Localization Academy

Translating Without Source Text, What3words App Localization

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Can you imagine translating with no source text? Monese is trying a new approach to localization. Translators take on a hybrid role of copywriters and are not limited by the source text. Can this work?

This episode was recorded on a live stream. I started my Twitch channel with the goal to show localization live. Full transparency, no bullshit. Catch me LIVE at http://bit.ly/AndrejZitoLIVE

More topics:

  • How what3words localized their unique app
  • How to ensure you’re getting good quality?

This is episode #14 of my speaking practice, also known as the Localization Podcast 🙂 #localization​ and #translation​ news across social media delivered to you by the power of my voice. #podcast


Andrej Zito 

This will be Episode Number 14 of the localization podcast. Hello, everyone, this is Andre. I’m recording this one on Thursday, which is very, very late. And also, it’s late in the day. It’s 11:18pm. The reason why I’m starting this late is because I moved back to Vancouver. And it was the first week back into office. So I was a little bit, you know, out of control out of the routine. So I was I don’t know, I was, I was catching up, you know, like coming to the work in the morning. then going back, I was so tired. So I did the preparation for the podcast. I think it was actually prepared two days ago, but yesterday, I I didn’t start recording. I’m starting right now. And there’s a big reason why I’m starting only now. And that reason is Twitch, ladies and gentlemen. So I mentioned this in one of the earlier episodes, that that is kind of like my goal.

Andrej Zito 

I think I actually mentioned it in the last episode number 13 that if I grow my balls, the next episode will actually be live streamed on Twitch. And so it seems I just needed these few days to to grow my balls. Because right now 11:20pm Thursday, I’m actually live streaming on Twitch. So for those of you that don’t know what Twitch is, Twitch is mainly a streaming platform for gaming. So you play a game and you live stream it to everyone who can just tune into your channel. You show your skills, you interact with the with chat, you show the game, you can talk you cannot talk. But there are also other categories in Twitch. So you don’t have to just play the game. And for me, this is not my first venture into live streaming. Actually, I tried to live stream before. And I had the idea of live streaming A long time ago, actually when I was working on my startup.

Andrej Zito 

And the whole reason was that I just wanted to basically go full transparency mode. And I just wanted to show like how I basically built the whole thing from the ground up. And I still like that idea. I think it’s kind of like the future. So my goal with this is not just not just livestream, the podcast, or like content creation. But what I really want to do. And this is something that I’ll be focusing on, this will be kind of like my main priority. And that is that I wanna basically livestream localization. And of course, I cannot livestream or share anything that I do with work, because that will be like a huge, of course, violation of NDA and stuff like that. So the only way for me to live stream localization in practice, is if I start making my own content, that then I can use as a source for localization. So that is the that is the plan.

Andrej Zito 

I already bought the domain with my name long time ago. So I just need to set up the WordPress, which is, I think, something that I’ll be doing over the weekend, hopefully. And with all the content, like especially like just just this podcast, I think the idea will be that if there are some key key ideas or key size or commentary, I’m going to try to turn it into articles. So these articles are basically posts on my website. And then I’ll try to find a way how to localize them. I still don’t know how to do it, because like I don’t want to pay translators. But I think there’s a pretty decent chance that I could find somebody to do it for free, because in return, they will get exposure and hopefully, maybe it will be even interesting for them to actually walk away. content that is about localization. So, yeah, so the plans are actually big. We can start with a website translation.

Andrej Zito 

But then I want to venture into other types of localization so that you get like a full, full experience of localizing and see like how I would approach localization, maybe, I mean, hopefully you can, many of you can learn something from this. And I also want to make it a more interactive experience. And as I said, full transparency. So that’s the idea. If by any chance, you really, really are interested in this idea, just hit me up and let me know what you think about us. So that was the first thing that I wanted to say. The second thing is, if you are watching my YouTube channel, you might have noticed that I re uploaded all the podcast videos. And I also edited most of the episodes on the podcasting platforms. And the reason for that was that I was asked to remove the sensitive information that I’ve definitely had in almost all of the episodes.

