Apple Asking Developers to Localize Apps, Opens Chinese Support Forum

michal.poland said:

I haven't heart anything so stupid in a long time. I's always worth to translate into major languages apart from English unless your application is about English-specific language jokes

I've got iPhone 4, my wife 4S. I spend a hundred or so $ on apps every year. My wife not a dime. Why? I want to show her a great/useful app, but she says: "In English only? No, thanks."

She DOESN'T CARE to write to developer to translate their apps. She just ignores them having been ignored by them earlier (by their not providing localized versions).

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So your wife isn't willing to learn English and yet judges someone who equally chooses not to learn her language? What makes her so special?

Ridiculous amounts of butthurt going on here.

Apple is not going to require anyone to localize - not unless they want only a tiny handful of apps from only the largest publishers.

No one is going to waste time localizing an app before they've tested the market for it. If you get zero sales in the US, it's not wise to dump any more money into it, unless you know for sure it would have sold in a foreign market.

Calm down.

furi0usbee said:

Apple can have *everything* they produce localized. But a small developer? Probably not. Since English is used in pretty much every country by the well-educated, I think it's not of major importance to spend money on all those langs.

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No, but there is a growing middle class in China and India - in total about 500 - 600 million people. These people have money, but may not have the comfort level in English the elite and well-educated do - this is a market for localization provided your app needs it.

Not every app needs localization - but it's just one way of making your app stand out in a crowded marketplace.

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firewood said:

They have. They use google (mis)translate to produce some near gibberish that they haven't a clue how bad it looks to a native. You can find tons of apps with English descriptions that are just as badly translated in the App store. No idea whether this helps or hurts sales of the typical (doesn't sell in high volumes) app.

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Might be cute and bring back some (reverse) nostalgia - remember the Japanese games from the 80s?

thewitt said:

Machine translations are worthless.

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In general, but not necessarily. I note some apps with bad automatic translations into English occasionally showing up in the rankings.

thewitt said:

You do NOT need in house staff, however you do need to be ready to pay someone to support your alternative languages.

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Like every thing else, even with support, there's a cost benefit ratio business decision to consider. Even Apple ignores some customer complaints and developer radars for years.

Kaibelf said:

So your wife isn't willing to learn English and yet judges someone who equally chooses not to learn her language? What makes her so special?

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First of all, speaking a language (or not speaking) has nothing to do with translating apps. Why?

1) if you can speak e.g. Spanish it doesn't mean you can automatically be a good translator.
2) I'm a native speaker of Polish, have quite a good command of English, can speak some Spanish and German. Nevertheless I wouldn't like to translate my apps if I were a developer, because I wouldn't have time to do that. Depending how much text there is to translate is more convenient and money-efficient to outsource translating.

My point was and still is that my wife (like 95% of non- English population) doesn't care to use English applications, because she doesn't speak it.

BTW, Translatting cost is not as high as many people think provided you think smart. In my country translating 1800-character page of English cost about 40-45zl that is 10-15$. If you want to check if i'ts profitable to target customer in a given language, translate just App Store description (some agencies even give you one translated page for free to help you see their proficiency) - no hard programming skills necessary. If you see increase in sales, go further and translate you app altogether.

Where there's a will (for money), there is a way.

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