Source: https://www.pexels.com/ru-ru/photo/3183174/
Have you ever visited a website or used an app that was not localized properly? Do you remember this awkward feeling of missing out on critical information and not understanding the context?
About 87% of customers say they would not buy from an English-only website. Moreover, non-native English markets dominate both the iOS and Google Play charts for app downloads if we talk about the apps. These numbers clearly show that businesses should seriously consider localization as an integral part of the product or service development process not to lose potential clients.
Software localization services — website, app, or game localization — include many critical steps to prepare the product for foreign markets. Let’s see how localization is done and what parts this process consists of.
Table of Contents
Step-by-Step Software Localization Process
1. Define the Scope for Localization
The first and the essential step is to define what needs to be localized. If you’re not sure what exactly you should localize, you can start with the most vital part of your project. You can divide all content into two categories: ‘must be localized’ and ‘nice to be localized’.
Also, it would be best if you defined your target markets and languages. Don’t try to enter all of them at once: think critically about what is most valuable to your product. You can create a backlog with other markets and languages to come back at a later date.
To find your new target markets and locales, you need to research and probably do marketing testing. You can run ads on potential markets and compare some numbers, like CTR and conversion rate. It will help you not overspend on localization and make data-driven localization decisions.
2. Assign Internal Roles
From the very beginning, the entire team — from developers to product managers — should be involved in the localization process to make it successful.
Of course, it’s not obligatory to have an internal localization team that will localize the content: you can always use software localization services. However, you need to assign roles inside your team who will be responsible for having the localization done.
3. Create a Style Guide
Every company has its tone and voice. However, it might change a bit if you’re trying to reach a new market. The localization style guide is needed to show how things will be perceived in a foreign language.
You should always keep in mind that the primary goal of localization is to translate the sense, not the words. You need to have a clear message that you want to share with a foreign audience. Create a style guide for your product for every locale to be consistent with your messages in every region.
4. Create Guidelines and Translation Memories
Also, it’s essential to create complete guidelines to make the work of translators easier. You need to define all the terms to avoid any ambiguity and that the translators understand the context of localized texts.
Moreover, translation memory is a valuable tool to make localization faster. Translation memories contain sentences or other segments of text that had been translated before. So, you won’t need to translate text once again — just reuse what has been done earlier.
5. Select a Translation Method
There are several of the most important ways to do localization:
- Have an internal translation board.
- Hire freelancers.
- Choose professional third-party software localization services.
It is always better to go for professional translations and localization tools and platforms as they have vast experience in localization and will provide you with high-quality translations. There are translation management systems (TMS) designed to support localization and translation process management. They help organize the localization workflow, track the progress of projects, and reduce manual tasks via automation.
Also, to have your content updated on all markets, you should incorporate continuous localization. One of the best ways is to use translation platforms to manage your localization projects in real-time. Cloud-based translation platforms allow you to appoint translators and editors, discuss questions directly with them, track the process and progress, and export string resources once the translation is done.
6. Extract Resource Files
It’s a critical technical moment: you need to extract resource files to make them ready for localization. Modern localization platforms support a variety of source file formats and allow you to upload files directly. Then the platform automatically extracts the source strings and makes them available for translation.
7. Localization Itself
Now we’re turning to localization itself. The localization team gets your resource files and starts translating your content according to the style guide and glossaries you gave them. Today, it’s common for translators to use machine translation to ease and fast their work and then revise the texts they get from the translating AI tools.
8. Quality Assurance
This step is essential to deliver high-quality translations to the end-users. Localization testing assures that your content lacks bugs in your product’s interface and that the localized texts meet the context.
In the process of localization QA, professionals check not only the grammar mistakes but also that the texts fit on buttons and the jokes and dialogues have been translated in the local style.
9. Introduce Translations Into the Product
Last but not least is to incorporate the localized texts into your product. You need to change localized strings and release an updated product for the new markets.
Final thought
Of course, localization is not a once-done-forget process: you need to revise your translations constantly and keep your project updated. It’s a continuous process that, in fact, never ends if you want to stay successful in the foreign and local markets.