Andrej Zito 

So yeah, I did that. And I’m actually very, very happy that I was asked to do this at this kind of like early stage, it was just 13 episodes. And like, the audience is pretty small. It’s growing, but it’s still small. So I’m happy that there was like, No, legal, there were no legal consequences. Because that’s something that I really don’t want to be facing. So, yeah, so I cleaned up all the things that were related to my current job, or like when I was like hinting at the clients, I think, and I really hope that like, if I’m referencing, like my old employer years, order old customers that we were working for, I hope that that will be fine, at this point. And so yeah, so going forward, I will try to be more careful about what I say and how I reference my experience that I gained throughout my career.

Andrej Zito 

So these are two main things that I think that I wanted to mention about the localization podcast. So I’m still live. Yeah, I’m live. So with that being said, it’s almost eight minutes in. So I have a couple of articles. And I’m actually very happy. I don’t know why I wasn’t doing this before. But before that when I was commuting, and if you have guys, if you guys have watched my most successful video on YouTube that I made, it’s the one about toggle. That was my first educational video. And so far, it’s like really still getting a lot of traffic from YouTube search. So in that video, I said it, I’m trying to like maximize my time with something valuable. And so with all the commuted I have to do Monday through Thursday, so far, like before, coming back from the Philippines, I was I was mainly listening to podcasts.

Andrej Zito 

So it was usually Tim Ferriss podcast, or Gary V’s audio. But now, I finally started actually using the time to work on the podcast preparation, because that’s, that’s a really good time for me to just browse through the social media and see what’s happening there. So actually, I was doing that on Tuesday, Wednesday, and even today, I think, today I was already preparing for the for the next week because I actually am behind. So I’m actually covering what happened on social media the week before. And where was I going with this? Yeah, so that’s, that’s a better way for me to use my time because I think I was mentioning it at some point. That if I look at my total report, I do spend a lot of time in a week for learning and listening to podcast. I also log it as learning time.

Andrej Zito 

But I think like I need to minimize the time of learning because it’s because I need to do more practical things. So yeah, so I’m happy that I started doing that. And actually, the whole commute to Office actually close pretty fast. Because like, once you start engaging like in some meaningful activity, then just, you know, the few stuff, they just pass by very fast. Anyway, it’s 11 minutes. So maybe one more technical question. So hopefully, I’ll finish the intro before we hit 15 minutes. The technical thing is that since I’m streaming this content, live on Twitch, I actually started using my webcam that I had at home that I purchased long, long time ago, when I was thinking of starting streaming on Twitch. So I finally started using this. And because I have that, and because the whole stream can be downloaded.

Andrej Zito 

For those of you who are used to this link or watching the podcast on YouTube, I won’t be using my regular camera for this one. Because it’s not easy to connect. I’m not sure if it’s possible. I know it’s possible with DSLR cameras, but I’m not sure if it’s possible with my cheap camera to connect it to PC so that it acts as a webcam. And then I could connect it to OBS. So So yeah, but I tested it before I started recording this session. And I think the quality is pretty, pretty decent. I was even considering of buying light. But like a special light. It’s called like a ring, ring light or LED ring or something like that. But I guess for now I just do it what I have. It’s not a bath. It’s not a bath. Yeah. So that’s, that’s it for the intro. So now I’m going to switch the scene and let’s start looking at the articles that I have.

Andrej Zito 

So I have 12345 articles from the previous week. And I might skip some of them. It depends on how how much I will talk with this articles, because it’s already 1131. And I think like my ID is actually this probably naive. But when it was, I really want to get like get this out. So once I finish the recording, which might be one hour, maybe I’ll continue working on editing. Because normally I want to finish the editing, especially for the video part before I go to sleep so that I can start exporting it while I’m sleeping. And then the next day, I want to publish it. And since it’s already Thursday, tomorrow, it’s Friday. So ideally, I should be posting the new episodes on podcast platforms and on YouTube tomorrow. because technically on Saturday, that’s when I should be already working on the next episode 15. So anyway, this is Episode 14. And let’s look at the first article.

Andrej Zito 

So the first article, it’s, it’s from Lindsey, probably the top research company right now. They do a lot of interesting stuff, but you also have to pay for some of them. And this article is about one lady that says goodbye source text. So this lady’s Julia tardy. She’s the head of localization at monese. And she asked everyone during the process Innovation Challenge at Lock world where she presented a different approach that she named goodbye source text. So what is this all about? So Julia and her team ended up screaming wrapping the whole idea of having sourced X to begin with. Instead, the content design team at monese creates a brief which describes the functionality of a button or a screen within the app. From there, it is the linguists responsibility to imagine what the best translation would be.

