App stores like Apple’s iStore are giving app developers and creators unprecedented reach to catapult their apps to larger markets and newer user bases. But no matter how strong, fresh, well-made, and smooth an app is, it’s bound to hit dead ends if it doesn’t cover some app localization basics.
Localization, in short, is simply an attention to detail that makes an app useful for a specific language, segment, or culture.
Without this foundational plank in place, even a robust and radical app can fall on deaf ears and go unnoticed when approached by a user in a particular country or dialect. To configure localization, an application must also be organically internationalizable. That means developers must, from the start, make the app responsive to differences in formats, user specifications, and other details that will change from language to language and country to country.
Proper internationalization, in and of itself, goes a long way toward effective application localization.
Here are a few tips that may be helpful to aspiring iOS developers and gamers to ensure the app doesn’t fizzle out at the moment of truth.
Don’t wait for the app to be complete before inserting the iOS location. It should be done proactively, only at the coding stage, rather than as an afterthought. Internalize the relevant code and strings and deliver them to professional and experienced translators for the desired language. They can deal not only with number, calendar, date and time formats, but also with other localities that may come into play when a user interacts with an application or when the application display is triggered.
Export parts and strings in the desired format and provide translators with as much information and context as you can. Differentiate well between user-facing parts and other parts of the code to speed up the process.
Keep working on iOS localization at your level (image, music, etc.) through the app build process while the translators are working. It’s a mindset and once you’re attuned to the differences that localization addresses, the app would be nimble enough to make sense of many languages and segments when needed.
After importing the translated content, your work starts in a new way. You have to make sure that it is assimilated well and works as desired. Proper and relentless testing is a good way to check localization effort. This should be done both at the developer level and by letting some users test the app to get their perspective and any gaps that may still exist.
Please keep checking and updating the app with iOS localization and translation as the app grows and adds new versions. Having standard APIs helps increase the scope and ease of this process.
Sometimes the resources at stake can be optimized and the space the location occupies and the associated cost are reduced by having the regional targeting in the correct order with the language targeting. Markets like US, UK, Australia, APAC; for instance; they have the same language of use, English, as long as time differences and minor details are well incorporated.
It pays, in the long run, to give enough time and space for nuances and differences that go beyond standard time/schedule changes. Like some user segments and languages, they work from right to left instead of left to right text direction. These material contrasts cannot be included at the last moment of the design of an application.
As we can see, location is an important parameter for major app stores. Furthermore, the remarkable growth and spread of iOS makes it imperative that developers pay the necessary attention to this part from the very beginning and well after the release of the app.
It’s all about keeping the user experience smooth and seamless.