Localization of mobile applications. Part 2

To be honest, this article should not be a continuation of my first article on the instantaneous language change of iOS applications . If the first article was written by a programmer for programmers, then this post will deal directly with the localization process applicable to any mobile (and not so) platform.

But we will forgive me and pretend that this is a series of articles;).

So. In the process of developing most mobile applications, there is a need for localization. And at this awkward moment a number of legitimate questions may arise: what languages ​​to translate, what exactly to translate, where to turn, what little things should be paid attention to.
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Let's try to answer each of these questions separately.

What languages ​​to translate?

For country / market oriented applications, the localization problem is not worth it in principle. Excellent application The rules of the Russian language are unlikely to be interesting to a foreigner who does not learn this very Russian language and, accordingly, it is hardly worth translating the application into Swahili. At the same time, localizing Smart Coin, I was guided by very specific principles.

First of all, for a Russian developer who probably reads this article, Russian is the first candidate for localization. Well, in-zero, English. It is obvious.

Secondly, to search for languages ​​other than English and Russian, you need to select criteria. First - the market for the application must be large. The first thing that comes to mind is the United States, but we have already translated into English. And what else? A good answer gives Appannie - Japanese, German, French, Italian and Chinese.

Not everything is simple with China, by the way. For an inexperienced reader, I will explain - there are two types of Chinese: traditional and simplified. Traditional is used mostly in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and simplified officially introduced in 1956 in the territory of the PRC. That is, it is a potentially huge market. However, even though there are a lot of people there, they don’t like to pay, unfortunately. On the other hand, if your application is free, the insolvency does not matter.

Further. A slightly less obvious answer is Brazil, Mexico and Turkey. According to a number of reports, Mexico, Russia, Brazil and Turkey are the fastest growing non - Asian countries in appstore. You can take the translation into Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish (we have already translated ourselves into Russian;)) as an investment in perspective.

By the way, from the unmentioned countries / languages ​​Smart Coin is selling well in the Netherlands. This is probably all.

So, summarizing the languages: English, Japanese, German, French, Italian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Russian, Dutch. I also took Chinese Traditional and Korean. To heap :).

From experience I will say that with the translation into the Brazilian version of the Portuguese one should not particularly bother. Firstly, the appstore itself will redirect all Brazilians to the Portuguese version of the application if there is a Portuguese and no Brazilian-Portuguese, and secondly, the Brazilian-Portuguese differs from the Portuguese in less than 1% of quite specific words . Exactly the same situation with variations of English (UK vs. US vs. AU) and French (FR vs. CA vs. BE vs. dofiga in all).

What to translate?

At first, it is worth figuring out what kind of question it is. What to translate? “Everything!” The inexperienced reader will reply and hell be right a hundred times. On the other hand, the person who understands will ask the question “what is more important - the description in the appstore or the translation of the application itself?” ...

For myself, I brought the following rules:

• If you decide to give some language priority for localization, first of all translate the description in appstore.
• If the budget allows you to localize the application itself to this language - do it.
• Translation of the application without translation of the description does not make much sense.

I would be glad to have some comments about the statements above, but as for me, the user would rather drop some application if he is not ready to accept it, say, in English, if the description is not translated. He will somehow reconcile himself with the untranslated interface; such a user is likely to close the page with the untranslated description right away.

Where to go?

There are several options:

1. Professional translation agency (as an example, I can recommend Egotranslating - used to translate documents, satisfied. For advertising they pay me nothing, honestly :). I also saw quite good reviews about www.tethras.com )
2. Web portals with native speakers who receive money for translation (for example, onehourtranslation.com , gengo.com , translationcloud.net or crowdin.net )
3. Completely free web portals based on the principle of karma and rating - you to me, and I - to you. For example, ackuna.com
4. Machine translations - google translate and their ilk.

The lack of machine translations (4) is obvious. Professional translations (1) are often expensive, but in this case there is at least some guarantee of quality, which cannot be when using free crowd-porting portals (3).

An example of a not very successful (but obviously man-made) localization can be seen in the following screenshot:

Localize Smart Coin was decided using one translation. Benefits:

• Inexpensive. For a project that was originally thought for fun, this is a very important aspect.
• You can always discuss translation with a translator.
• In case of some dissatisfaction, you can open a dispute and if the dissatisfaction is justified, the money will be returned back to the account (within the system, but this means that you can open the transfer request again).
• There is a translation verification system - proofreading. I used only once - to test my bad English. Separately, it costs the same amount as a regular translation. But if you order along with the transfer, it will turn out to be 30% cheaper.
• You can order a translation to a professional from a specific area (in my case, these are mobile applications, but there is up to a line of different features - medicine, law, etc.) - it will cost twice as much as a regular translation, but, again, a quality guarantee. I did not steamed and translated through standard translators.

In general, everything turned out quite well - people in this community are responsive, most of them unsubscribe from the result, offer to contact and ask in case of any questions. Many of them even ask for screenshots and context for a more accurate translation, or offer options and describe in which places which option is better to use. This approach is incredibly happy.

What little things worth paying attention to?

For myself, by trial and error, I developed the following rule: the most detailed description of the task for the translator . Literally describe every little thing - in my case it was, for example, the format of the file Localizable.strings:
"String_id" = "string to translate";

Due to the fact that String_id often looks like a regular string, the translator can easily pick up both lines without a second thought. In our case, this will mean additional work for us and useless work that the translator has done.

Another example is actually the line feeds themselves. In one of my applications, there is a nice start guide, which explains the principles of work on the fingers. These are ordinary overlay pictures, in which the lines are very important to fit in and look beautiful. And if in the case of translations into European languages ​​I had no problems with the arrangement of the translation of strings, then in the case of hieroglyphs this problem rose in full growth! I asked to mark in the translation possible break points with special characters. All but one responded to the problem with understanding, however, the Korean translator refused without explaining the reasons and in general was not very attentive, I slapped four stars to him, and arranged the line translations using the google translate. This option can also be borne in mind.

Another nuance that is worth paying attention to when placing a project on one translation is the number of words. On this site, the number of words is a type of payment - the translation of one word costs five cents. And, in principle, it’s probably not necessary to calculate the exact number of words - this, by the way, is another plus of this site. In the case of a professional translator, you will be rolled out a bill for each preposition and the article used in the text. With one translation, everything was quite simple. First, during the placement of the project in text (txt, doc, rtf) files, the site itself counts the number of words, but you can also enter it by hand. For example, in a .strings file you need to count the number of words without string_id. I simply removed everything that went to the "=" symbol with the help of reg exps and put the text into word, which at the bottom of the window showed the total number of words. Well, if somewhere wrong in one direction or another, no one will reproach you. And according to the results of the translation, if you liked it a lot or you need to finish translating something, you can donate money to the translator. Very competent, I think.

Scandinavia. I decided to make this problem separately - it was painfully unexpected that everything turned out. At one translation, finding a translator to Norwegian turned out to be an impossible task. After 3 (!) Days (even though ALL the others usually started within 1-2 hours) after the project was opened and it was completely ignored by the translators, I wrote to the support and asked “What the nafig”, I received the answer “Scandinavian translators are very rare. Try to interest them by opening a specialized translation of a mobile application (twice as expensive). ” As a result, I spat on the Norwegian. It is also possible in vain, but I did not want to spend twice the amount of money on an unpromising language. Maybe the hands will reach someday.

In general, this is probably all. I hope I have not forgotten anything and the article will help you;).

Make quality applications. Successes!