Hacker News Reader

Comment by edpichler | Hacker News Reader

I've localized my apps exactly the way the post is and it's not so easy. Localizing is necessary and inevitable, but it's not so cheap as this article are saying. There are another costs the article are completely ignoring.

If you do iterative and lean development, localizing using freelancers website will really slow down your release cycle. This multiplies your fixed costs you spent running your small company.

Another point, you'll also need to pay others skilled translators to verify the quality o the localization.

In my case, after localizing it, the numbers of user increase just a few. If I would spent this money on marketing and development, I'm sure that I could get better results.

View on HN

I think the worst thing is when the support requests start arriving in [insert language here] and you cannot reply to them.

Localising like this might get you more downloads in a foreign market but you are potentially burning bridges with customers because you cannot give them the support you give your english speaking customers.

What kind of app have you localized?

The increased downloads will allways be relative to the downloads you have in that spesific market before the localization.

It is true that you'll have to spend time doing it, which translates into money. However, I claim that you can do it using only three hours, plus the time it will take you to adjust the screenshots (it will normally be a design job in addition to just changing the text.)

These translators are good at their job. IMHO you won't need to double check their work with other translators.

"If you do iterative and lean development, localizing using freelancers website will really slow down your release cycle."

How come? Because it's freelancers you have reached through a website?

I've had fairly good luck with [1] for iPhone apps on my very low budget. For decent enough quality, the translator has to be familiar enough with the context (e.g. someone who had translated apps, uses apps, and most importantly understands what your app's features/demographics are.) Work with your translator to give them enough background information. Just translating a word like "music" in isolation may lead to subpar results.

[1] http://www.icanlocalize.com

Agreed! It's important to get them to understand how your app works. Ideally they should download your app, read comments, blog posts, everything that relates to it.

It will make it cheaper and better.

Interesting website. Do you get to communicate directly with the translators?

It's pretty low-effort. I've gotten results back in 1-2 hours -- you select the "app" category and a topic area like "Accounting", and there's also a box to provide additional context.

It also looks like you can respond/open an issue, but I haven't tried that.

Really the most annoying part was updating my screenshots, hours spent in Photoshop. This should be much easier since I've started using Sketch though (Tip: convert screenshots to symbols, choose "Exclude Text Value From Symbol" for your text layers, so you can duplicate the symbol and edit the text many times.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com