Month: May 2012

Get Localization Sync for Eclipse

Get Localization Sync for Eclipse syncs your translation files between Eclipse and your Get Localization project. It’s very easy to use and allows developers to use their time to actual development instead of arranging and managing localization files.

Installing Get Localization Sync for Eclipse

Install from Eclipse Marketplace

Just select Help -> Eclipse Marketplace and search “Get Localization”

Install using “Install new software…” option

1. Choose Help -> Install new software…
2. Click “Add…” button
3. Enter name for repository e.g. Get Localization
4. Enter repository location, which is http://getlocalization.sync.s3.amazonaws.com
5. Click Ok
6. Click “Uncategorized” and check Get_Localization_Sync -plugin
7. Click “Next” and follow instructions

Setting Up Get Localization Sync for Eclipse

Settings are project specific and they can be easily found under your project properties.

Setting up Get Localization

In properties, you can find the Get Localization Sync plug-in.

Username – Your Get Localization username
Password – Your Get Localization password
Project – Your Get Localization project name (same that appears in project URL)
Default Platform – Platform you are developing on. It defines the file format of your i18n files. You can also set the format for individual files from their properties if you happen to have multiple different file formats in your project.

Sending Files To Translation

Right-click the file you wish to send to Get Localization and select “Get Localization Sync -> Send to translation”. Note that these always should be master files (files that translators translate from, typically in English), never send files that are in different language than your other master files.

Sync Translated Files Back To Project

After translation, you can easily sync the files back to any folder you wish.

Android Projects

Get Localization Sync for Eclipse handles Android projects specially when translations are synced back to “res” folder. They are automatically placed into appropriate values folders so they work in your application without any modification.

Update to Get Localization Sync for Eclipse

We’ve released a new version of Get Localization Sync for Eclipse. You can find it from Eclipse Marketplace, just search for Get Localization and install.

This update features couple of important new features:

Pull file filter allows you to filter which files you wish to pull to your Eclipse project. For example just pull all the strings.xml’s you can use filter:

.*?strings.xml

Replace rules can be used to alter filenames when they’re pulled to Eclipse project. You can for example create rules that change the language codes or installation path. E.g. if you wish to change language code from pt-BR to pt-rBR, just create following replace rule:

pt-BR/ -> pt-rBR/

Replace rules can be imported and exported so if you manage to do proper rules for example Android or some other platform, please do share them with us. We’re happy to add them to our library.



A/B Testing Translations

A/B testing or split testing is a method to test a performance of different versions of your website against the baseline version. It’s most commonly used for marketing purposes to figure out how different messages lead to conversions and sales. Developers are also using it increasingly to test how new features affect the user’s behavior. It’s a great tool for data driven company to validate the direction and see whether new changes actually perform better or worse.

Using A/B testing to validate translation quality

So could you use A/B testing also to test your translations? You could use A/B method to test how your localized version performs against your baseline version e.g. English. However there’s some challenges and it’s not that simple as it sounds. In order to get valid results from A/B testing, it’s important that the results are comparable. Both control groups should be identical to each other so when you compare languages, you also accidentally compare different markets. This variable, how you perform on each market depends of your product or service. Demand, pricing, local competition and other factors like shipping costs and currency exchange rates can affect it. So how we could eliminate all these variables and test just the translation?

First, test how baseline performs versus translated version on each geographically distinct market.

This gives you valuable information whether your translated version actually performs better. If it doesn’t perform better, you can be absolutely sure that there’s something wrong with the translation. If it provides similar or only slightly better results, there’s room for improvement in the site overall localization that includes design e.g. colors, layout and translations.

When you’re sure that your localized version is actually increasing your conversions and sales, you can use the first localized version as a baseline and start rolling out changes to it. For example, you could order a totally new set of translations from different agency or translator to see how they perform. There’s no limit how much time and effort you can put to this work, but it’s an awesome way to find out what works and what doesn’t. It’s also only way to really know that your translated site is good as you most likely don’t understand all the languages.

Get Localization offers A/B testing solution for measuring translation quality on websites. Just contact us with the form below if you are interested to hear more!

Get Localization offers professional translation services and managed translation & localization solutions for all kind of businesses.