Andrej Zito 

The critical point behind this idea is that the linguists imagination is not hindered by the original source text. Essentially, they are the end users of the app. Julia and her team have leveraged negative user feedback, filtering in through customer services to pilot this new method for two languages, Romanian and Bulgarian, and they have done it to great success. They concentrated their efforts on the first few screens, a potential end user has to go through in the money’s app, the resulting translation has led to a sizable increase in user conversion conversion. At the same time, the series of improvements, the workflow has the team on track to reduce licensing costs by 80%. So when I was recently reading this for the first time, they’re a couple of things that I’m going to be challenging a little bit, I know that I have not achieved anything, I wasn’t appraised by anyone for coming up with some revolutionary idea.

Andrej Zito 

But basically what this means, if you are as a translator who doesn’t get the exact source text, but you just get a brief basically means that you are kind of like a copywriter. Because you have to basically write the copy from scratch. So it is true that you are not hindered by the original source source text. Which actually, where the quality might not be super great. It depends on the English copywriter. But also may be kind of like limits. Like how you would naturally describe like a button or like a feature or like a screen. If you could just start like from scratch in your own native language. So this is definitely an interesting approach. To me, it’s kind of like the next step.

Andrej Zito 

Next up after transcreation. So for transcreation, you still have the source text, but you are kind of like free to adapt it and you should adapt it. And you can bend it, you can change it. So this one is you have no source text, and you just start with a blank slate. But the problem that I see here actually is that the people who usually write the book documentation, or actually in this case, because they’re talking about conversions, so it’s like marketing copy that’s highly visible on the landing pages and throughout the I don’t know signup process or the payment, the checkout process. I think that you usually need to have like a certain skill. And you definitely need to have like a little bit of like marketing. Marketing background, like especially like copywriting would be really helpful that you can actually produce something reasonable from scratch if you don’t have the source text.

Andrej Zito 

But with this approach, because like we were talking about nmt in almost every episode in almost every episode, and there’s like this idea that maybe translators will need to change their role, if empty becomes really, really good. So this could be actually one of the ways how they could adapt to empty. So for content that’s like really highly visible and highly critical to some of the business goals. Instead of just referencing to the source text these new translators slash copywriters could just get like a brief, which describes what certain features are about what is the goal of the page or the button and it will be up to them to write a copy from scratch in the native language. The second part that I read is so they concentrated their efforts on the first few screens, potential end user has to go through in the mommy’s app.

Andrej Zito 

So if they’re talking about potential end user, it means it’s someone that still hasn’t sign up or like completed the registration process. So they’re just learning like about the app. It’s really like the top of the funnel, please, for example, like landing page, and the resulting crustacean has led to a sizable increase in user conversion. Yeah, okay. So this is the funny thing that I forgot to say. So this is a quote from her, I’d read a spend 90% of our localization budget, on the 15% of content, which drives conversion. So this is, this is like a nice thing, especially like if you say that you have weighed the monster, metric for like, how they how much they increase the conversion, trying to find it now. I can see it. So what I wanted to say is that this is basically not a new thing. It’s about defining the scope of localization.

Andrej Zito 

So of course, if you increase your efforts, and you I don’t know, let’s say, hire like better translators that can do like copywriting from scratch, and you just have them focus on the few pages that lead to conversion, of course, you’re going to see an increase. Because you’re putting much more effort and resources and money on to those few key areas. But then the question is, if you increase budget, like she’s saying, like, she would like to spend 90% of the budget, which drives conversion, but what happens after that, like conversion is just like the first initial step of getting a user. But once the user converts, whether it’s just like he signs up, or if they track conversion, as somebody who like, I don’t know, registers for like, sorry, look signs up for like a monthly subscription plan, I’m not sure what their app actually does. Be free to work, whatever.

Andrej Zito 

So the question is, like, what happens after the conversion, like after the conversion, you still, especially if you provided like such a good quality during the conversion process? The thing that I’m challenging is, what will be the quality after the conversion? Because like, you can convert someone, but then it’s about all about retention and loyalty. And if you spend 90% of your budget, just to get somebody converted, then my question is, what the quality will be like after the conversion process, like all the texts that that visible to the user, after they convert, which probably is the day to day usage of the app or your service. Then, if you spend 90%, on the conversion part, you’re technically left with 10% of your budget to cover the rest. So So even if you drive up the conversion rates, through increased effort and spending on the pages that lead to conversion.

