Which localization is "worth it"

Discussion in 'Public Game Developers Forum' started by Carlos, Oct 14, 2012.

  1. Carlos

    Carlos Well-Known Member

    Sep 29, 2009
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    Software architect, game dev and book author
    xor eax, eax
    Hi,

    I'm about to add support for further languages in my apps, which is always a good idea. Now since I'm not (yet ;) a millionaire, I'd like to prioritize, and here's where I needed some help. Which languages are definitely a prio0?

    I've added what I could manage by myself: English, German, Hungarian, Romanian and French.

    I plan to add: Spanish and Italian. However, considering the huge Asian market, I'm wondering whether a Chinese translation should be also considered.

    Any suggestions or remarks would be highly appreciated.

    Thanks,
    Carlos
     
  2. Rubicon

    Rubicon Well-Known Member

    Feb 22, 2011
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    Lead Programmer, Chief Bottlewasher
    Isle of Wight, UK
    #2 Rubicon, Oct 14, 2012
    Last edited: Oct 14, 2012
    The only languages you need are American and English. That right there covers 90% of the people buying games' native languages and you should be able to do it yourself. or via some friendly forum members at a push.

    Most Europeans can read English so if you're on a budget you can rely on that. The first actual localisation I would recommend is Korean - they buy tons of games and genuinely seem to appreciate it when westerners take the trouble to do it.

    Don't waste time with Chinese. I'm sure someone will instantly take exception to this, but they just don't buy anything. We had GLWG translated into Chinese (both simplified and traditional) and we got a front page promotion from China Mobile - the biggest shop in China. Think about that, the biggest shop in China must make walmart look like a dime store. Total sales for the month? Below $1,000 - didn't even cover the cost of the text.

    EDIT:
    I just checked some stats. From that well known fount of knowledge, wikipedia:

    "As of January 2012, China Mobile is the world's largest mobile phone operator with about 655 million subscribers."

    So up to 0.6 billion people probably saw our app. And we made under a grand out of them.
     
  3. RodrigoCard

    RodrigoCard Well-Known Member

    Jan 10, 2012
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    If you can translate for any language easily, do it, cosumers will appreciate it a lot.

    About cost/benefit, if you need to choose one, I would go for spanish.
     
  4. Silver Josh

    Silver Josh Well-Known Member

    Oct 12, 2008
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    Some of my apps became a huge success in Spanish speaking countries, Japan, France and Italy. I believe I wouldn't make it if I didn't translate them into other languages.

    Why? Because you couldn't use most of my apps if you don't understand English. I didn't sell much in the US and English speaking countries (too many similar apps), but thankfully most of my competitors didn't consider to localize their app in other languages.

    We used to talk about this in here: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=1244

    I highly recommend you to contact DYS Translations - they work with some of the most successful iOS devs/companies.

    I used to like MyGengo, but recently I had a few problems with them.
    Other services are simply too expensive and it's not worth.
     
  5. SiXX

    SiXX Well-Known Member

    Sep 15, 2011
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    Game Developer
    Bangkok
    If you could afford, do localization as many language as you can. But I assume that's not the case for most of us.

    So, you should prioritize base on your current sales stat. Which countries/region download your app the most? Which give you most profit? It's better to localize for the people who already interest in your game than the ones that not know yet.

    That's what I think. :)
     
  6. henr1kk

    henr1kk Well-Known Member

    Nov 4, 2008
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    Independent Game Designer and Developer
    Porto, Portugal
    For my upcoming game, I'm thinking about doing English, French, German and Portuguese. The Portuguese market is on the rise due to the recent boom of iOS device owners in Brazil. Also, seeing as I'm portuguese, it's a fairly easy endeavour.
    Chinese and Japanese are also on my priority list, but support for both languages will probably be released as part of an update. Spanish and Italian are also on the to-do list, but they're not a priority.

    My opinion is that you should do localisation for every language that you know. For the languages that you haven't learned, try to find a friend, relative or ex-teacher that can do it for free/cheap. As a last resort, contact a professional translator.
     
  7. FlowStudioGames

    FlowStudioGames Well-Known Member

    Dec 14, 2011
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    Co-Founder
    Europe
    Do it with a PRO

    I would recommend not to do translations on your own. Hire professionals! Usually we have only couple of pages of simple text, that's nothing expensive to translate by someone who isn't making mistakes. Imagine what the customer thinks when there is some language mistake...
     
  8. binaryhelix

    binaryhelix Well-Known Member

    Oct 15, 2011
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    We used Google Translate and Bing's API to automatically translate our game which is rather text heavy with story and dialog. It actually increased sales, but the poor translation hurt us with some user review scores. But as a whole, I'd say it has helped more than it hurt.

    Some fans have reached out to us saying they'll help us translate. So we're working on a web interface that will let some of our fans help us do the correct translations. We'll also consider using a translation service as well.
     
  9. Carlos

    Carlos Well-Known Member

    Sep 29, 2009
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    Software architect, game dev and book author
    xor eax, eax
    Thank you all for the comments. There is so much truth in each of them.

    @binaryhelix: In my opinion Google translate should only be used to double-check a word, definitely not to translate whole sentences. Sometimes it fails even for a single word.

    @FlowStudioGames: I couldn't agree better! Even if I do localize for say German by myself, I ask a native speaker to run through the text for problems. I only had some tiny mistakes, but the app looks definitely more professional if there are 0 language issues.

    @henr1kk: I also observed lately that my sales did increase in Brazil. Good point to think about also a Portuguese localization! Thanks!

    @SIXX: Indeed, if sales are good in a given country or region, localizing the app is probably not a bad idea.

    @Silver Josh: You are right, especially since not all European and Japanese people do speak or understand English to that extent like i.e. Northern European ones do. If you've ever been to France you know what I'm speaking about. :)

    @RodrigoCard: Spanish has been on my list for quite a while. What makes me hesitant is that I only had a few sales in Spanish speaking countries like Spain or Mexico. But maybe exactly the lack of Spanish localization is the root cause. ;)

    @Rubicon: Yes, Chinese might not be worth the effort, especially if it costs that much. I do not have that much of text in my app, so maybe it would not be $1000+. Anyway, skipping for now.

    One more point: is localizing the app enough, or should the iTunes description also be localized?
    People are probably looking first to the iTunes screenshots (especially true since the latest AppStore revamp), and the next step is probably checking out the app's description. So to answer my own question, when localizing the app you should always localize its AppStore description.
    What about the keywords???

    Any further comments would be highly appreciated!
     
  10. Rasterman

    Rasterman Well-Known Member

    May 10, 2010
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    Game Monger
    Tampa, FL
    I'm pretty sure you have to localize your description for apple to accept your app as localized. Even if not you definetly should do it.
     
  11. Rubicon

    Rubicon Well-Known Member

    Feb 22, 2011
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    Lead Programmer, Chief Bottlewasher
    Isle of Wight, UK
    The app store description is probably more important. But that's definitely a place where you don't want any lost in translation issues as well.
     
  12. magmedia

    magmedia Member

    Oct 30, 2012
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    Keyword Localization

    I have no doubt that localizing the keywords in the App Store is extremely important in order to get found in search. I am currently localizing these to Japanese, Chinese (trad and simplified), Thai, Korean, Russian, French, German, Spanish and Portuguese. I am testing out two paid services, icanlocalize.com and onehourtranslations.com - both are pretty easy to use, without speaking the languages i think the quality on icanlocalize might be a bit better, but as their name promises onehourtranslations is pretty damned quick. Cost is usually around $0.09 per word, if you need very specialized translation this usually double. Since I am translating just the keywords and a short description, it comes out to around $16 per language, so not too bad.

    The effectiveness of keyword localization for the App Store probably varies from country to country however. I don't have any stats yet so I don't want to throw figures in the air and I haven't found any concrete figures regarding this. Distimo put out a paper about the effect of app localization, but they didn't refer specifically to the keywords (this may have been inferred), it was related more to localization of languages within the app.

    Anyway, I am in the process now of localizing just the keywords / screenshots / descriptions myself and I can let you know how the downloads trend after this change. Will be very interesting to see.

    Has anyone had specific experience with the effects of keyword localization??

    PS This is my first post on Touch Arcade!
     
  13. MarkFromBitmenStudios

    MarkFromBitmenStudios Well-Known Member

    Apr 4, 2011
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    IT Architecture, Development Project Manager
    Austria, Europe
    Welcome to the forums. :)

    Anyway, I just wanted to throw in that if you localize your app description, then you need to come up with localized versions for all changes you make there. For example, you want to go on sale for a limited time, you want to add a late reviewer's opinion. That can include quite a bit more roundtrips (and small costs).

    Second, not sure if it's still the case but we failed to enter a russian description at some point. We all know that app descriptions have some max length but what I didn't know is that they apparently count bytes, not characters. For languages where each character uses up more than one byte in unicode (e.g. cyrillic) you hit the limit way earlier. Just take that into account.
     
  14. Alexandrus

    Alexandrus New Member

    Feb 6, 2013
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    App localization

    Hello everbody,

    I wanted to suggest a tool for iPhone app localization, http://poeditor.com/. It's web-based and very efficient for translators or for whoever wants to do the job by himself. Hope it helps.
     
  15. panzeriti

    panzeriti Active Member

    Jul 31, 2010
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    I localized my app Budget Saved to German and French. I translated all app text and the app's description/keywords/name.

    Downloads for the German and French versions are about the same as the US version, so I essentially tripled my sales by localizing.

    I had the translations done by freelancers on Elance. You find some really skilled translators for a very reasonable price on Elance.
     
  16. Alexandrus

    Alexandrus New Member

    Feb 6, 2013
    2
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    Localization

    Guys, I suggest you try this tool for a simple and cheap localization: https://poeditor.com/. It has really useful features and it's easy to use. Nice API also.
     
  17. MiaF

    MiaF Member

    Aug 19, 2013
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    Female
    I do not agree with you. China is still a big mobile marketing. The player's habit which pay for in the game has still not so good. But it need us to make it better.
     
  18. Maryna

    Maryna Well-Known Member

    Sep 18, 2012
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    PR&Marketing
    San Francisco
    I'd recommend to localize the game's description first, and then go for the game's description.
     
  19. Silver Josh

    Silver Josh Well-Known Member

    Oct 12, 2008
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    So you localize your game's description twice? :D
    Anyway, you're correct: game description first, in-app text later.

    That's what worked for me too.
     
  20. devilmouse

    devilmouse Member

    The other high value languages are Portuguese (if you're planning on releasing on Android as well) and Japanese.
     

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