This autumn we’ll again be heading out to visit a bunch great conferences. Here are a few places where you can find us in the next couple of months:
elia Networking Days in Tuscany (October 6-7), where Jari will be speaking about agile and lean in localization.
Web Summit in Dublin (November 4-6)
Slush in Helsinki (November 18-19)
Looking forward to seeing you there!
Get Localization is a company with a long background in mobile development. Actually we first started Get Localization as a side project to support our own product localization. In total, we have tens of years of experience on both mobile development and localization.
There’s a lot of discussion in communities about situation of indie developers. Some people are offering localization and translation as a “turnkey solution” for high downloads.
We want to make it clear that localization is not a silver bullet to success. If you localize your moderate app, it still will be a moderate app. But it’s also good to understand that your amazing app will be an utter crap app if it’s localized badly. Why is that?
First of all, people often think localization is a marketing effort. Well sometimes it is but it’s not the full story.
It’s about making your application’s user experience (UX) better.
It’s like optimizing taps and clicks to achieve a smoother experience for the user. If your app is localized badly, it is hard for the user to navigate through it. When it’s localized well, your app feels much easier to use. This means that if you decide to localize, you need to commit to it and consider it as a long-term investment.
But is it worth it? You can experience this yourself. Ask your friend to turn your phone language to Chinese or Japanese and try to navigate to switch the language back. Not so easy? Well that is how majority of people feel when they download your app in plain English.
As a developer you are supposed to make your users feel good so they recommend your app to their friends. This is why you localize your apps, to provide best possible experience to your users.
In this business, return on investment unfortunately doesn’t come instantly. There is no such silver bullet. It just requires a lot of hard work – sometimes years – to be an overnight success.
Get Localization provides a professional translation and crowdsourcing services for developers and lean content creators. Check our software!
We just released a new video about Get Localization Now, our professional translation service designed for customers who might only have occasional needs to translate content (opposite to continuous translation, for continuous translation we recommend Get Localization Workspace).
Here’s our short introductory video for the Get Localization Now interface and ordering process:
We had a webinar about apps localization & translation with Nokia earlier. It’s meant for Nokia Asha developers but provides a lot of general information about app localization as well.
So here it is, finally:
We have released a new premium feature for developers who are using crowdsourcing and are interested in promoting their app to volunteer amateur translators.
We hope this feature helps especially those who don’t yet have budget for professional translation or don’t have a strong community who could help them to get translations. If your app is interesting, this is a good additional way to get new users and translators.
Promotions are based on credits that are given for each month according to your subscription plan:
Micro: 100 credits
Plus: 500 credits
Advanced: 1000 credits
Professional: 2000 credits (for each project)
Promotions is a completely optional service and you can enable it in your workspace settings. Please also note that we don’t target professional translators or translators who work in premium projects, also it’s not possible to select more specific targeting options. If you are looking for specific languages, we recommend using professional translation or asking directly from your existing community.
Think localized marketing material, screenshots etc. Think about how frustrating and painful it is to create localized graphics and especially keep them updated. Well no more. We are proud to introduce Get Localization for Photoshop. It allows you to export all the textual content to a resource file directly in Photoshop. This resource file can be easily translated either using Get Localization Now or Get Localization Workspace, and after the translation you can easily import the translated files back to Photoshop and generate translated PSD and PNG files just by clicking a button.
See the video below for more information. It shows you how to install the Get Localization for Photoshop extension and how to use it together with other Get Localization services.
You can find more information and download from http://www.getlocalization.com/photoshop/
Today we got the chance to talk with Fiverr‘s Oren Ben-Ami about how they handle localization.
Q1. Tell us about Fiverr!
Fiverr is world’s largest marketplace for services, starting at $5. For example, if you are launching a website for a small business, you can go to Fiverr and order services to help grow your business, such as website creation and design, logo design, or even a video testimonial. The Fiverr community of buyers and sellers is far-reaching and diverse, including everyone from college students to professionals and housewives to senior citizens. On our site, you can find over three million services offered (known as Gigs®). Fiverr is a privately held company founded in 2010 with headquarters based in New York. I am part of the amazing Product team based in Israel.
Q2. Please tell us about yourself.
I came to Fiverr from MediaMind where I managed the localization process for our web-based platform (for Japanese and Spanish). At Fiverr, I assumed the role of Localization Manager and am responsible for the localization of the Fiverr.com site. My position at Fiverr is much more challenging, since it’s not just the user interface that is translated, rather, it’s supporting user generated content in various languages.
Q3. How are you using Get Localization?
Fiverr is split up into two areas, the user interface and user generated
content.
Before we start with our next language, we want to integrate with
Get Localization’s API to make the process more automated.
Q4. Would you have localization tips or best practices that you would like
to share?
One of the most important tips is to make sure the English is written correctly in your files before you upload to Get Localization for the translators. Also, you should use the comment area within Get Localization for certain strings. For example, we had some strings that needed an explanation for context, so users know how to translate. We also have some texts that we want to leave in English or that we want to change just for a specific language. The comment area is very good for these types of issues. It’s also a good idea to have someone validate the translations. We were lucky enough to have some Fiverr employees join our Get Localization project and either translate texts or validate existing texts. The advantage that the Fiverr employees have is that they can sit with me and see the context of the translations and we can change it instantly.
Thanks Oren for sharing insights into how Fiverr is getting localized!
We’re well into December now and the holidays are just around the corner. All you iOS devs out there, remember that iTunes Connect will be unavailable from December 21 to 27. There’s a lot of downloading going on when those Christmas presents have been opened, so be early with your submissions as you don’t want to miss out on this traffic.
Take these schedules into account even in your localization plans. If you want to maximize your chances of getting downloads in non-English speaking areas too, there’s still time to get your apps translated.
When you think about localization costs, what is the first thing that to your mind? Did you just say translation prices? You are not the only one who would say that. Sometimes that might even be true, but let’s consider a more likely alternative.
We have come across localization projects, where the actual translation cost is somewhere around 10% of the cost of the whole project (and no, I’m not exaggerating). It doesn’t take that advanced math to see where the possibilities for biggest cost savings lie in those cases. To be honest the ratio of translation and other localization costs is usually not quite this extreme, but would most likely surprise you anyway.
What are those other 90% of costs then? Those costs can e.g. be related to various project management tasks and handling different file formats. Of course, you can’t take away all of that, but for sure some of it.
So here’s a short checklist for you. If you recognize some of the below tasks as something you or your colleagues often do in localization projects, then you have an idea of what hidden costs of localization are:
The key to getting rid of these hidden costs? To put it simply, a thought-out process and tools that are focused on you, not only the translation service provider. Lean localization is not a myth, but something most organizations can achieve by taking a critical look at their old habits.
Over here the weather is getting colder, but the conference season is getting hotter. We’ll be keeping busy and here are a few places where you can find us in the coming months:
Web Summit in Dublin (October 30–31)
tekom-Jahrestagung 2013 in Wiesbaden (November 6–8). Check out our presentation about Crowdsourcing in the Localization Process and our stand in booth 442 in Hall 4.
Slush 2013 in Helsinki (November 13–14)
Nordic Translation Industry Forum in Stockholm (November 21–22). We’ll be presenting on the second day about ‘Lean Approach – Better Customer Service’.
Looking forward to meeting lots of interesting people and hearing a bunch of killer presentations! Get in touch with us if you would like to exchange thoughts about localization, start-ups, your app, the weather in Finland – or anything else.
See you there!
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