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I'm wondering, based on experience (and raw population data) which are the 5 "best" localizations for an application (iPhone app in this case). Note by localization I don't only mean language, but other customs such as date and currency formats, etc.
My guess list would be as follows
English
French
Spanish
German
Japanese
How does your list compare and why?
I think your list includes the ones that pay off best for the effort of translating. A bit googling shows they rank high on the list of languages with the most native speakers (see here and here) and are at the top of the languages of Internet users. Of course you would need to know iPhone usage in the countries, but it's obvious that the countries speaking those languages rank among the tech savviest countries.
French people are very well known to insist on the usage of their own language and take their culture very serious. So it's also important to have a perfect translation and maybe adapt things to their culture.
I think your list also reflects the top foreign languages teached in school. Most Scandinavians for example speak English fluently and are used to watch uninterpreted U.S. TV shows. I wouldn't translate the app for them unless there's a very good reason.
From experience the biggest markets for Localizing software are:
French
German
Spanish
Italian
Japanese
These countries generally have the most paying customers for software and is also in no particular order.
This list is generally referred to as FIGS+J
Adding East Asian languages can be a good idea:
Korean
Chinese Simplified
Chinese Traditional
Also don't forget about Russian.
There is a lot more to go on also, for example you should really have some basis for localizing your product, market research for instance. Your product might require to be internationalized, i.e. tailored to a specific country. This could be as simple as making sure the flag in your application is correct, or worse even changing content.
For example a tick to mean something is complete is pretty common everywhere but Japan when a circle means Ok.
It should go without saying that you can't even begin to decide unless you decide where you're going to distribute your app and what it will do. Once you determine that, it should be easy to decide.
Simplified and traditional chinese, to cover the markets in China, Hong Kong/Macau, and Taiwan. Although the iPhone is not officially offered in China, I'm sure Apple will reach an agreement with China Mobile or China Unicom sooner or later, opening up a potentially enormous market. Persuading people to pay is a different matter, but I can see that happening if they offer a chinese language service.
KT in Korea is also going to be officially offering the iPhone soon. There's another fairly affluent market, so Korean would be worth looking at.
Russian and Brazilian Portugese are also worth considering, as Russia and Brazil are BRIC countries etc.
And has been mentioned, English is a given, and the Japanese have now warmed to the iPhone also, despite earlier predictions.
From my own experience, I have had an unexpected and absurdly large number of sales from Italy. This is for an English word puzzle game. I have no idea why.
Updated after some spreadsheet magic:
675 sales in US
236 sales in Italy
42 sales in England
36 in Australia
1 in France
It all depends on your customers. Whom do you see as potential users of your application.
If you mean those most ready to pay, it's probably English, Japanese and German.
A good place to start might be to see if you can get some statistics on how the iPhone is selling in various countries. Japan is a wealthy nation, with a very tech savvy population, but if the iPhone isn't selling there it's probably not a good market. (That's just an example...I have no idea whatsoever how the iPhone is selling in Japan.)
Based solely on the most widely spoken languages,
Mandarin
Spanish
English
Arabic
Hindi
This sort of data could be useful if you haven't yet decided what countries you want to tailor your app for. This could easily backfire on you if you don't research those populations and make sure that people who speak those languages have adequate access to technology.
Brazil has a lot of internet and iPhone users. You might take that under consideration. From what i see on the streets here is that most people speak marginal english, but they (we brazilians, at least most of) will prefer a translated app.
Don't know about the other 4 languages but don't forget that the English which your other respondents place in their lists is the English spoken (and written) outside the US. If you only consider the language itself, pass this off as a joke, but when it comes to localisation (US Eng: localization) of date formats and other stuff, it probably bears more serious effort.
Related
I am planning to design a google action, which will help users to learn some phrases in another language lets say "French". Here is an Example:-
“ok google, let me talk to learn french”
LearnFrench (LF): Hi! This is learn french! Would you like to practice 20 of the most important basic phrases in speaking French?”
user: “Yes”
LF: “Great! I’ll start by telling you a word in French - and you repeat after me. Let’s start with bonjour.
user: bonjour
LF: that was good! Bonjour is the most common greeting you’ll need. Next is "bonsoir" / or let’s try that again, it didn’t quite sound like “bonjour”
user: bonsoir
LF: bonsoir is used as a in the early evening,
etc….continues through 20 or so phrases. After going through those then there could be some type of “recall” practice. LF would say the phrase in English and the user would say the phrase in French. And if the user says it incorrectly then LF “learns” the phrases that the user needs to improve on.
At the end of a session LF would say something like “I think you know the basics here - good luck on your trip”.
If after that session the user came back to LF - LF would know that the user had already come before and would ask if they want to repeat the tutorial - or ask if they want to move straight to the quiz.
Is it possible to have multiple language support?
While Google Assistant is available in other languages, the Actions on Google platform is currently only available in U.S. English and U.K. English. We’re working to make Actions on Google available in other languages, but we don’t have a formal release date. We’ll make announcements to the community with updates as they occur.
If you are already using the invocation name, it is not possible to link it to another project/app.
Thanks,
Actions on Google Support Team
Does Apple provide developers a set of standard terms in differing languages? The reason why I ask is that I'm having portions of my application localized and want standard terminology consistently applied throughout the app. I have utilized some tactics to do this with terms like 'Loading...' by changing the language on my device and observing how Apple has interpreted those terms in other languages. This has only gotten me so far however, and a resource that I can give a translator would go a long way in creating a seamless experience with the consistent application of terminology.
