Mobile app translation in 13 languages

A multilingual project is always a challenge of coordination and of working in different time zones and with translators from different cultures. The ambitious goal of MyKronoz to become a world reference in the manufacture of smart watches has led this manufacturer to create a dream design that sells internationally.

Translating the app from its original English into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Polish, Korean, Traditional and Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Thai, and Russian presented two basic challenges inherent in any mobile app translation. 

Visualization of the interface

The translation of mobile applications is especially difficult for translators due to the lack of context caused by the impossibility of searching for the word in the interface in order to contextualize it. However, on this occasion our client was able to provide the different software screens developed during the design phase, which allowed translators to easily search for a word that needed context to be understood.

The other strategy that becomes necessary during this type of translations was the participation of the client to answer the doubts that arose and to offer an explanation of certain functions of the app that clarified the correct meaning of the questioned words.

Custom filter

For the translation of the app, The translation agency AbroadLink had the usual team of translators working for MyKronoz, for which it was necessary to create a specific filter to extract the text that needed to be translated from the file created by the MyKronoz's developers that contained the text of the app. Although all translators worked in SDL Studio, we use the greater flexibility offered by MemoQ to create text filters and from here we export the file that we finally use in SDL Studio.