Category: Blog List

Nobody can deny it. Mobile phone applications are becoming part and parcel of the everyday life of individuals and key to the success of businesses in our 21st-century world.

Therefore, mobile app developers always wish to have their apps downloaded and used in each and every market by multiple audiences who speak different languages and have different ways of life. 

But how can mobile app developers achieve this? This is where mobile app localization services enter the scene.

So, what is this magic service ─ Mobile App Localization?

Mobile app localization is how an app development business customizes their app so that it may appeal to a geographically specific target market and become easy to use outside their local market. The app’s interface is thus tailored to meet new and different cultural and language expectations. The ultimate purpose is to give the app’s end users a feeling that the app they’re downloading has been created natively for them.

And now that user experience matters that much, is mobile app localization an essential for the mobile development business, or just a luxury?

 

Why is Mobile App Localization Vital for Business?

Many years ago, it was the exclusive privilege of global brands only. Big names ─ like Microsoft, Orange, Pepsi, Walmart, and Toyota ─ were versed in customizing their products to fit the needs, tastes, languages, and cultures of different markets. Today, Thank God, any smart business, small or large, can play the game!

And mobile app developers are no exception! They all have learned, through years of hands-on experience, a few important lessons. First, our world has turned into some sort of a global marketplace. Second, almost everyone is using mobile phones ─ a fact that smart businesses need to use to their advantage. So, Let’s directly ask the question. Can anyone ignore that mobile apps are being used all across our planet, with people (let’s call them prospects!) relying on them everywhere for both fun and work?

Therefore, if you want to take your mobile app outside your borders to foreign markets, you have to leverage mobile app localization so that your app gets downloaded in Beijing, Mogadishu, Berlin, Sydney as it is in New York. All in all, the customer is king everywhere, provided that you talk to her or him in their languages and take into consideration their distinctive tastes and cultures. 

However, we might still need to ask another question. Is mobile app localization a tough job or it’s usually carried out like a hot knife through butter? Let’s see!   

 

Challenges You Face in Localizing Your Mobile App

Yes, several bottlenecks might come up in the course of localizing a mobile app. Yet, going global with your app product is well worth the effort. Therefore, let’s have a look at the key challenges you might face in developing multilingual mobile apps.

1-When You Adapt the Design!

Based upon 12 years of experience in the field, we’d like to advise you against using concatenated strings. The fact is, many languages occupy more space than English. Therefore, it’s great if you leave some space for text expansion. Besides, we advise you to use strings in UTF-8 encoding, because it’s simply less error-prone and quicker.

Also, beware of icons. You need to use them with discretion, as they are sometimes interpreted in different ways in different markets, different countries, and different cultures.

2-When You Translate!

What’s the golden rule in translating the content of your mobile App? Avoid machine translation in this particular sphere! It wreaks havoc with your customer’s user experience! On the other hand, human translators have the creativity and cultural sense to deliver translated content that results in more app downloads, more sales, and more success for your app with various target audiences.

3-Date & Time

You have to pay attention to geography when it comes to selling your app in foreign markets. Switching to another time zone or integrating local places will certainly give your app content a local touch!

4- Digital Marketing Matters!

You can’t take your mobile app across your local border using sales techniques only. Honestly, you need marketing. Precisely, only an integrated digital marketing strategy will help you to promote the app to reach your foreign target audiences. It goes without saying that this is done by digital marketing professionals.  

And now that we’ve highlighted the challenges, isn’t it time to talk about how to handle, or, more accurately, how to optimize? Let’s dive deeper!

 

Tips to Master Mobile App Localization

Yes, it’s tough and needs focus, budget, and teamwork. Yet, it’s worth the effort. That’s why we, at AfroLingo, have a few tips for you to go down the road as smoothly and professionally as you can.

1-Internationalize Before Localization!

Before mobile app localization, there’s another step ─ equally important. Internalization. It is the design and development of a mobile app to enable easy localization for target audiences that vary in language or culture.

Internalization has a general workflow. You need, first, to extract UI strings from the app code. You will have to separate the text into an external file so that you may adjust this textual content without changing any of the code itself. Then, you’ll make multiple resource files, and translate the text in each file. With this, you will have one resource file for each language. Then, you will need to name and store each file properly, so that the system may understand which language each external file refers to. With this, when an end-user opens your app, the phone operating system will load the language resource file which is closest to this user’s language setting.

2-Use a Translation Management System

Gone are the days of manual translations. To get things done professionally, you need to put in place a good translation management system TMS, which will automatically channel the flow of content through the various steps of the localization process, thus smoothing the entire localization process.

