In this article, we want to give you an overview of the most important things to consider if you are thinking about including localization in your next IT project. We hope that you find the information below helpful.

The process: Doing things in the right order

There is a tried and tested order in which the content needs to be translated. It is the order followed by the main IT companies and it is the fruit of decades of seeing what works and what doesn’t work.

Step 1 – Software Translation (or UI translation)

Start with the software, always start with the software translation. It will save you inconsistencies with the support material – such as manuals, tutorials, and help articles -, last-minute fixes, and headaches (as if software development didn’t have enough headaches as it is).

Once you have a stable version or at the very least a UI freeze you can send the software strings for translation.

Translating the UI strings first allows us to create a glossary of UI terms, this will help maintain consistency between the UI and all the support material.

This also gives the development team the opportunity to test the new translated UI and see how the software is holding up and check if fixes are needed. We will discuss some common issues at the very end of this article.

Step 2 – User Manuals

The second step is the Manuals. Since we started with the translation of the Software, we now have a strong Glossary of UI terms that will help us maintain total consistency between the UI and the Manuals.

Consistency is important since it is what will ensure that your users will find what is on the Manual on the actual UI and prevent them from getting lost trying to find a menu item that has a different name.

For example in English imagine if your software instructs the user to use the Cut feature, but in the UI it is actually called Crop. This type of inconsistency makes the manual hard to follow and defeats its main purpose as a reference for the users.

Step 3 – Help Files – Online Help

This part is pretty straightforward on the linguistic side since all the terminology should be already well established from previous steps.

The one difference is how the Help files are structured. If we are dealing with the old format of help, then these files are a collection of files that are translated, compiled into a Help file, and then tested by our team to make sure that everything works.

If on the other hand, we are dealing with Online Format, this step will be like translating a collection of webpages.

Step 4 – Tutorials

This step is optional, but it definitely helps you foster user adoption of your software. You can create short videos or interactive tutorials to help your users (or would-be users) understand how to perform key tasks.

We can support you with either Subtitling, for a simpler and cost-effective solution,  or with Voiceover for a more complete localization.

Step 5 – Patch Notes

It is always good to keep your users updated and engaged with your software.

Normally patch notes are relatively short on the text so it doesn’t cost that much to keep everybody up to date on what’s new and what has been fixed.

Step X -: Marketing Material

Marketing material can be translated at any point in the process.

You can translate it during development to drum up interest for your product, before release to increase your sales, or periodically after release to share news and offers.

Tips and Tricks

Character Encoding

An important aspect of software translation is how the characters are going to be displayed. Your software will be displaying text in languages with special characters, or languages that have a completely different set of characters (e.g. Chinese).

In other words, what worked for English isn’t necessarily going to work now.

As a rule of thumb, we recommend you to use UTF-8 or UTF-16, as it allows you to display almost all languages.

You can find a full list of the languages supported here: https://www.unicode.org/standard/supported.html

Character length and the UI

Besides character encoding, the length of the text that can be displayed in a UI item is one of the main challenges of UI strings translations.

This is especially important for software that is used on Mobile Phone Apps, Heavy Machinery, medical devices, or any device that isn’t a Mac or a PC.

If you want to tackle the issue early on, try to perform a Mock Translation (i.e. a simulated translation): import a random set of characters that is 30%-50% longer than your existing text to your current UI. This is a good opportunity to test compatibility with the new charset

After doing the Mock Translation please check for the following possible issues:

• Does it truncate text?
• Does it reduce the font?
• Does the text scroll out of the screen?
• Are special characters displayed correctly?

See how your software behaves and inform the translation team of any text size limitation.

Finally, please save some time after translation for testing the UI. If needed you can send back a list of strings to be shortened along with the maximum string length.

Microsoft’s Glossaries

Microsoft has been a big player in the Software industry for many decades now, so it is of little surprise that they have humongous glossaries with thousands of UI terms translated to hundreds of languages.

What may surprise you though, is that they have been nice enough to make their glossaries public and available. You can access them following this link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/language

When in doubt about how to translate a UI string, it is always a good practice to check the glossaries of Microsoft since their translations have already been read (and subconsciously, accepted) by millions of users.

