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Tag: localization

  • Android App Translation Service Goes Live For All Developers

    Back at Google I/O in May, the company showed off a new app translation service for Android developers. In short, it would allow developers to hire professional translators through Google who would then translate their app into however many languages they needed. Now the service is finally ready to go live.

    Google announced today that developers large and small are invited to use the company’s new app translation service. The company says that launching an app in multiple languages will ensure you see more success as your app will be more readily accessible in parts of the world that don’t speak your native language.

    While the app translation service may have gone live today, many developers have already been using it as part of a pilot program. Google says those that participated in the program saw incredible results from localizing their apps, with one developer finding that 80 percent of installs came from non-English speaking users. If testimonials are your thing, you can see more here.

    So, how do you take advantage of this new service? Developers can sign up to have their app translated through the Google Play Developer Console. From there, you must include the project name, the source language and which languages you want your app localized for. If you’re not sure, Google will also provide you with some metrics to help you find which languages similar apps have found success in.

    As is the case with most localization projects, costs are varied and dependent upon the amount of work required to localize your app. Despite that fact, Google says that a small app will probably cost about $75 per language while a large app will run you $150 per language. Just remember that those are not concrete prices and it will fluctuate depending on the amount of text that requires translating.

    If you want to learn more about the app translation service and app localization, check out Google’s excellent documentation.

  • Here’s Some Tips On How To Best Localize Apps

    Regardless of platform, the app store is a developer’s way of reaching millions of people around the world. Those people speak a variety of languages and as such desire an app that’s tailored specifically for them. Others have offered tips on localization before, but here’s some tips from an actual developer in the localization trenches.

    The Amazon Appstore Developers blog invited Playrix’ Head of Marketing and PR, Dasha Kobzeva, to talk at length about the process of localizing apps for the Amazon Appstore. The advice is meant for developers of Kindle Fire apps, but developers on all platforms should heed the advice.

    First and foremost, Kobzeva says developers need to pinpoint their markets. Localizing an app in every language is foolish and wastes resources. Developers need to find which markets bring in the highest downloads and monetization rates. From there, localize for those markets. If you don’t have time for that, at least localize your descriptions and screenshots.

    If you are going to localize everything, be sure to put considerable thought into the title. Kobzeva says that a good title that can be understood across different territories doesn’t need to be changed. A specific title that plays towards a very specific culture, however, would need to be changed so players in other countries can understand it.

    Like in traditional film and game localization, events in your app may need to be changed to resonate better with a foreign audience. To better help those localizing the app, Kobzeva says that developers need to provide as much contextual information as possible. Many Japanese games in the 80s suffered from poor translation because the localizers were handed the finished game and just told to translate the text. There wasn’t enough information in the game to provide adequate context and the localization suffered for it. It’s now 2012 – you can provide translators with more than enough information to make a localization stand out.

    Finally, Kobzeva stresses that a “bad localization is worse than no localization at all.” It’s suggested that developers carry out their own internal QA sessions to determine if a localization is up to snuff. Such tactics can help prevent embarrassing localization mistakes that can cost you customers.

    Of course, Kobzeva works at a large developer who can afford professional localization services. Not every developer, especially smaller indie developers, can afford this. Localization is something that you should only tackle if you have the resources. Developers can, however, push their games onto app stores in other territories, and just hope for the best. Foreign apps can gain traction and become popular in other territories if the content can get across the language barrier. Art and music apps come immediately to mind, but good developers and artists can find ways to speak to people regardless of language or culture.

  • Windows Phone: Globalizing And Localizing Apps

    On the heels of Google’s announcement of Google Translate helping with the localization of Android apps, Microsoft is now talking up how Windows Phone developers can globalize and localize their apps. There is a difference between the two, I can assure you.

    Kim Cameron of the Windows Phone team briefly goes over what it means for an app to be globalized as there’s not much to it. Globalization just means that your app will display the native currency and time format for the country in which your app is sold.

    Cameron clarifies that you can choose not to localize an app and still sell it on the global marketplace. As long as you globalize the app, it will be available to all. The problem, of course, comes with the people of various countries that don’t speak English. Even if the currency and time format is native, the language won’t be.

    Cameron does offer two reasons why you might not want to localize. Those reasons being your app title and language-specific apps. They’re both simple enough with the first meaning the title of your app should reflect what it is. If your app is named after a common item, you should translate it into a person’s native tongue. If your app is named after your company, don’t translate it as they will search for your company’s name in your native language. Language-specific apps are obvious for those apps that only want to target a specific audience.

    When it comes to the actual localization process, you’ll want to localize four things – app title, app description, application bar and app text. That’s easy enough to remember and the process of doing it is just as easy as long as you know the language.

    For the app title, you’ll just want to create a “resource-only DLL file for each language.” Windows Phone OS 7.1 currently supports 24 languages from Chinese to Swedish.

    The app description is a bit more involved. When you submit your app to App Hub, it detects if your title has been localized into any other languages. From here, it will prompt you to enter in a description for each language that your app is in.

    Localizing text is by far the most involved process when it comes to the localization process. First you’ll want to select your neutral language, or default language. By default, your neutral language will be set to the language in which you installed the Windows Phone SDK in.

    From here, you have to create a resource file for each language. Then with a bit of coding magic, you can have the resource file replace the default language in your app through data binding. It makes it so that developers don’t have to hardcode each version of their app separately.

    You can also do this for specific regions that speak the same language. With this tool, developers can create an app in Spanish, but specify that there is a resource file for Mexican Spanish. Normally Windows Phone would just select Spain Spanish regardless, but you can make the app target the specific region file through some code magic.

    If your app uses an application bar, be sure to localize your text before you localize the application bar. You needn’t worry about this if you don’t use one in your app.

    For all the examples and specific code, check out the Windows Phone blog post. There’s plenty of examples and code for you to go through. It’s a bit more complicated than Google’s localization process, but it seems to get the same stellar results.

  • Twitter Local Trends Come To New Indian Cities

    Twitter trends are used by people in a variety of ways – whether it’s to jump into the discussion on a popular topic or to gauge the pulse of a particular area. For those concerned about the latter, Twitter’s local trends categorization allows them to see what people are talking about worldwide, in particular countries, and in particular cities.

    Now, Twitter has added a few new cities to that list from which people can categorize trending topics, and the particular cities that they’ve added have the ability to increase Twitter use in a highly populated corner of the globe.

    Now, users can see what topics are hot in five new Indian cities: Ahmedabad, Chennai, Bangalore, Delhi, and Hyderabad. The only Indian city on the local trends list before was Mumbai.

    Pluggd.in points out a recent comScore report that shows just how slow Twitter is to take off in India. Total unique visitors to the site has yet to really grow over the course of the last year and a half, and has hovered just above 3 million per month for the last few months. They also point out that in terms fo search volume (Google), Twitter has failed to even beat a service like Orkut.

    Further localization could be the key. The more specific that users can boil down the Twitter trends, the more it will feel like they apply to their lives. In the same way that worldwide Twitter trends aren’t always that applicable to particular regions, trends across the whole of India might not be particularly applicable to certain regions of the country (it’s a pretty big place). Adding specific cites to the local trends choices could help Indian Twitter users warm up to the service.

    Back in September, 2011, Twitter added Hindi to their official list of supported languages.

    [Via All Twitter]