To craft the ideal message for the audience, you must thoroughly understand regional communication and the way of life. There are numerous barriers to entering new markets, some obvious and foreseeable while others are not. This is true in Asian markets because the regional languages exhibit highly distinctive cultural traits that may make the difference between successful and unsuccessful marketing initiatives.
Localizing software entails making it responsive to your users’ diverse cultural traditions. Contrary to popular belief, this isn’t just a matter of translating text; it also involves looking deeper into details like nuanced references to the direction (right and left vs. East and West) and more mundane things like the proper formats for date and time, formatting, weight, and height, among other things. That is why many choose to work with software localization services.
The following crucial areas should be adjusted when localizing software:
- Icons, symbols, and color schemes
- format for dates and times (including numeric formats)
- text and pictures that could be regarded incorrectly or as sensitive in a particular culture
- currency used
- use of a keyboard
- data collection, alignment, and sorting
- different legal standards
The primary goal of localization is to give the product a look and feel that gives the target market the impression that it was made especially for them.
When businesses localize their software, the app’s developers must make adjustments to satisfy the requirements and preferences of the intended market. Every software that is being localized must follow these steps. However, for this example, let’s focus on a corporation that is localizing its software from Europe to China.
Specific noticeable changes must be made, such as changing the Euros to Yuan and the English to Mandarin. Changes in advertising tactics and profiles on the App store are other distinctions to be aware of. Because China and Europe have different cultures around advertising styles, a direct translation from one to the other is probably not going to be very effective. This makes advertising style adjustments, and photographs utilized all the more crucial. It’s also important to remember that the localized software needs to adhere to Chinese internet censorship laws. Certain types of data collection might be prohibited in one location while requiring a permit in another. A company’s time, money, and resources would be wasted if they invested in localizing software for Chinese users to have it barred by the firewall.
Localizing into markets, especially Chinese markets is challenging, but it can be worthwhile for businesses to invest time and effort.
The Following Technical Problems Could Arise When Localizing Your Software:
- Mobile phones and other gadgets with varying screen sizes or specialized operating systems may be used in various markets. The design or content of your software may suffer if it doesn’t support these platforms or devices.
- A software adaptation for the Asian market can need double-byte characters (this is necessary for Japanese and Chinese languages).
- Arabic and Hebrew are two examples of right-to-left languages that need to be supported by your software. This may also impact the design of your app or game.
Therefore, you must test the software before release to ensure that your layout and content are localized correctly. Create a testing environment for your localized software based on your target market with various devices (or virtual devices) and screen sizes.
Best Practice For Localization
1. Interpret The Data
For instance, a Swedish tech company discovered that it needed to meet its key performance indicators in Indonesia. They could not identify the problem because there needed to be more sign-ups.
After some localization testing, they identified the cause as their onboarding process’ requirement for a last name, which only about 40% of Indonesians possess. Only because they could not, a sizable proportion of Indonesians needed to enroll. An entirely new market of 262 million people opened up once the corporation addressed the problem.
2. Be Culturally Sensitive
The process of localization is more complex than simple translation. Additionally, cultural nuances don’t often transfer well. For instance, a well-known diaper company plastered the typical image of a stork carrying a baby onto the package when it attempted to increase its market share in Japan. When they noticed that sales were declining, they gathered some local knowledge to try and identify the root of the issue.
The company suffered due to a complete loss of cultural reference. They rapidly learned that the legend in Japan is that enormous peaches, not storks, bring infants to their parents! By using localization testing, you can prevent any awkward or, worse still, offensive errors resulting from cultural differences.
Another hazard, aside from accidentally offending someone, is neglecting to make your product adaptive for all language content. The user interface, for instance, needs to be evaluated to ensure it can handle text with longer lengths without distorting the alignment and accommodating different writing directions.
More than various alphabets and characters need to be taken into account. Consider spelling variations, coding schemes, monetary symbols, hotkeys, HTML, and hyperlinks. Particular countries will require a different date and time formats and phone number forms. Then there are local licensing rules, weights and measurements, and calendar variations.
In this domain, various circumstances need to be covered via human testing. This can be accomplished using crowdsourced testing, which allows access to many testers from multiple nations and languages.
3. Pick A Partner With A Worldwide Presence
It can be challenging to get localization right, but you can do it with others. Many professionals have the necessary infrastructure and a guaranteed capability to test and deploy items in international marketplaces. You can save time and money by implementing a highly effective localization testing procedure with the assistance of these companies.
You may reach globally by working with a reputable local software localization company without engaging independent testing teams worldwide.
Native-speaking translators of a particular language have the essential expertise in dealing with various populations and can modify your translations to fit your location precisely. To respect cultural nuances and norms, they will choose the language and substance with care to prevent miscommunication and inappropriate wording. Utilizing software localization services helps expedite the process and prevent any issues brought on by cultural variations when localizing your app for the Asian market.
Final Though
Localizing your software for use in the Asian market is undoubtedly the best decision ever. For example, China alone vastly outpaces other nations in terms of the amount of time spent using mobile apps and the money generated by them. Asia accounts for 41% of all app sales revenue in the world. There is something to think about!