3-Optimization of App Store Keywords

Remember that SEO is not only about your website content and blog text, but is equally about optimizing app stores to help attract your local target market.

You need to describe your mobile application with locally-trendy keywords so that you may ensure that your app will be popping up among primary results instead of tragically slipping into oblivion at the bottom of results! Further, you will have to conduct a lot of research to have an idea about which words your prospects will be using to search for the likes of your product. And rest assured, it pays off!

 4- Take Care of Cultural Nuances!

You need to pay attention to what is unique for every culture, such as the color palette used or screenshots selected for the app store. To get users to download your app in their smartphones, you need first to download their culture in your marketing strategy!

5-Test, Test and Test!

It might be the functional testing ─ to make sure that end-users will be able to do all actions, such as swiping, saving, and switching pages. It also might be linguistic testing ─ which checks for correct translations to get rid of linguistic errors and cultural issues. However, in both cases, you need to test until you get bored and all the people around you also get bored!

After all, said and done, we still have 2 or 3 questions that need to be answered, including how to choose a professional mobile app localization provider, and why mobile app developers in Kenya, South Africa, and many countries all over Africa and the world would choose a specific app localization services provider? What are the secrets, or the reasons behind this act of selection?

 

Why AfroLingo?

It often happens. Tough questions sometimes have simple answers!

With more than a decade of experience, AfroLingo has grown into a market leader in translation, localization, and all language services.

Businesses in Kenya and all across Africa recognize the company’s great project management capabilities, industry-specific resources, extensive experience, and our expertise to handle all our clients’ translation and localization needs.

At AfroLingo, we take pride in our team that comprises some of the best linguists in the world, who are all highly qualified native speakers and are versed in customizing your mobile app to specified locales or regions without losing brand identity or consistency.

With AfroLingo, you’ll rest assured that your mobile app content will be localized, with full attention paid to the context, local culture, currency and measurement differences, etc., while ensuring that the original layout and user experience of the application remain intact. With this, you’ll be able to get closer and closer to your audiences.

Furthermore, our translation workflow is fully automated, with a variety of content management systems CMSs, which puts an end to the need for time-consuming and error-prone copying and pasting. Besides, we have the most rigorous quality assurance system in the entire industry.

For more information on how to revolutionize the number of downloads for your mobile app in Kenya and across the world, contact us today.

It’s becoming one of the top mind-blowing facts of business ─ and life!

To survive and thrive in local and global markets, it’s not only about good products, but also about the look and feel of the content that presents these products. Appearances are not always deceptive!

We’re living in a local and global environment of cut-throat competition. According to Nielsen Media Research, there are more than 500,000 brands all over the world in more than 2,000 product categories. Therefore, against such a frightening background, a good company needs to enhance the appearance of their documents and give them a good design that fits the identity of their brand and communicates that brand’s message to customers, prospects, investors, business partners, and other stakeholders. But how can this be achieved?

The answer is “Multilingual Desktop Publishing”. So, what is it?

 

What is Multilingual Desktop Publishing?

It’s the final phase of the translation or localization process – which aims to deliver a document that looks as if it were originally created in the target language.

With this indispensable service, your business will have full control over how content is formatted and presented – from layout to images to the actual body of text – noting that every artistic element can be customized so that it may appeal to whatever audience you’re targeting.

 

Types of Documents That Need Multilingual Desktop Publishing

DTP publishers usually use a wide range of software, like QuarkXpress and Adobe InDesign, to add their aesthetic touches to such basic documents as brochures, menus, business cards, and others.

Furthermore, Desktop publishers also work on more complex projects such as catalogs, flyers, price lists, newspapers, pamphlets, magazines, books, and many other kinds of documents ─ both printed and online.

 

Why do Businesses Use Multilingual Desktop Publishing?

It’s no luxury. It’s a must, especially when your business is publishing content, printed or online, for multilingual audiences who speak different languages and have different tastes and, still, they are your customers ─ who are kings!

For companies across all industries, there are many benefits of using multilingual desktop publishing services, especially when they’re delivered by a professional partner. Let’s have a look at some of them.  

 1) Reduced Costs

It’s clear. If you decide to carry out desktop publishing, you’ll have to invest in hardware, software, and human talent. Yet, when you partner with a professional multilingual desktop publishing services provider, you won’t have to invest in DTP equipment (printers and computers) or the advanced expensive software and its regular upgrades, or the DTP designers and professionals. With this, you’ll reduce your production costs, while leveraging your partner’s quality desktop publishing services.  Saving is an art!

