New Service – Android Localization

We’re translating dozens of iPhone applications every week and recently, folks have started asking about localization for Android apps. So we thought, why not?

The same logic behind localizing iPhone applications applies for Android applications as well. People who get smart phones want to have everything in their languages.

The phones are localized to each country they sell in and users expect applications to run in their language as well.

The return on investment for localizing smart phone applications is huge. Most apps contain between 200 and 500 words. Translating them costs $14-$35 (USD). That’s less than one hour of developer’s time.

If you’re spending days or even weeks creating an application, you can get it localized to dozens of languages for a tiny additional cost. Even a moderately selling app covers the cost of translation in a few days.

Localizing the application increases the potential sales by at least x2, so it’s a no-brainer. Cost is not the reason most folks are hesitant when it comes to localizing their applications. It’s the extra effort.

ICanLocalize changes the rules by hugely simplifying Android application localization. All you need to do is upload your Android XML resource file (the one you’re using anyway). Our system will parse it and get the texts for translation. Translators, which you choose, will translate the application and we’ll build the new resource files, ready for Android.

Some cool features you’ll love:

Add comments and explanations per string

Some strings are not very easy to understand and translate. Stuff like %d %s makes no sense if you don’t know what the placeholders stand for. You can add comments per string, explaining the translators what these texts are used for.

Specify which words NOT to translate

You don’t want translators to translate your program’s name, your company or other keywords you’re using. Instead of specifying these per string, you can add them as global requirements.

Built-in QA measures

Our system automatically looks for variable placeholders and HTML tags. If they exist in the original, we’ll make sure they also appear in the translations. Besides that, we also make warn against too long or too short translations, so that your GUI doesn’t look strange.

Your own glossary

When your translators work, they use a glossary to store phrases which can be translated in several ways. This assures that you get consistent translations, even when you update the texts a year later.

Incremental translation

If you’re starting with version 1.0 and then going to version 1.1, 1.2, 2.0 and so on, we’ll help translations follow. Our system identifies new or updated texts and will only mark those for translation. You only pay for what needs to be translated.

Our software localization system has turned hundreds of iPhone applications into multilingual. Now, we’re doing the same to help with Android localization.

Some figures

Getting started

To localize your Android application, you’ll need to create an account at ICanLocalize. It’s free and only takes a minute.

Create Account

Then, click on Projects->Software Localization and create a new project. Choose translation languages, upload your Android XML resource file and we’ll get started.