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Localizing your product for global markets
Global markets can represent as much as one-half the yearly
revenue for software products! Furthermore as applications
slowly transition from desktop web based users from all other the
globe will begin to use your software. These factors alone
are compelling reasons to learn more about global markets and how
to make your software useable by the majority of the world's
population. Acuit employs policies of software development
that ensure that products are created "ready" to
translate and sell into these global markets. Here's how we
do it.
Making products localizable
The process of "localizing" a product is where a product
is transformed from a U.S. English or (other language) into a
language of another locale. Microsoft Windows identifies
many specific locales where the details of computer usage are
identified and clearly documented. So localizing a product
simply means to identify a single locale which you would like to
sell your product and adapting the language and user interface
elements of your product to that locale. It is actually a straightforward
process which we have done several times. Products developed
by engineers at Acuit are in use in many cultures around the
world. Places they, themselves have never actually been to!
The first step in developing products for global markets is to
architect them knowing the tricks necessary to simplify the
translation process. It is necessary to have once
participated in the translation process to understand these
tricks.
The resource DLL
One of the ways to simplify the translation process is to isolate
the user visible program elements from the actual code of the
program. This can be done by creating a separate DLL to hold
those elements. This is called a resource DLL, and user
interface elements of this kind are simply called resources.
The benefit to creating isolated resource DLL's for use in your
product is that the actual in-country translators have tools which
can automatically crack open a resource file, translate many of
the strings and rebuilt it again! Wow! That's
automated! And cheap to do. Translators charge Acuit
by the word for their translation work. So the more
automated they can make the process the more inexpensive and
profitable it can be for them. Acuit simply passes those
cost on to it's clients. Obviously many of the words in your
program will be unique to your application. These will be
translated by hand.
Another benefit, albeit not used often yet, is that since the
resources are isolated into small DLL's you can install and invoke
each one based upon user input. For instance a menu item
might enumerate all resource DLL's installed in the program
directory and offer a menu to change between them. Programs
which reside on a web server might be activated by users who visit
certain web pages. These programs simply load the
appropriate resource DLL at runtime and display a localized user
interface. One single program can be used for all languages.
Localization phase
The first phase in developing for global markets is the
localization phase where engineers study and craft the code the
ensure translatability. Often the translation company will
perform an independent audit of the code to help identify problem
areas. Developers walk though check lists of localization
issues and fix areas in the code that don't lend themselves to a
locale translation. Keep in mind that the goal is to create
a single program that is usable by people in completely different
cultures! As you can imagine there are many issues to
consider when creating such a program.
Translation phase
Once the product has been prepared for translation in the localization
phase it is ready for in-country workers to translate each
word. Acuit uses a outsourced translation company with a
staff of over 2000 translators. Most of these translators
are indigenous to the locales they translate for. This way
we achieve accurate and human readable language translations.
Have you every bought a bicycle you needed to assemble at home
which was produced in Taiwan? The assembly instructions for
these kinds of products can be a great source of
entertainment! The manufacture attempts to translates the
instructions from Taiwanese to U.S. English and somehow misses the
mark! The same thing happens in software. What if the
help text for Paste read "Into your document the contents of
clipboard pasted are." You get the gist, but its just
not very pleasant to read. And you come away feeling that
the developer didn't really hire the right translator. This
is why Acuit works with only the most reputable companies.
They may cost a little more, but you can understand why!
Linguistic review and quality assurance
After a product has been localized and translated into various
languages an objective linguist is assigned to review the product
and translation. He or she simply uses the product as the
end-user might and looks for the use of translated text and user
interface elements. The product should operate and display
correct text in all circumstances. There should be no cases
where English text is displayed. Features which are
characteristic to a certain locale should operate as
expected. For instance the entire Arabic user interface is
Right-To-Left in every way!
How much does it cost?
Product translation is actually very inexpensive. An entire
translation for a moderately sized program, with a help system,
containing over 7000 words can cost as little as $3500!
That's not very expensive, provide that the developers of the
program designed it to be translated. Every product we
develop contains all the necessary elements needed for
translation. This makes creating localized versions of your
product inexpensive when the time comes. This is just
another benefit of doing business with Acuit.
Betas and shipping products
After translation and linguistic review is complete you should
strongly consider placing a beta version in the hands of trusted
beta users in the locales you are targeting. Those users may
flush out even more issues you will need to address before
shipping your final version.
Acuit engineers have participated in the development of many
products which have shipped worldwide and know the steps to get
there. If you know the steps, the process is really not that
complicated, and not very expensive.
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