It has been two and a half years since posting my radar, but Apple has finally posted its iOS glossaries:
You can download them from developer.apple.com, or use this link to quickly find them:
https://developer.apple.com/downloads/index.action?name=Glossaries%20-%20iOS
EDIT 29 FEB 2020: This link is still valid and the glossaries have been updated on 15 JAN 2020 with everything updated for iOS 13.3.
At WWDC this year I went to the Localization Lab to get an answer to this question, since a bona fide answer from Apple was needed.
From one of their head cheeses in localization he told me that currently there are not any publicly available resources for download for iOS or Snow Leopard. He did tell me, though, that these resources were slated for release in the coming weeks after WWDC.
This answer will be updated when the information becomes available.
UPDATE 19 JUN 2012: Wow, it has been a whole year now! Obviously Apple didn't come through for us 'in a few weeks'. I did talk to them again this year and was given a contact to follow up with via email. I explained that they made a claim to have it last year and this was the response I got:
I did check with the documentation folks and found that they're still
planning on doing this but it's fallen behind other priorities. If you
haven't already done so, would you mind filing a bug report about
this? That's one of the best ways to convey the desire to the
appropriate people. While I've relayed this feedback to some people
it's always best to have a bug report directly from folks outside of
Apple. Feel free to forward me the bug number and I'll keep an eye on
it.
Our best bet at this point is to keep filling bug reports so that this gets more attention. Just for the record, I did file a bug report last year.
Apple provides a number of translation resources that you can download which may or may not be useful. One of these is AppleGlot, a tool for replacing strings in application resources. A number of XML-based glossaries for different languages are also available, but they're specific to AppleGlot. You may be able to make AppleGlot work for you, or you might just want to extract what you can from the language glossaries. AppleGlot and the glossaries were created to support translation of MacOS applications, so the terms are related to MacOS X and not iOS. Nevertheless, I think it's worth a look.
I was just wondering about the pros and cons of submitting metadata and changing the UI buttons for people who don't speak English.
According to this study there isn't a huge percentage of users who go to stores that aren't in English (all the smaller countries have stores in UK English).
That said, I was wondering if maybe there is some advantage to this? For example, if I submit to the French store I would assume there are less apps with metadata in French and so therefore you might have a better chance of getting featured.
Keep in mind my app is super simple with no network activity and only a couple of buttons I would need to translate.
PS please forgive me if this is not an appropriate question for this site. And feel free to vote to migrate.
There is no disadvantage of providing localised versions of your application. It's probably more a question of knowing your target audience.
Generally one should assume that in a country, which official language is not English, people don't speak English. Of course there are exceptions like Germany were a lot of people do speak English. But usually they still feel more comfortable using their native language. Following your example, French traditionally have a very strong opinion when it comes to languages and will appreciate a French localisation.
Besides users by country you should also take into account the area or business segment you're targeting. Just to give an example: an British pub guide obviously is targeting English speaking people. If you're creating something around renewable energy it could be worth exploring a German version besides an international English one, too since it's really popular in Germany and also supported by government subsidies.
If you can reach your potential users in English a localisation might not be necessary. But the lack of localisations will make it definitely harder to advertise your application. I can't think of an non-localised app have been featured on the German App Store. This might be just bad memory but Apple points out the importance of localisations many times in the documentation.
Since you mentioned your application doesn't actually have that many localisable elements it might be worth the effort anyway. Even if you decide not to do so for the initial release it's worth building your application with future localisation in mind to add localisations in later updates. See that post for more.
There is a disadvantage, and it is that once you add a language, you will be expected to continue supporting it in future releases. It's not nice for someone who uses your app in say Chinese to install an update and find that the app has reverted to English or that some new features are not translated. But in order to continue supporting a language in future releases, you'll have to get new/changed content translated which will cost you (assuming you are paying a translator) and delay your release a little. You'll also have a bigger testing burden.
That said, localization is a great way to attract more users.
Just to clarify, by hacker community group I mean people who just like to get together once a month or once a week to have a beer (or tea or juice) and share with others what they've been working on and maybe even help each other out.
I know this already exists in the general hacking world, but I'm wondering if an iPhone specific one is running.
It would be also good to know if there is one in London, England (where I live). If not, I might consider starting one up! Any interest?
Feel free to comment on any of the above, especially if you are interested in forming one.
Thanks
This should be exactly what you are looking for
London iOS developer group
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1798655
http://iphonedevelopergroup.blogspot.com/
It will also be worth checking out NSCoderNights and CocoaHeads
Hi I'm currently doing some independent development on the iPhone and Mac. Loving the freedom but the single biggest thing I miss about working with a team of developers is the opportunity to talk through design choices and issues with other developers.
I'm not talking about general "humm ..." questions (there is stackoverflow for that ;)) I'm talking about things that are not for public consumption or are very specific to your application. I'm thinking about something that is a little more interactive (for example screen sharing and chatting).
Does such a thing exist?
There are Cocoaheads groups in various cities, that usually have monthly meetings... also there are NSCoder groups, that have a bunch of people working together for a day or so once a week.
IRC sounds like a good place for such discussions. Some iPhone development related channels you may be interested in:
[I don't know any, community wiki'ing this so others can add them]