The usability of a website, app, or any other software must take into account the need to localize: that is, to render the interface, and engineer the experience, for users who read diverse languages. The diversity of language expresses itself in many ways: typeface selection and size, average word and sentence length, reading directionality (RTL/LTR), symbols and accent marks, spacing, and much more.
We will examine these considerations and provide some best practices on how to go about tackling this linguistic variety while maintaining a consistent and attractive look-and-feel and expected interactions for the user. We’ll also point out to you some tools that professionals use to manage these tasks.
These days, it is generally well understood that websites, apps, and localization and translation software should not be limited to a single language. That is, to put it bluntly, ignoring the global nature of the web and thereby limiting one’s marketing reach. Supporting multiple languages opens your content, products and services to new markets and additional customers and subscribers. So the real question now is whether or not to go global, but how.
Seeking Expertise in Translation and Localization Services
The easiest solution, of course, is to seek help from experts. Translating a website is relatively easy, and website translation services are abundant.
Website localization is also not exactly rocket science: most professional translators know how to translate a web page, and to translate a website in total is just a quantitative rather than a qualitative difference.
But apps are more complex to localize, and you really need a roadmap. App and software localization involves more than just changing the languages, but also considers differences in currency, measurement and, most importantly, cultural preferences.
If you are looking for a localization company to perform app translation or localization, there are a few things you should be looking for.
One is readiness to give you a free price quote with no strings attached. Typically, you will send them a link to your app or site, and mention which languages and regions are of importance.
The localization services agency should do the rest and can send back you in minutes or hours a budget and timetable. You should insist on a guarantee that, should a mistake be found in the work even after delivery, the localization agency will make the correction promptly to ensure translation quality and at no additional cost. The guarantee period usually lasts up to a month or three, but some location and translation agencies offer one-year guarantee periods.
At this point, we can’t stress enough the importance of quality in translations. You can try double-checking with someone who also speaks the same native language to make sure that the translator you’ll be working with will be able to render the translations you’re expecting from a professional.
Localization Solutions starts with Multilingual Design
Let’s be clear. Everything starts with design, whether it’s a website, app, or other software application. Website design and development are pretty stable by now. There are free or low-cost web-building platforms like WordPress, Wix, and Foursquare that simplify the whole web design process, albeit imposing some limits on what you can and cannot do with your website. The most important thing for any designer working on any language is the ability for your site to look good on any device and respond to the detection of the device being used. Responsive web design these days is expected.
Although user interface (UI) design and user experience (UX) design are sometimes used interchangeably, there are distinct specialties. Get to know in depth about 3 major differences between UI and UX.
In sum: the former is used to refer to the visual elements between the user and the program such as the graphical user interface or GUI. The user experience, on the other hand, focuses on the broader (not just visual) dimensions of the human-machine interface. It focuses on interaction; the interactive feeling of the site or application. But sometimes the UI/UX designer can be one and the same, such as in UI/UX design agency ramotion.
I suggest a simple “pyramid with six elements: multilingual design at the top, under it User Interface and User Experience, and under that the 3 primary tools Computer-Assisted Translation, Machine Translation, and Translation Management. Here’s a detailed list of the essential elements of the design if you need more info.
Once you have a UI/UX design that is flexible and responsive, there is also the need to use tools which organize management of the various languages used in your app or website. Check out this up-to-date survey on localization software. There are three main categories in this field: Computer Assisted Translation (CAT), Machine Translation, and Translation Management software. These are highly specialized software niche that targets mainly software companies and localization agencies. If your company is not in one of these groups, it’s probably not worth the cost and effort to buy them, but chances are your translation or localization agency will use one or more.
Specific Language Variances in Localization
There are different levels of complexity in localization. The easiest kind is working within left to right (LTR) languages, which covers most of Europe and the Americas.
If you need to localize from English to French/English to Spanish, design differences are likely to be minimal between the languages.
Words in these languages tend to be of similar length. Sure, French and Spanish feature more accent marks, but this is relatively trivial. This works in both directions as you can translate Spanish to English and that Spanish to English translation can most likely use the exact same design.
Problems may arise with word length. German words tend to be 20 to 30% longer than English ones on average, while words in Vietnamese, on the other hand, are 20 to 30% shorter.
Ultimately, a design that can accommodate both of those extremes needs to be built in a flexible manner. A language translator who is aware of these challenges usually knows to seek out words that are not too long, especially for space constrained areas like horizontal menus.
Due to the limited width of mobile screens, most menus are vertical these days.
Which Way Does Your Site or App Read?
LTR (left to right) to RTL (right to left) localization are not too difficult. They are key to anyone who wants to market and sell to the Middle East and, of course, for Middle Easterners reaching out to Western audiences. If you are considering a template-based content management system, seek out one which is flexible with respect to text direction. Support for bidirectionality is common but not universal, but it should be essential if your markets “go both ways.”
Asian languages are another kettle of fish. The differences between Mandarin Chinese, Korean and Japanese on one hand, and Western LTR languages on the other can be quite substantial. You may in fact need to have very different designs across these languages. Your localization expert and translator, however, should be familiar with these differences and can guide you.
Spacing is another consideration. Thai for example, uses precious few spaces and punctuation marks. So words, even though distinct, may appear incredibly long. Again, rely on your language translator and ensure good communication between linguists and visual designers.
Your designer has many tools to accommodate these differences. There is the choice of typeface or font and, in addition, the size and kerning of letters. Designers worth their salt will take pleasure in making those creative choices, and it will not stand in the way of a successful and responsive multilingual design.
Test, Retest and then Re-Re-Test
Usability, of course, needs to be evaluated, and this process is a science unto itself. When dealing with multilingual usability testing, you naturally need to employ testers in each language who will have the temperament and the testing process to try to ‘break’ your website or app. They will scrutinize the quality of your translations down to the color schemes you use to ensure that everything has been done right and that your website is well suited for your target audience.
In addition to testing each language in isolation, there is a need to test what can be called the pivot points in a multilingual site or app, where the user can choose one language instead of another. These days, there is a tendency of developers to take the discretion away from the user by forcing language interfaces based on the user’s IP address or GPS locator.
While there may be logic in choosing the language for most users in a location, speakers of a minority language, tourists or expats will be annoyed when the language appearing is not their preferred one. It’s a good practice to make language switch options obvious both in location and symbology. While using national flags may be popular, it’s neither politically correct nor intuitive. Ultimately, it’s better to use the two-letter symbols for specific languages rather than flags.
