Making a Unique Localization Situation Work

The way we interact with the world around us is being driven more and more by the changing face of technology. Whether we like it or not, technology has become a huge part of our lives and many of us are dependent on it in order to get through each day. It’s the internet of things.

Take your smartphone for instance. With a simple tap you can turn on your home appliances from work or navigate from point A to point B. For businesses like yourself, being the leader in innovative solutions is key to staying ahead of the game.

So let me tell you a story about one of our partners, a leading manufacturer of fitness equipment who sought to bring the fitness experience to a whole new level. How? By creating software and apps for their new line of fitness equipment that would interact with its users prior to and during their workout sessions. What they needed was a partner to help with software localization and internationalization testing.

Their localization model needed streamlining to increase the efficiency and in addition was decentralized with each separate office employing their own internal localization team. Inconsistencies across translations were predominant and the need for rework prior to launch was high. They wanted to launch their products as soon as development was complete which called for a non-standard approach to localization.

A little close to home? Well, here is how we did it and how we can help you…

Step 1: Joining Forces

From multiple localization teams around the world, one remote team was formed.

The parallel team was made up of our localization experts who were responsible for all localization activities and treated not as an outsourced team, but as part of our partner’s team. They were integrated with our partner’s software development team to create a side by side workflow for communication and cooperation in real-time. Both teams relied on each other to ensure the smooth roll out of the software.

Step 2: A Real Life Agile Example

We did not wait for development to finish to begin work, rather conducted internationalization testing ensuring the launch date would remain as forecasted. To eliminate any hiccups when translating, we designed testing scenarios that would mimic real-life usability situations for three languages, evaluating the software’s overall usability in various languages. The results of the tests were fed back to the development team providing information on potential problems with the code before it was submitted for translation.

Step 3: Localize It!

With internationalization testing complete, our localization team now knew how to approach localization and translation for the rest of the languages.

When localizing, we needed to keep track of proper context for source strings. The strings that we received not always followed the same format. For example, the word “We” was used often, but without proper context it would have been translated as a noun whereas it was an abbreviation of the word “Wednesday”.

Having a proper localization workflow in place helped us eliminate such problems and properly localize the software in all the target languages.

Step 4: The Final Test

With localization and development complete, we conducted one last time linguistic and functional testing on each language version, ensuring proper layout, formatting and linguistic accuracy.

Extensive preparation, close cooperation with teams and the introduction of tested workflows to capture problems ahead of time, made this project and its short turnaround time possible.

When working with us, you can be assured that we will help your unique situation beyond just standard translation services. Contact Us and find out how we can help you with your next translation project.