Software Localization Tips To Improve Your Global Market
By: Shazia Butt Posted on Mon, 09-05-2016
Software localization is the process of modifying a software product according to the lingual, technical and cultural requirements of any target market. This process requires a lot of labor and a significant amount of time. A software product localized properly, looks like an original product written and designed for the target market. Software localization can also mean translating a piece of software, like any mobile phone application or a computer program from one language into another.
In the Middle-Eastern countries, software localization are written in such a way, that it is quite easy to adapt into different cultures and languages. Here, localization and internationalization go hand in hand. Internationalization is basically used to develop a software product, in different languages. Arabic software applications translation services can easily translate all parts of your software, according to the specification of the country for which the software is meant.
Here are some points that help you produce a quality product for the global market.
Planning Ahead
A lot of companies start their software localization, at the very last minute before releasing their product. It is very important to take into account the testing, translation and relapse, which mostly occurs while producing a quality product, for all localization scheduling and inspecting efforts. Professional certified translation services provider can perfectly translate the text, and adjust the functional elements of any software application especially for international consumers.
Developing a Detailed English Test Plan
A detailed English test will have to be planned for localized testing. The same crucial dialogs and functionality will also be included in this testing. Repeating this English test plan for localization testing, has become very common in the global industry nowadays. In addition, this will also avoid delays in the L10N testing. Concerning the translators like professional certified translation services agency can perfectly master your targeted languages, because they have very good knowledge in the technical field and are professional with the specific vocabulary.
Testing Your Software
In a lot of cases, it is advisable to test the localized software as thoroughly as any original English software. It is highly a wonderful experience to make you aware of seeing a foreign language in context, within your own software.
Leave Plenty of Space for the Text Expansion in Other Languages
Among the languages that are spoken all over the world, several languages take up to 30 percent of more space than the English language. But, if your engineers design a software in which only the English language fits in, then you will have to face many problems down the road. So, it is much better to leave ample space for text expansion in many other languages in your software.
Avoid Sequence and Exaggerate of Single Strings
A combination of words in one language will most likely not follow the same order in many other languages. A chain of strings, and strings that are used in different situations will definitely have grammar and gender agreement issues. Those days are now long gone when optimization of the software was done due to memory limitations. So, be extra generous when you are localizing your product. Using industry documents translation services can help you avoid problems for the people in charge with the translation.
Provide Internationalization Support in Your Software
Providing internationalization support in your software has become very important nowadays. This can enable numbers, dates or many other region specific data, such as the currency there, to show up in a familiar and comfortable way for all the users around the world. Many translators just like the Arabic Translation Services, can be more successful in translating this information in a simple and clear source content.
Provide Numerous Comments in Software Resources
It has become very essential to provide numerous comments in the software resources, which can define the context in simple wording, totally focusing on what’s truly important. By knowing the context and the appropriate strings, can help many translators to choose the accurate translations from the very beginning. There are also many translation tools that are available, which allow those translators to see these comments while they are translating the strings.
Usage of simple sentences, define and use the specific product terminology and spelling out acronyms has become a necessity. Many translators use active voice so that the subject of the sentence can easily be identified to further enhance its clarity.
Perform Localization of Help and Software
Users all over the world can easily notice, when the context sensitive help informs them to click on a button, which is differently worded in the software itself, just like when you look for a synonym. Therefore; look for an experienced and responsible translation company, to handle both your help/users guide and software at the same time. This is basically done in order to ensure consistency between your help documentation and your software.
Perform Pseudo Localization
There is a huge need to perform pseudo localization to demolish hard-coded strings in your software. This can be done by using a regular expression to replace all letters in the string text, with any single repeated character such as XXXXX. You need to build your software in such a way that no hard coded text can jump up at you, showing string IDs not defined in the string tables.
Use Localization-Friendly Encoding Of Strings
Try as possible as you can to source your software resources or string tables in Unicode/ UTF-8 encoding. By doing this, you can avoid extra conversion steps, falsified text and time consuming mended work.
Several companies want to expand their business, and provide for the entire worldwide market through localization. This is either translating or adapting a software product into numerous languages. Many localization attempts fail once the software is built in, which the text get confused, sentences are cut off, fonts are not exact and mostly software does not work as it is designed. These are some of the tips that you can follow, to manage the localization and testing efforts for the worldwide release of numerous software’s.
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