Mobile App Localization: Making it Work for You

Mobile applications are hot, and not just in North America, Western Europe, and Asia Pacific, but also in emerging markets and developing economies. But how do you adapt your English-language app to launch in new markets? Let’s take a look at three key steps:

• Preparation: researching international trends and how they will affect your strategy and release schedules
• Internationalization: engineering your app for international operation
• Localization and translation: thinking about language and culture 

1. Preparation – Think Ahead with Mobile Apps

Before considering the technical aspects of app localization, you’ll need to make sure you’ve made some well-thought-out decisions about the global app marketplace and your overall strategy. These considerations will greatly affect your release schedule, since thorough testing in each language market plays a big part in the release of multilingual mobile apps.

First, look at smart phone usage trends around the globe. Where is the most growth? What demographic is using smartphones and why? There is plenty of information online about this ever-changing market. You may also want to translate your app for the U.S. Hispanic market: according to Nielsen, 45% of U.S. Hispanics own a smartphone.

Next, research regional app trends. What types of apps are popular in each region or country? Will your app sell in that market or should you consider customizing it a bit to local trends? For example, according to Nielsen, live concert apps are most popular in Latin America, while music discovery apps are more popular in Asia Pacific.

Lastly, know your operating systems and carriers for the desired market. Who dominates in China — Android, Symbian or Apple iOS? What system is quickly gaining momentum in Europe? This may play a large part in your strategy, especially if your app is only written in one operating system that isn’t popular in your target country. Once you determine your OS, you’ll have one last task:  determining the carrier(s) for each market. The carrier adds another layer of consideration for testing your app in market. 

Let’s look at an example of why all the above is so important to decide up front: 

Perhaps you decide to take your app into Switzerland, where the diverse population speaks three main languages: French, German, and Italian. Three operating systems dominate that market: iOS, Blackberry, and Android. Three major carriers sell these operations systems: Swisscom, Sunrise, and Orange. From one country, you now have three languages, three OSs, and three carriers, which means a total of 27 test instances. All of a sudden, one country can turn into a very large localization project!

2. Mobile App Internationalization

In general, mobile apps require the same internationalization process as any traditional software program. Here are some high-level considerations:

• Separate content from the code and put it in a resource file. If this isn’t done, retrieving the content for translation becomes a complicated process. It can also save a lot of time, money, and effort, since you can apply updates to one shared code file.
• Make the architecture locale-independent. An internationalized program app can display information differently throughout the world. It does so by referencing an API that controls internationalization issues for a particular locale. A locale identifies the exact language and cultural settings for a user. The API controls how to format the following locale specific areas:
  • Currency amounts
  • Numbers
  • Dates
  • Times
• Ensure that non-Roman characters are rendered correctly in the UI. East-Asian (e.g.,. Japanese, Chinese, Korean, etc.) and European extended characters (e.g., accents, umlauts, cedillas, etc.) will become corrupted unless you use simple interface fonts that support multiple languages.
• Allow for expansion and contraction of text. When translating from English into German, for example, the length of your words and phrases will increase, making your text extend past the container. You’ll want to allow for 20-50% text expansion depending on the language. Conversely, when translating into Chinese, Arabic and some other languages, your content will contract and its font size will need to be increased. Contraction leads sometimes to unwanted “white” empty space. Think about the aesthetic design of your app, taking expansion and contraction into consideration.
• Collation and sorting. Is there alphabetical sorting of content in your apps? If so, note that not every language follows the English order of sorting an alphabet from A-Z. Czech, for example, sorts the digraph “ch” between “h” and “i”, and in some other European languages, accented letters have special sorting rules. Languages such as Greek or Russian don’t even use the Latin alphabet. And some East Asian character languages, like Chinese, don’t have an alphabet at all.

To help you with internationalization solutions, rely on existing mobile app system APIs for international support. Make sure to conduct global readiness testing before moving on to localization. Test for locale and language neutral support as well as for locale and region-specific features.

3. Mobile App Localization 

There are three main steps towards localizing your mobile app:

• Preparation
• Translation
• In-context verification

Prepare for Localization

Work with your localization agency to create a language glossary and style guide (this includes your intended tone, brand guidelines, etc.), and establish translation memory. Due to space constraints, mobile apps tend to use images, shapes, icons and symbols more than traditional software. Conduct a content review to make sure that these are truly international. Don’t assume an “i” icon means “information” in all cultures and languages. Also, think about cultural or sports references. If you use an American football to express a national pastime, you’ll use a soccer ball in Europe. Think twice about symbols or colors that may have national, cultural, political, or religious implications. 

Ready to Translate!

Who will translate your app? There may not be many words in your app, but you still want to be sure that it’s translated correctly for the target markets. Do you use a freelancer, internal native speaker or hire a professional agency like Acclaro? Assuming you use a professional agency, your translators will be native-speaking linguists, living in your target language countries. The translations are then given to native-speaking editors, who are also in-country. Finally, the edited translations are given to you, the client, for final review. Your reviewers should be native speakers of the target language and very familiar with your product and brand. Once the translation is approved, it’s fed back into your language resources (glossary, style guide, translation memory) so that your next update or new app project has up-to-date, approved information, reducing costs and ensuring consistency in the long run.

In-Context Verification & Testing

You’ll now test your application on the actual device, ideally in the target country on the designated network/carrier. First, you’ll conduct localization testing for cosmetic UI checks and locale-specific functional checks. Resolve localization bugs before your start your linguistic testing, which looks at in-context language verification within runtime UI. This is where the Switzerland example mentioned at the beginning of this article becomes especially complex — one country can have dozens of test instances. For many organizations, conducting that many tests is not feasible. Here are our suggestions for testing scenarios, with the ideal scenario first:

• Ideal: Test on target device and carrier in country
• Option 2: Test on target device out of country
• Option 3: Test on emulator

Don’t Forget!

Remember that launching your app in another language market means more than just localizing the app itself. You’ll also need to localize your app description and provide final, localized screen grabs for the app stores, and localize your marketing or public relations materials as well.

The global app market is growing every day. Contact Acclaro to help you take your mobile app to new language markets.