 

2) Better Document Layout

You won’t settle for things that are mundane, ordinary, or commonplace! So, you certainly want your printed and online documents to stand out from the crowd? Then, simple templates from word processing programs won’t work for your business. You need to come up with professional documents so that your company may stand out from the competition.

With superior multilingual desktop publishing, your company will leverage a broader diversity of templates, and will also be capable of creating its unique, one-of-a-kind templates and designs. This will help your business to grab the attention of customers and prospects, in addition to bringing about an increase in sales. More importantly, it will help you express your brand identity.

 

3) Customizable Documents

One of the great advantages is customization. Suppose your company wants to use a certain design but wishes to make some changes that meet their needs or reflect their brand personality.  Also, what if your business wants to improve and customize any type of document ─ graph, flyer, press release, catalog, newsletter, menu, proposal, schedule, etc. ─ to target a specific audience? Easy, this is one of the privileges of multilingual desktop publishing!

 

4) In-house Templates

Brand identity is always one of the top goals for any successful business. Multilingual desktop publishing makes it possible for your company’s marketers to use an existing template or design that best reflects your brand. Of course, this is much better and easier than having to repetitively come up with new versions of marketing materials.  

Further, with this wonderful service, your marketers can always use an updated ad, newsletter, or brochure template ─ which helps to keep your brand individuality in the hearts and minds of customers.

 

5) Easy Revisions

You can easily make a revised version of your designs. It happens when your company wants to change the price or address on an ad. This helps to save both time and cost.  

All told, we’ve now reached the question of why we must select an expert multilingual desktop publishing vendor. Let’s see.

 

Why Choose a Professional Desktop Publishing Service Provider?

Asked what a professional translation company is, we need to resist our tendency to mention AfroLingo, supported by a lot of evidence and dozens of client testimonials. 

However, suffice it, for now, to define a great translation company as the one that provides its clients with finalized print-ready documents and finalized screen-ready localized online or digital materials. In other words, it’s the translation agency that, after delivery, the customer will not need to do any additional work.

So, why should you partner with this professional language service provider to handle your multilingual desktop publishing? In reply, we have to mention these following top reasons.

 1- They Can Handle Complex Languages & Characters

Based on the source and target languages, the size of the text can sometimes contract or expand. Russian, for instance, has words that might contain dozens of characters, demanding the resizing of graphics and menu items.  

When you translate from English into, for example, Arabic, you’ll have more words and an expanded document which will require either more space or smaller font size. As for such languages as Farsi, Arabic, and Hebrew, they require changing the layout order as they’re written right to left.  

All these issues are effortlessly handled by multilingual desktop publishing professionals who can easily modify the document layout to accommodate these differences in size and display direction.

 

2- They Can Recommend the Optimal Look and Feel

When it comes to the look and feel of final documents, printed or online, countries usually have their different standards so that what is great in Japan, for instance, might be quite unacceptable in Egypt.  And, here comes one of the advantages of choosing the right multilingual desktop publishing partner who should be able to understand each local language and local culture. With this, they will recommend which layout will fit which target audience.

When it comes to the choice of colors, images and symbols, they will choose the ones that will better communicate your message to your audience. Cultural nuances matter!

 

3- They Can Handle Any File Type and Format

Let’s put it outright. A professional multilingual desktop publishing vendor will always be able to lay out documents using multiple software and handle multiple file-formats in multiple languages and scripts. They won’t say no to any file format, script, or font type. In this particular area, they should be Jack of all trades and also a master of all trades!

 

4- They Help Save Time, Money and Resources

When you partner with a professional agency, you’ll enjoy dealing with a team that works around the clock to meet your deadlines. Besides, when you assign the DTP job to internal teams to save some costs, you always end up incurring more costs in the long run. All in all, working with a professional agency will save you a lot of time, dollars, and human talent.

 

Why AfroLingo?

At AfroLingo, we’ve been since 2008, working with top-notch clients in Africa and across the globe, providing them with premium language services to help them cross their national borders and thrive on a global scale.

As the top ISO 17100 certified translation & localization service provider in South Africa & Kenya, our success is based upon the pillars of professional services, an expert team of native translators, on-time and on-target deliveries, in addition to 100% confidentiality.

When it comes to multilingual desktop publishing, we work closely with our customers to provide them with designs, layout, and templates which capture each brand’s image and values. 

Our unique team comprises extensively experienced desktop publishers, native translators, and talented graphic designers who are versed in producing online and print-ready localized content that reflects your brand identity and helps you get close to the multiple languages and cultures of your target audiences all over the world.

Contact us today for more information or a free quote.