What is software localization?
Software localization is the process of adapting software to both the culture and language of an end user. Companies localize software to overcome cultural barriers and ensure their products reach a much larger target audience.
A software product that has been localized properly has the look and feel of a product originally written and designed for the target market. Imagine trying to set up a new TV, laptop or phone in a language you do not understand – it is likely to be time-consuming, frustrating, and even impossible. Although changing the language of a product’s user interface is crucial to ensuring electronic devices are usable, software localization goes beyond this. It also involves changes to visual layout and design elements to make software look and feel natural to the target user.
More about software localization
- Analysis of the material received, and evaluation of the tools and resources required for localization
- Cultural, technical and linguistic assessment
- Creation and maintenance of terminology glossaries
- Translation into the target language
- Adaptation of the user interface, including resizing of forms and dialog boxes, as required
- Localization of graphics, scripts or other media containing visible text, symbols, etc
- Compilation and build of the localized files for testing
- Linguistic and functional quality assurance
- Project delivery
- Work together effectively and use fewer development resources by connecting everyone in the translation process
- Eliminate disjointed processes and save time for project managers with simple handling of projects in fewer manual steps and control over the whole process
- Increase translation quality with built-in quality assurance (QA) checks to ensure quality remains high, and leverage terminology resources to increase consistency
- Enable quicker time to market with support for agile development processes to easily manage more frequent and smaller content handoffs
- Meet all your translation needs with all language versions of software shipped simultaneously
