Will you localize the app into my language?
I often receive requests to localize my apps into other languages. There are several reasons why I avoid this:
- I update my apps quite frequently — every string update would require updating all the localized languages, which would slow down the release process considerably. When users offer to translate the app, they usually mean translating the current version. However, what I would need is continuous translation support for every future release. And nobody can promise they'll have time to translate an update three years from now, in the second week of July.
- To mitigate the problems above, I could use a professional app translation service with guaranteed availability. The problem with these companies is that they employ translators who aren't IT experts, and I'm worried that because the app is full of very technical terms, the result will be awful. And not knowing the language, I wouldn't be able to verify the quality of the translation.
- The layout of the user interface is optimized for certain string sizes. Each translation would be of a different length, so some texts could start to overflow or be truncated in the user interface.
- I'm Czech, so English isn't my native language. But I always prefer the English terminology when IT is involved. My operating system language is set to English and all applications are in English. The English terminology is the most established, and I'm often quite confused when I read Czech translations of some terms. And frankly, if you don't understand words like "server", "network", "gateway", "IP", "DNS", "download", "upload", "history", "Start", "Stop", etc., the app isn't for you.