12 The Linguist Vol/61 No/1 2022
thelinguist.uberflip.com
FEATURES
Michal Glowacki considers the many challenges of app
localisation, from grammatical gender to lack of context
Last year, I received an interesting email from
one of my best clients, letting me know that
they had just signed a contract for the
localisation of an innovative app for active
lifestyle enthusiasts (read: people like me).
Sports, app and marketing? 'Bring it on!' I
thought. Now, more than 25 batches and
seven months later, it's done. There were
some familiar challenges, but each with very
specific app-related considerations.
Consistency. I've completed many app
localisation projects but none as
comprehensive as this one. Together, me, my
editor and the other language translators
localised the Android app, iOS app, backend
(customer-facing communication, emails), web
platform, website and everything in between.
In total this amounted to more than 100,000
words over more than 13,000 strings of text.
This posed our first challenge: consistency.
When working over such an extended
period of time, and with so many different
types of content arriving one by one, you
need to put extra focus on consistency. All
User Interface (UI) elements need to be
translated in the same way, and if they are
mentioned elsewhere (FAQs, manuals,
feature descriptions etc), they have to be
named correctly, or users will get lost.
We approached this from multiple
directions. First we developed a glossary of
key terms and feature names. This was
translated and reviewed, and then approved
by the end client. Next we used the TM
(translation memory) function of our CAT tool
extensively. The last stage was the testing
phase, which enabled us to smooth any kinks
and pick up anything that was still
inconsistent or misleading in the final content.
Space. Typically space in apps is very limited,
but if you work from English into another
language, your localised copy will usually
grow. This is a major issue when localising
apps, especially for smartphones and even
more so for wearables (e.g. smart watches or
GPS computers). The best example of this for
my language combination is the word 'name',
which is usually translated as imię i nazwisko in
Polish if it refers to people. That is more than
twice the length. Another example is 'retry',
typically translated as spróbuj ponownie. Many
app developers don't take this into account;
if the copy is too long, it will either overflow
or completely throw off the layout.
We explored several avenues to tackle the
issue. The best solution for this and a
multitude of other problems is a preview
(ideally live). It doesn't solve the length
limitation difficulty but it does remove the
question 'How much space do we have?' We
not only had a preview but also an emulator,
which allowed us to input strings in the target
version and see how they fitted the layout.
Once the translator knows how much space
there is, we can reword and simplify the copy
accordingly. Trasa została pomyślnie zapisana
('route was successfully saved') can become
Zapisano trasę ('route saved') and Upewnij się,
że wpisana nazwa jest prawidłowa ('Ensure
the entered name is correct') can become
Sprawdź wpisaną nazwę ('Check entered
name'). The downside is that we have to be
extra careful not to alter the original meaning.
Variables and numbers. Polish, like many
Slavic languages, includes grammatical cases,
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