How to Localize an App: A Turnkey Solution

When you have crack teams of developers working on your app, it only makes sense to have the best possible localization team to usher it into new markets worldwide. With everything that localization involves, from the logistics of integration to managing translators and accounting for cultural nuances, it is a job that requires its own specialists.

You essentially need a second team of top professionals working with you to keep your app relevant and up-to-date in all markets, and this need is intensified if your app has frequent iterations. When considering how to localize an app with short release cycles, your best bet may be a turnkey solution. Here, experienced partners working in an integrated, automated, and collaborative space can help you ensure every release speaks to your audience—whatever language they speak.

How to Localize an App with Turnkey Localization

Partnering with a localization management platform for turnkey localization is the most efficient way to get all the parts of the localization process moving with minimum expense and project management on your end. A first-class translation service will transparently handle all your translation needs so you can be aware of everything you’re committing to when planning to take your app around the world. Here’s a quick summary of how this happens for you:

1. Preparing a Successful Localization Strategy

A professional translation service will provide a high-quality localization strategy that includes the tools and expert linguists for effective localization. This strategy will consist of everything necessary to provide a fully translated app to launch on new markets, including translation memories, glossaries, file engineering, quality assurance review, etc. A successful localization strategy will focus on accuracy as well as an engaging consumer experience.Localizing your app is not the only consideration in selling your app worldwide. Working with a localization partner to create descriptions and keywords in app stores that appeal to local markets will boost your success. You can also consider having a translated marketing website and emails for a drip campaign to international audiences. Your app exists in an ecosystem, and localization is most effective when it penetrates that ecosystem in its entirety.

2. Proactively Balance Your App’s Real Estate

Still, your localization infrastructure is one thing, and your app’s real estate is another. You need to think early on about space issues. Different languages take up varying amounts of space. Especially where mobile apps are concerned, text expansion poses a challenge. You have strict limits with nowhere else to go, so if it’s not right—and there will always be that one spot—you’re looking at delays and detours for your resources.Working with expert engineers provided by a localization partner will help you be keenly aware of this issue and grant you specialist insight on how to be more creative with the app space.

A translation partner may also use machine translation and preview screens to showcase a pseudo-localization strategy that will let you know where you may need to create more balance in the design.But you’re never going to be able to design away all of the situations and challenges introduced by various languages. Just as developers need to manage the app’s size, translators also need to be mindful of maximum character restrictions. If translators are not explicitly informed of character limits, they can easily fall very far off the mark.This is also where it’s essential to work with an agency that provides linguists who are experts in the chosen language and the content matter of the app.  

Comprehension is the goal, not linguistic purity. And the authentic localized content still needs to be ready to integrate with the app’s available space. Translators may need to paraphrase in places or introduce abbreviations—and maybe even invent them—to fit their available space, for example.

3. Create a Plan for Continuous Localization

By automating your string localization process, you can save big on time and ensure that no localizable update is missed. Easily setting up an approach for continuous localization is yet another benefit of opting for turnkey translation with an agency.

• An agency provides a file engineer to optimize your code for easy future localization. In the initial localization process, they can set up your app to have all of the localizable strings in resource files.
• Second, consider what level of involvement in the continuous localization process will work best for your team and your workflow. Your localization partner can help you maintain more control and flexibility by actively integrating translation projects into the localization architecture with a command-line interface (CLI). Or you can opt for them to set up a more hands-off automated approach that monitors the codebase to recognize translations updates and integrate them immediately.

Make your plan a reality, and something critical and complicated becomes streamlined and accessible. Continuous localization was designed to keep up with apps that iterate quickly. So, you don’t even need to think about holding your developers back while stepping forward in international markets.

High-Quality Turnkey Localization

When you partner with a localization technology provider that offers you a consistent and always accessible source of truth, reliable automation of your localization project becomes possible. Even better than a human manager could achieve, this centralized system can keep up with your developers consistently and accurately. It takes a tight localization infrastructure to accomplish this as new content strings are added regularly, old information needs to be updated, and your target markets continue to expand.A localization partner that can provide high-quality continuous localization for your app will save you time and money. Equally important: it will save your developers from headaches and allow them to concentrate on their priorities. Developers are charged with creating a top-quality product and getting it to as many markets as possible as quickly as possible.

They should not have to think about transferring content files, confirming the integrity of language resources, or worrying about the quality of translations.When you’re determining how to localize an app, be sure to consider your options carefully and choose the one that puts linguists, reviewers, and project managers all on the same platform. Of course, your developers will continue to operate in their lane, and the localization management platform will work efficiently in its lane. Still, you’ll be able to monitor the collaborative progress through the platform’s transparent window. With great translators and technology, your localization partner can work continuously and without disruptions while your developers are free to do what they do best—creating a great app.