If you are ready to tackle new markers and want your software to be used around the world, you need the right partner for your software translation.

At Australis Localization, we stay with you every step of the way. Contact us at production@australis-localization.com to discuss how we can help you launch your software to the World.

In this competitive and globalized world, seeking other markets for your products and services becomes an opportunity and a need. The importance of translating and culturally adapting your online communication, user guides, website, and digital marketing to specific locations and markets is crucial to find success and growth.

What it is not completely apparent is that without finding a professional Desktop Publishing (DTP) service, your attempt to smoothly translate your document could be jeopardized.

What exactly is DTP?

DTP or typesetting is basically the practice of giving the finished product its professional look. It is the adaptation of digital files to keep your designs consistent between languages. It allows the translation to be perfectly formatted in order to ensure that the new document is of the same high quality as the original.

After completing the translation, multilingual DTP specialists feed the translations into the design file, adjust font sizes or tweak the layout to accommodate text length, make sure all characters display correctly and that the document looks as good as the original.

Languages are unique 

Let’s don’t forget that languages have different rules when it comes to publishing – there’s not a one‑size‑fits‑all approach to multilingual typesetting. In Japanese, certain characters cannot be at the end or the start of a line. Arabic, for instance, is written from right to left and their linguistic system does not include hyphens. Many languages tend to expand when you translate them. So while you might have 500 words of English text in your source file, that same paragraph in Spanish could end up being over 600 words.

Translating something like an advertising poster, a set of blueprints or a multilingual website design requires a more technical approach to translation. With DTP your files are all translated in the original format you created them in, meaning you are ready to publish as soon as you get them back from your translators,

The importance of cultural relevance.

Another important point to make is that cultural relevance and appropriateness of images can have a huge impact on the success of your product. That’s why, as part of our typesetting process, changes could be suggested in order not to offend your potential customers.

Let’s imagine you have spent months working on new marketing material, brochures, and promotional posters. You love how it looks, but now you need to translate it to different languages. In this case, you need to find a multilingual translation agency that has an in-house professional DTP team. You need skilled desktop publishers and graphic designers to know how to place that text back in the file without ruining the layout.

Choose professional translation services 

DTP is a MUST if you are looking to translate your solutions and go global. There is no need to take the risk and throw away any of the great work that has been done.

Work with professional translation agencies that offer DTP services. This will give you peace of mind and save you endless hours of formatting work.

“Technical Translations” is a catch-all term that encompasses projects related to machinery, industry or technology. The exact subject matter can vary, but the projects share the same set of characteristics that make them especially challenging.

We will explain some key points about how to handle this type of project properly:

• All industries have their specific terminology, it is important to locate good sources of industry-specific references before the project starts. The best option will always be to refer to customer-approved previous translations, but if that is not available then Scientific or industry related publications or glossaries from industry associations will be a good starting point.
• The style should always strive to be direct and the meaning of the words should be unambiguous. There is no room for purple prose or unnecessary flourish that may obscure the meaning of the sentences.
• The content is aimed at people with technical knowledge on the subject matter, there is rarely a need to adapt the content to make it accessible to a more general audience.
• Terminology consistency is KEY, and every single source term needs to be represented by a single translated term.
  • For this reason, it is critical to keep both the TM and the Glossary up to date and follow them strictly.
  • Whenever possible, a single editor should work on the whole project to prevent divergence on the terminology. If more than one editor is needed (because the client needs a short TAT) there should be constant communication between Editors and a single version of the TM should be shared and maintained.

At Australis Localization, we have Technical translation experts with wide experience in areas such as Manufacturing, Engineering, Automotive, Construction, High-Tech, Automation/Robotics, among others.

Give us the chance to help you with your next Technical Translation project. We have the knowledge. We’re ready.

“Using your style & preferences guide our work is going to be impeccable”.

How does is it work?
At Australis, preference management is our distinctive service. We add the most value by using your preferences to assure completely satisfactory translations for you, accurate in form and meaning. Our team of professional translators will use your style & preference guide to guarantee our top quality approach. As you know, there are different ways to express and translate the same concept or idea, but the accurate way is the one that we documented together.
For multilingual communications, your preferences are essential to achieving our quality-assured translations. We’ll apply the terms and expressions that you selected to use, and remove all those you instructed us to avoid. Furthermore, your style & preferences guide also involves the exact tone that you prefer, to perfectly reflect the voice of your brand.

