One of your key aims as a mobile app developer will always be to boost your app’s visibility and exposure. This results in a rise in the app’s monthly active users number and, as a result, income. To truly optimize your reach, you’ll want to personalize your app to accommodate different users in different locations with varying tastes, which can be accomplished through mobile app localization.
Localizing your mobile app helps you reach out beyond your current user base and tap into a worldwide market. This will help you increase downloads, get a competitive advantage, and improve revenue. According to a study by Distimo, localizing apps resulted in 128% more downloads per nation and a 26% gain in revenue for each country included. What’s more incredible is that these outcomes were reached just one week after the localized software was released.
So, to make things easier and more understandable for you, let’s walk you through the journey of mobile app localization and cover the most significant factors to consider during this process.
Table of Contents
Consider Alternatives To Translation
The first thing to remember is that app localization is more than just translation. If you want to flourish in international markets, you must think outside the box.
Although translation is an important aspect of localization, there is a lot more to it. To appeal to the intended audience, you must customize your app’s themes, layouts, formatting, and even payment mechanisms.
To help your targeted mobile users interact with your app, you must pay attention to small aspects such as color selection and time display. Mobile app localization includes graphic element optimization, keyword adjustments, and consideration of all regional cultural and legal subtleties.
Use Right-To-Left Language Supporting Tools
Some languages, such as Urdu, Arabic, and Hebrew, begin on the right and end on the left. As a result, you must ensure that your CMS tool supports both languages.
Otherwise, it may have a negative impact on the design of your program and lead to issues. It implies you’ll have to adapt your app’s interface for each new language to offer an optimal user experience across all regions you’re targeting.
Content Might Expand Or Contract
Not all languages are created equal. It’s possible that your translated information will require more or less space than the original text. If you want to translate a text from German to English, for example, you should be aware that the text may expand by 20-35%.
This is due to the fact that the German language script takes up more space than the English script. Similarly, some languages may take up less space than others. For example, there would be a 20-35% text contraction in an English to Swedish translation. As a result, the design of your app should be adaptable to multiple font sizes.
Use File Formats That Are Appropriate
It’s critical for your software to accept several file formats if you really want your content to be quickly localized to multiple locations. Make sure your strings are placed in source files rather than code; this will help you localize your content more rapidly. Otherwise, changing your code for each new location would take a long time.
You must request that the strings be externalized by your developers. The file formats utilized (such as JSON, XLIFF, or TAML) should be appropriate for your content type. It’s also determined by the programming language or framework used by your developers.
Make Use Of Glossaries With Mobile App Localization
It’s important to make a list of all the words that characterize your brand, as well as any terminologies that won’t alter during the translation. If you’re working with a language service provider, you should give them a lexicon of all terms as well as a style guide.
This will help your translation supplier keep the translations accurate and appropriate to your brand persona. It also aids in maintaining a consistent brand voice across all worldwide regions.
Final Thoughts
All in all, localizing your app is one of the more daunting tasks that you’ll face as an app developer. While it’s certainly possible to launch your app in a single language, the vast majority of developers will choose to launch in multiple languages. However, localizing a mobile app can be a tricky process, but that doesn’t mean it is impossible. It’s important to make mobile apps available to users in their own language and with cultural context, so you need to successfully navigate this new world of digital marketing.
Finding your way to effective localization for your mobile app is more of a matter of questioning some basic assumptions you might have had about this process, rather than having to reinvent the wheel from scratch. With these methods, you will be able to create and maintain a strong mobile app presence, which will help you gain more customers in your target audience.
