Mobile app localization is so dang hard!!

While localizing an app can have a range of benefits for the business house, the process entails its own
set of challenges. If you are planning to localize your mobile app, you may want to keep these aspects in
your mind and prepare for them beforehand.

Choosing the right market

Since app localization is about ensuring your app is optimized for usage by a specific linguistic group, it
becomes highly important to choose that group right. For example, you might want to analyze the app
usage patterns of Hispanic people, of Chinese speaking people, of Indian people, etc. The Chinese
industry is one of that holds a large potential for app localization, with over 200 billion hours of app
usage. If you do not choose the right market, your entire effort can come crashing right down. Here’s a
chart showing app usage across various markets.

Linguistic barriers
Since not all languages can be directly translated from English due to differences in grammar and
sentence construction, it is rather better to hire a highly rated translating professional for the job. This is
even more important because at least 50% of the speakers of every language prefer to use an app in
their own language, as per a recent survey. Certain languages such as French and Spanish have quite
different sentence construction methods and thus the translation might not always be as smooth as you
think. There are also phrases and slangs that require translation, which is another task altogether.

Let’s look at the case of HSBC. Their attempt to launch its U.S. campaign overseas failed miserably. The
hugely successful slogan at home – “Assume Nothing” was translated on a wide scale in many countries
as “Do Nothing.” Which was far from the inspiring message intended.

Design Adaption
If you thought that you can just translate the content and get done with the process, chances are it’s not
going to work. Most languages take up different amounts of space and thus more often than not you are
required to redesign the app to fit the content within it. This become more difficult while dealing with
mobile screen real estate. English is a rather “short” language, German is known as a very “long” one.
E.g. NA in English is 11 characters in German, “Off” in French becomes Offnen. A sentence as common as
“try our new product line” is five simple words in English. Which become “私たちの新しい製品ライン
を試してみてください” in Japanese, or “essayez notre nouvelle gamme de produits” in French.

Unicode support
Unicode support is a must if you are going global. If source code is managing strings that use a datatype
that doesn’t support Unicode, translations will likely break if you use a wrong character when encoding.
Many localization-related bugs could be avoided by supporting Unicode.

Numbers and Dates

Number and date formats also need to be customize based on the locale. For dates, some countries and
regions use a month/date/year format, while others use a day/month/year format, so you need to
adapt accordingly to avoid any confusion. This is an aspect that is often overlooked and as a result apps
end up getting released with the wrong time zone functionality, rendering them useless. Even if you
correct it at a later time most users would have sought out a different option by then.
For numbers, decimal and thousand separators are the key factors. Every other country follows its own
way. Some countries, like India for example, use a unique separator system for numbers different from
the international norm, where they group the numbers in a repeating pattern of 3,2,2 (from least
significant digits). So instead of writing 111,111,111 it would be 11,11,11,111.
Almost all operating systems already have systems that take care of these things for different locales.
But, you need to make sure to double check that everything is working and appearing as it should be.

Highly fragmented Mobile markets

Different handsets having different display sizes and screen resolution apart from different operating
environment. There are several browsers available for mobile devices, resulting a number of challenges
specially for Indic and similar languages.

Agile Localization & no Translation Buffer

The development process of mobile apps should be an agile one, to react quickly to changes and to
user’s requirements. Becoming agile means to gain agility during the whole process including
Localization. Translations aren’t just done once and delivered at the end of the development cycle.
Instead, localization starts after each sprint and often during the sprint (when new approved and
updated strings are sent automatically for translation). Language translation is a specialty of
innovativeness and creative ability which is tedious and ends up troublesome when you are supporting
right around 30 regions or more. So, it is important to build dedicated team of translators and editors
who are trained to use appropriate style and terminology, familiar with the product.

Distributed Development Teams

Multiple features need to be delivered in a short span of time to meet ever changing market
requirements. And hence, most of the app development happen through distributed development
teams, each focusing on a specific set of features working on individual branches. Localization become
more and more difficult as strings will come from all the branches, many times overlapping, sharing the
same screen and despite all this you need to make sure the consistent tone everywhere.
Missing context
In many cases, translators just receive a single word, free of any context. E.g.: string “block” = “Block”
can be translated in many ways. This may appear on a button or on an address field. Depending on the
context, translation will be different.
In such scenarios, either you need to confirm with the client or need to go through the English app.
Considering the short app development cycles, sometimes you will hardly find time to do the contextual
review.

Cultural misappropriation
Remember that you are not merely selling to a linguistic group; rather you are re-shaping your content
to suit the tastes of a different culture. And during this process it is important to understand the cultural
nuances of the target market, and make sure that they are not disrespected or misappropriated.