Andrej Zito 

The question is, how will the retention rates look like if the rest of your site or app is pretty much crap, or it’s like significantly worse than the first impression that the customers got when they converted? Okay, let’s continue with the article. Where localization meets user experience. If we take a step back, it’s not necessarily about a localized end product. The effort to localize should go hand in hand with improving user experience. Positive UX then drives conversion. Imagine a localized app, which has better conversion rates in English and in German. On the one hand, a German user base exists precisely because there is a localized version of the app. On the other hand, it’s not growing quite as fast as the English one. In Julius own words. It’s bad UX often comes from poorly translated content.

Andrej Zito 

It’s this idea of integrating localization upstream and influencing product development that Julia was able to act upon in her in one of her earlier stints as the head of localization at badoo badoo. She says, I wanted to move localization from customer services into product development. What I did was I looked at big companies such as Google, or TripAdvisor, to see where localization was integrated there and whether it was successful. The idea was to work on localization becoming effective for growth. During her time at Badu, she helped grow the number of supportive languages of the platform of the 43 while doubling conversion and boosting revenue back to 10 times in mid tier markets. This part I can definitely support, like moving localization from customer services into product development. So more upstream.

Andrej Zito 

There’s definitely a very good approach that I think most of the companies still have to go through. I think in Episode 12, we covered tactics, how to evangelize globalization, it was article from Bruno Hernan Herrmann, sorry. And I think there’s like close collaboration with other teams. And including, I mean, involving localization involving localization from early stages, or like, from the basic web, the whole inception of from the whole inception of the idea of a product until the product is like on the market. That I think it’s something very important. So that localization is not just like seeing like, Oh, hey, I just need to translate this because like we’re going into new markets are like we have customers in like China or whatever. But it’s really more like a concentrated and like a strategic approach, like from the very start. So Yep.

Andrej Zito 

Okay, let’s continue to challenge what challenge only it giants such as Amazon, or Google, or really have the resources for constant experimentation, opportunities to try something new don’t come around often. Julia agrees, saying that it takes a specific leader to convince the team to try a track record on developing localization programs and different companies helps to get bind to everything needs to change at moneys, Julia says, Even the way we do English, if all languages are created from a brief English has to be produced as the same time at the same time as the other languages. We had to design a custom workflow add a custom issue type in JIRA to keep track of this process. So a couple of things, saying that only Amazon or Google has resources for constant experimentation. I think that’s not true.

Andrej Zito 

Of course, the question is, how expensive The experimentations are, but like in this case, like if you basically just scrap the whole source text, and you just give your translators like brief, I don’t think that’s like a very expensive experiment. I think the problem, actually with the idx giants, and like big companies in general is that they’re afraid to experiment, because they’re finally just what has been working so far. And unless something is going really wrong, or maybe they have like an impulse, or like a feedback from the end users, that something is wrong, which could point back to localization, then they don’t have any reason to try to experiment and innovate. And actually, if you’re listening, if you’re like a stable listener, if you’re like, if you listen to the podcasts regularly, you know that I have a lot of ideas based on these articles.

Andrej Zito 

And I just need to find the place to put them in a practice, which basically means doing all different kinds of experiments. So going back to what I was saying, in the intro, That’s the reason why I want to create my own content so that I can do a lot of experiments on that content and share everything with you. And maybe that’s one way how we can showcase experimentation and innovation. So the second part, where she says, JIRA custom workflow, custom issue type, I have been working with JIRA. Since one of these with Autodesk, I really love to run all the Atlassian products. So this doesn’t seem like a surprise to me just to design a workflow and issue type. Yeah, and then she says that English has to be produced at the same time as a language. So this is a very good point.

Andrej Zito 

For example, with Autodesk, and I’m pretty sure that this is like the goal for most of the localization departments at large companies. And the goal is sim ship, or reducing the delta between English and locals like localized languages as much as possible. So that all the customers around the world get the news or the product or the updates or whatever, pretty much at the same time. So with this approach, it’s definitely possible because basically, you’re creating the source for all languages at the same time. Because you think about it, if there’s no source text is needed means that every language has their has its own source text. Okay, next port. resourcing and subsequent pricing of localization efforts have been a challenge onto themselves. With goodbye source text, there is no price per word, because there is no text to translate.

