In today’s global market, providing localized content is crucial for a positive customer experience. For organizations that operate internationally, managing support materials—such as instructional images, tutorial videos, and user documents—in multiple languages can quickly become complex.

This document outlines best practices and strategies to use Acquia DAM to streamline the creation, storage, retrieval, and distribution of multi-language assets.

Challenge of multi-language asset management

Without a dedicated strategy, teams often face several challenges:

• Version control chaos: It is difficult to keep track of which language version is the most current. This confusion leads to outdated or incorrect assets.
• Inefficient search: Marketing, support, and localization teams search through disparate folders or platforms for the correct language variant of an asset.
• Inconsistent metadata: A lack of standardized tags makes it impossible to filter assets by language, region, or translation status.
• Increased storage burden: Storing many identical files (differing only by small changes such as translated text overlays) can clog systems and complicate maintenance.

Acquia DAM features for localization

Acquia DAM offers specific features that directly address these challenges:

1. Standardized metadata and tagging
   Metadata is the key to discoverability in a multi-language environment.
   • Required language field: Implement a mandatory custom field for every asset named Language or Locale. This field must use a controlled vocabulary to ensure consistency.
   • Region and market tags: If assets vary by region within a language, use an additional field such as Region.
   • Translation status: Use a metadata field, Translation Status, to track the lifecycle of a localized asset:
     • Source Pending Translation
     • In Review
     • Approved - Live
     • Archived - Needs Update
   • Collections for related assets: Use collections to allow users a holistic review of all assets pertaining to a certain service or product. Place all related assets within a global collection to enable users to apply metadata filters.
2. Permissions and governance
   Control who can upload, edit, and access language variants to maintain integrity.
   • Localization team role: Create a specific user role for the localization or translation team with permissions to upload, edit metadata, and approve new language variants.
   • Regional asset groups: If certain assets are only relevant to specific markets, use asset groups to restrict access. This ensures that regional teams only access the assets applicable to their market.
   • Regional metadata fields: Permit metadata fields to be viewable only by specific user groups. This helps keep pertinent information in front of the correct audiences.
3. Integration and distribution
   The DAM must serve as the single source of truth and integrate with other platforms.
   • API integration: Use the Acquia DAM API to connect the system with your CMS or your customer support portal. When a user requests an asset, the system can dynamically retrieve the file based on the user’s language setting.
   • Embed codes and links: Use the DAM’s embed codes or direct links to place content on your public webpages to maintain version control. If you update or replace an asset in the DAM, all linked instances across your sites refresh automatically, regardless of language.

Step-by-step implementation strategy

1. Audit and preparation
   Before you upload, inventory your existing assets. Determine the core assets that require localization and the target languages.
2. Define naming conventions
   A strict naming convention is essential for human readability and searchability.
   • Structure: [Product/Feature]_[AssetType]_[LanguageCode]
   • Example: PhoneSetup_Diagram_en, PhoneSetup_Diagram_es, PhoneSetup_Video_de
3. Establish the parent/child linking workflow
   To create a new language version:
   • Upload the translated asset file (for example, the Spanish image).
   • Apply all standardized metadata, including the correct Language code (es) and Translation status (Approved - Live).
   • Apply metadata through your custom metadata structure to store the parent asset’s filename.
   • Place the new child asset within the global collection you created for this set of assets to maintain easy exploration of all related assets. You can also use a custom upload profile to do this automatically.
4. Configure language-specific portals
   Create dedicated portals within the DAM for regional or language-specific teams. This simplifies asset discovery and allows (for example) the French team to browse a portal pre-filtered to display assets tagged with Language: fr alongside language-agnostic assets.

Use DAM for Multi-Language Assets