an issue with the these four languages, we don’t even need to reach out to an internal native speaker, we can solve this problem on spot. Also, since let’s say Russia is a huge country, we have many customers, whenever we received the Russian translation, sometimes when I know the content is sensitive, I’m reading it just you know, like this. And sometimes I do catch the mistakes which I am correcting, making the content look much better, much more user friendly or much more relevant to the product. And this is what makes me proud, actually. I physically contribute something in common thing correcting it, because no one but me knows what we meant.

Shaheen Samavati 18:52
Yeah, makes a lot of sense. And actually, another thing I wanted to ask you is about like the, the types of localization you do because I think one thing is like the more technical localization and you’re working with maybe like very small bits of texts here and there. And then you also mentioned you’re working with things like blogs and more narrative storytelling kind of content, I imagine that is quite different. So, I mean, yeah, well, and which one do you do more of? And I don’t know what my question is. But anyway, yeah, I mean, it just seems that they are kind of like different skills, right? Kind of one is the technical aspect of localization and one is the creative aspect, right?

Galyna Margolin 19:37
Yes. And this, this content is being written even by separate people. This is how like, this is extremely different. We have several people handling, user interface, email communication and blogs. So yes, it depends on the vendor, it depends of to who we’re sending it. We have a separate translation solution for each: user Interface, we have one for blogs, we have another one for user communication, we usually use a third vendor or freelancer. And also, let’s not forget about design. Let’s not forget about some more features, which need to be added… when a freelancer is not capable to handling it, we need to hand it over to someone else who is better in, let’s say, designing or localizing the images.

Shaheen Samavati 20:27
Makes sense. And do you think that localization is becoming more important? Is it something that’s growing? Or is it something that was always there, always needed?

Galyna Margolin 20:41
I think it is. I think it is because I can I can even say from perspective of Payoneer that I think any company wants to… the more you want to open yourself to other countries, the more you need to catch up with customers needs. So, we need to be nice to our customers and we should not expect people in some little country to speak English and understand it on the level of payment platforms. So localization is very important. And even disregarding of all the technologies, we have…Google Translate, etc, etc…it’s always nicer and much more clear to read it localized than Google translated. Although Google Translate is a wonderful tool.

Shaheen Samavati 21:31
But it’s actually enabling I think, like the ability to do localization on a bigger scale than it was ever possible before. Because it would have been… It used to be a lot more work to do localization. Now that we have it like tools like Google Translate that enable, they do half the work, basically. And then we do the rest. So, like humans do the rest. I mean, yeah.

Galyna Margolin 21:53
For sure. I yeah. Yeah. And I also need to say that the vendors are catching up with the progress. So, year after year, they provide more and more amazing possibilities to save money, to save consistency, to save human efforts. So I think it’s all moving in the same direction. We want more languages, vendors have more possibilities. And we are moving, like we’re looking in the same direction.

Shaheen Samavati 22:20
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think like, the creativity that we were talking about is something that, that the technology is far away from replacing anytime soon.

Galyna Margolin 22:31
Yeah, let’s hope otherwise we’re all jobless!

Shaheen Samavati 22:36
That’s true. Well, at least in the near term, I think there’s gonna still be a big need for it The next… at least 20 years, we’ll see! Yeah. Okay. Well, great. Galyna, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today. I really appreciate it.

Galyna Margolin 22:54
You’re very much welcome. It was a pleasure for me to share my experience, to laugh, to speak about things we like. It was nice. Thank you for inviting me.

Shaheen Samavati 23:03
Thank you and thanks everyone else for listening in. For more perspectives on the content marketing industry in Europe, check out www.TheContentMix.com and follow the podcast. Thanks everybody! Bye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai