The best and surest path to the success of your app is by penetrating the international market, but that requires delicate adjustments to suit your new target audience. Why do apps need to be localized? What challenges are involved in doing it right? And what else do you need to know? Answers in this article.
The need for app localization
In the global era, an app confined to its local market will not achieve its full potential. Developing a successful app requires considerable effort and a great deal of resources, and it’s clear that what the task developers have in mind is penetrating – and succeeding in – the international market. What people don’t always consider with appropriate seriousness is the need to make all kinds of adjustments, since what works in one country for a specific audience may fail in a different country with a different audience. The most critical component of localization is language translation, of course.
The key to a successful localization of your app? The translation.
There is a common tendency to underestimate the work required in a translation – which is in fact the key factor in the success of an app overseas. When you settle for a mediocre translation, it will likely have a bumpy road to your end user due to inaccurate terms or expressions that negatively affect the user experience and lead to user abandonment. As you can see, localizing an app is no easy task, and it’s not enough to know both languages to be up to the job of translation. Translation is an intellectual task requiring deep knowledge of both the source and target languages, of course, but also profound understanding of the cultures in which these languages are spoken, as well as of the specific subject fields.
How to guarantee success
We’ve established that localizing an app is a major challenge on the path to success and that unprofessional translation not only doesn’t help, it may even be the decisive factor in case of failure. Translation requires knowledge, experience, skill, and considerable patience – all qualities that are available when working with a well-known professional translation company. These companies work with high-level translators, giving you peace of mind thanks to the assurance that the product you receive will give your app the best possible opening.