Someone in the company says "we should launch in Germany". Everyone nods. A developer gets a ticket to "add German".
Nobody has asked which customers in Germany you're after, whether they'd pay in euros or need an invoice in German, who answers their support emails, what the law says about prices, cookies or accessibility there, or how you'll know in six months whether any of it worked. Those are business questions, and they decide most of the technical work before anyone writes a line of code.
This chapter is about that side of localisation: deciding where to go, what it costs, how you know it worked, and what you're signing up for afterwards. It's written for founders, product managers and anyone else who decides whether localisation happens. Developers should read it too, because you'll be the one asked "how long will this take?"