Software Localization - some details in terms of how the process work - Part 3

In the previous post (Part of software localization), I was describing how the process of doing localization works, as well as the schedule in which this needs to be done. In this post, I will provide more details of what needs to be done.
In this post, I will go back to the beginning of a cycle, where the planning for a product development cycle needs to be done. Consider a product cycle for a product release that spans a period of 2 years. When the product cycle is planned, two of the key milestones in the schedule deal with the following 2 points:
1. The point in the schedule where the UI components in the application are frozen and all strings finalized
2. The release dates for the various language versions. There are 2 possible options, one where all the language versions of the product are released at the same time, and the other where the English and a couple of the more important languages are released earlier, and the other languages are released later.
The critical part of this planning is the time period required between these 2 milestones, since as said earlier, the actual work of generating the various locale translations, the testing, all this needs to happen in this time period. Make this too aggressive, and you will find the team stretching to meet the timeframes for the localization process.