I was recently hired as Localization Coordinator for a big firm and I can tell you it's simply impossible to get a decent translation for that cheap price. We tried to use their service, but we received a bad feedback from our Quality Control Assistants. We ended up spending extra budget and time to fix the translations. So far the best firm I had the pleasure to work with is DYS Translations.
I'm the developer of Hit Tennis 3, this is what happened when we localized: http://www.markj.net/blog/translate-hit-tennis-3-iphone-game Use Tethras.com, consider localizing to: Japanese French, Italian, German Russian, Portugese Chineese (simplified), Korean
I'm not a Dev, but as a French player, one of the motives that very often comes up in app comments with a medium score on the store is "This game is great, but isn't localized. With proper localization, I'd have given a 5* - please translate the game". Dunno about other stores, but french one seems to like its games with proper (text) localization.
Localization is definitely worth it - there are millions of users outside the English speaking countries & its easier to rank in App stores of some countries The best & cost effective way to test if its worth localizing - Is to just localize the Meta data first (Keywords, Description, App Name) then if you get traffic based on the Meta Data localization to localization the assets of the entire App (like labels, notifications etc)
Well i think its worth say that it depends on your app. If you app is dialogue heavy then there's a good chance it will just cost to much. Image the cost of converting "Device 6" or "black Bar". There are so many nuances in language that the cost would be to high.
Thanks for sharing that! I'm not a developer, just a gamer with an interest in the effect of language barriers.
Is it possible to localize the name of the app, so it has a different name, eg, on the Japanese iTunes store?
Yes you can have the name of the app in other languages in the app store. Two things about it though: 1) just going to iTunes and changing the app store country is not enough to see that countries language, because iTunes is also looking at the language setting in the 'locale' of your mac. 2) Games publisher have to choose between two different strategies a) translate the name (better for search and getting downloads from casual users); b) create a worldwide brand by keeping the name in english. b) can be attempted in non-roman alphabets by making e.g. japanese that sounds out the english name. b) is foolish for most I think, creating a brand that the average person would recognize is incredibly difficult.
I think localization is worth it and important. Although it entirely depends on your marketing strategy. If there's not a need for it now, I suggest focus more on other aspects that will sooner give more value to take localization into consideration. But you should always be ready for it.
I'm not a Developer,but as italian gamer,The localization it's worth,it's really important,I see on my App store bad review,or I give you 5 star when you add italian language,i'm not The guy that give bad review for this,but localization on games that have a storyline,a story to tell,dialogue,it's really important if they are translate,so,yes,localization in GAMES are really important,when in Apps it's not the same..
As a developer and translator... I'm both an app developer and translator, so I see both "sides of the fence" on this to some extent. A couple of caveats you need to bear in mind are that localisation in itself won't magically make your app culturally relevant to speakers of the language in question if it wasn't relevant in the first place. So I would definitely advise trying to find out, e.g. using something like Google Trends, what volume of interest there is from speakers of the language in question for the theme of your app. Then in turn, it's worth trying to assess whether having your app in a given language will give it a competitive edge: what percentage of apps in that genre have localisation compared to the demand for it? When I added German to my word puzzle "LetterMeister", this sparked a little bit of interest from German reviewers because they noted that most games of that genre are in English. (I should say that the attention was largely honorary, though: I haven't actually had tons of sales from German speaking countries.) Different languages could give you access to app stores where there's less competition for the top spots (but conversely with fewer sales). The other thing I've found for small niche/independent apps is that the thing that really makes localisation work is if, following localisation, you are then able to conduct your other marketing/awareness raising activities actually in the language of localisation: posting on forums etc actually in the target language. So you may need to think a little bit beyond "translating your app" as a one-off exercise. I guess this may not apply so much if your app and marketing budget is big enough for on-line interaction not to be a major part of your strategy.
I've wrote a Blog Post about Localization (as a guest blogger) on the Amazon Developer Blog. It's a generic article, so for all platforms. I'm explaining many technics and tips for making localization as smoothly as possible. I hope you'll enjoy the read: BLOG POST. JC
