What is localization? - latest tech tips

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What is localization?

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Localization is the process of translating your product into different languages.  There are many products that can be localized but the market that you should take a closer look at is the mobile game market.  According to market research firm Gartner, “102 billion apps will be downloaded in 2013. 91% of them will be free but they will still generate $26 billion. This will be an increase of 44.4% on 2012's $18 billion.” 

The game market is extremely profitable and for that reason localization should not only be an option but a requirement in terms of profiting higher revenues for your company.  Not only will you profit from localization but you are essentially connecting the world on a global level.

When you take a look at the top 10 list for app downloads, interestingly enough 50% of that list are non-English speaking countries such as Europe and East Asia.  This alone should give you a reason to prioritize localization.  Localizing is simple when you team up with a translation service such as Ackuna. Ackuna is a crowdsourcing platform with thousands of language professionals which are able to translate your next mobile app in various platforms such as iPhone, Android and Blackberry in over 20 different languages.

How is crowd-sourcing reliable you may ask?  Well what could be better then giving your users full power.  By allowing our translators to peer edit each other’s translations, we continue to translate until our users are fully satisfied with our results.    In this day and age our main marketing tools consist of social media products such as Twitter and Facebook.  We are lead by these products due to the fact that everyone wants to feel that they are part of something.  The feeling of being part of a community creates an exceptionally strong feeling of self importance and also creates a learning environment as everyone participates with feedback. 

Ackuna makes the process entire process simple with just a few clicks.  Ackuna works with 10 different file formats including .String (iOS), .XML (Android), .RRC (BlackBerry), .XLF and even .XLS. First simply give your project a name, provide a description and a link to the existing app.  Second upload your source app's files and a crowd of volunteers will translate it until you are satisfied.  The text is returned in the same format with the translations integrated directly into the coding. 

Traslators can choose their projects by scrolling the projects section by languages required.  For each project, the translator will see a list of terms in the original source language, and then they can submit their suggestion for the translated text.  Translations are then peer reviewed and rated based on their accuracy.  Over time this creates an algorithm for the translators.  Similar to Ebay and Amazon’s customer ratings on users, our algorithm method allows are translator’s reputations to be increased or decreased on Ackuna.

The need for localization and accurate translation is greater then ever and translation companies such as Ackuna are able to provide this through top of the line crowdsourcing technology and human translators.

Authors Bio:
Irina Usharenko is a marketing intern at Ackuna. Irina is expected to graduate this
year with a B.A. in Marketing Management from Baruch College, Zicklin School of Business.


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