“You may decide to use a completely formal language or the contrary, a totally casual tone, something more reader-friendly”.

We’ll help you create your style & preferences guide.

Documenting your preferences is of key importance, it should be well planned and implemented. We guide you step by step to create and maintain updated your style & preferences guide. From there, we’ll be able to work as your colleague and not merely as an external resource, translation quality compliance increases and full fill your expectations, without ever losing your valuable time again.
Even though not all providers offer this service, at Australis, we consider ourselves as part of your team. Therefore, our professional linguists will be instructed to fully understand and apply your specific needs in terminology, expressions and style or tone. All your preferences will be documented in your company’s guide that is constantly updated as new projects are worked on. Fluent communication with you will result in a constant improvement of your style & preferences guide, revising and adding new valid preferences all the time.

“By using your translation style & preferences guide, we’ll perform a faultless work”.

If you have any further questions on how style & preference management works, please get in touch with us: production@australis-localization.com we’ll get right back to you!

Regardless of the particularities of each language, the most important consideration is to understand the spirit of the message, achieve the objectives and ensure that regardless of cultural barriers, customs and behavior, we need a professional translation to be sure that our message reaches our readers correctly. These are the considerations and analysis that you should take into account:

1. Precision:
   Accurate communication depends on an exact translation, which makes the meaning of the message understood, without adding or eliminating information and data. That is why we are dedicated to researching the local terminology, we carry out the conversion to the local measurement systems and very important: we fully understand the needs of the message sender.
2. Personalization:
   Before making a translation, we must be sure that we fully understand the needs of who issues the message, what it wants to achieve, who its target readers are, segmented into particular profiles by their ages, cities, countries, professions; this depends on the total customization of our translation, which can even use specialized terminology or local words, depending on the effect we want to achieve.
3. Style:
   It is the tone in which the sender of the message wrote his original text and it is up to us to preserve that intonation. Regardless of the particularities of each language, our duty is to reflect the intention, attitude or tone of the message, whether for fully formal texts such as legal documentation, to literary translations or advertising and marketing material.
4. Clarity:
   Our goal is to reach the absolute clarity of all the texts and the total comprehension of the messages, keeping the translation in a brief, concise way that manages to quickly express the meaning of the message.
5. Localization:
   Our goal is to ensure that a text is read fluently, to make the reader feel that this was written in their own language and it is not a translation, which interrupts the understanding, breaks the message and betrays a bad translation.
6. Specialization:
   We must honestly acknowledge that we cannot completely master all languages, all subjects, all idioms, and specialized terminology. For this reason, we rely on our team of linguists, scattered all over the world, who are experts in their mother tongue and also specializes in Industries similar to yours and the topics that we must translate.

You can have the absolute certainty that you will obtain an Excellent Translation, working with our expert team of professional translators, specialized in the topics that you need. If you have any further questions, please get in touch with us, we’ll get right back to you!

Now our goal is to translate the interface of these gadgets and smart clothes into the local language of the consumer countries. For all technology products, language localization is the key to achieve success in particular markets.

“Our great challenge is to keep up with the dizzying speed of technology that now tends to use user interfaces based on spoken rather than written commands”.

Localization involves much more than just translating the texts into the terminology of another language. In fact, it takes into account the user’s adjustable preferences, the variable options and the way the user uses and interacts with the technology. It is still a developing technology that provides many adjustments and customization for particular markets, which for example prefer a female voice as a reflection of artificial intelligence that is there to help, instead of a male voice representing authority and command. There is also the consideration that in Latin American and North American markets the greetings and friendly treatment of the interface, even if programmed, is very well received, while in certain markets they prefer a direct interaction without any additions. Eastern markets like China prefer to interact with voice commands and eliminate all written interface.

Whatever the location needs of your technology company, our job is to make your products fully accessible to the particular markets you want to reach. Do not hesitate to contact us to discuss your doubts and talk about the success of your company.