Andrej Zito 

Julia works with freelancers, at least they’re paid on an hourly basis for the work they put in, when they are on boarded. They need to perform a test to see how they perform without the crutch of a text. Hip, I would be really interested like if they’re actually looking for translators that have some copywriting experience. Actually, if you think about it, it’s like kind of strange, because like the whole copy special, like the marketing copy, usually needs to follow some brand guidelines. So I’m wondering if the brief that they give to translators, if they also have some, no brand guidelines for each language, so that the freelancers know, kind of like the boundaries, or like the tone that they should use, not to translate the source text, but to create to create a copy from scratch. And that would be really interested in seeing how their onboarding process works like next showy.

Andrej Zito 

Why don’t we just do some research right away? So I’m going to Google monies and I’m going to try to see if they have some job postings for freelancers. So my knees open a current account in the UK. Is that how far are we? Oh my god, it’s already 35 minutes. And this is just the first article. Oh, gosh. Okay, so I’m loading their page. And everything is actually very slow. Right now because because of the streaming and we’re their current pages. There we go. That should be somewhere your company careers. That’s that. Let’s see. Okay, commercial community positions, compliance, customer support, customer support for different languages, but I assume that’s not it. Engineering finance, General marketing operations product project manage man. I didn’t find it. So I don’t know how it looks like.

Andrej Zito 

I’m actually thinking thinking that maybe I should just contact Julia. actually have her listen to what I said. I’m pretty sure that they have bought it out and maybe just not clear to me from this short article. So where were we? So yeah, I think earlier in the article, it said that they just tested this for two languages. I think it was yet a Romanian and Bulgarian. And so their next step is to life this this on all of the 12 languages that moniece currently supports. In effect, this approach lends itself well to certain content type. marketing content, for example, works well with this model. Things like push notifications, billboards, or ad campaigns are well suited to this approach. Any other type of content where the text is sufficiently short, meaning it can fit in a single paragraph will work well to?

Andrej Zito 

I don’t see this approach viable for all content? Certainly not for something like translating a novel. So yeah, of course, like, if you have like some huge documentation is like we used to translate back in the days, and they still probably exist in some online form. Let’s say, I don’t know, documentation for like Windows 10, or something like that, then yeah, probably that would be like a very costly thing, if all the localized versions had to be basically written from scratch, and you will also need like a huge knowledge of the product, which actually brings me back to their whole approach. I think that the translators actually have to kind of like be involved in the product development, because like, they should know to predict, well, if they are supposed to be writing the copy.

Andrej Zito 

I mean, like, if you think about, like, the general landing pages, like there’s just like, the unique value proposition and just like that, you know, like, how can we translate or come up with a value proposition for like a product or for like, a whole startup on their own? No, maybe they have like a brief. But even then, I don’t know. Is there anything else for this article? No. That’s all that we have for this article. I’m already recording for 40 minutes. Wow. So that was the first article moving on. second article. second article is, from what three words. And it’s on medium.com. And the title is five ways to create a global app with a local feel. So this is not experience shared by LSP. This is coming directly from Well, you could say the buyer, but is basically like the company that actually produces but creates this app.

Andrej Zito 

So and I did do some highlighting some of the parts before. But for some reason, I didn’t save properly. So I’ll just try to find the important things. So what three words? Let’s that’s one name of the company is used in 193. countries. And their users are using their app for everything from planning meetups, with friends to finding their Airbnb is easier car navigation, smoother deliveries and foster emergency response. But making an app available to an international audience successful It is not easy. There are hurdles to overcome in every region. It can be expensive and never ending rabbit hole. In this article guide you through the approach we’re taking to localization at what three words and some important insights we’ve learned along the way. So for those of you that know, don’t know, and I really didn’t get it by the name, what three words, but I think I’ve heard about this solution before.

Andrej Zito 

I’m not sure if they’re the only ones or if there are other companies and apps that do this thing. But basically what what three words does is that they are able to generate a dress name which is composed of three words and they can do it for They basically based on GPS coordinates, I think when I looked at their website, I think it’s like, they basically slice the whole. For two, I think it’s five by five or no, sorry, it’s probably three by three meters, or feet. And so each each parcel, but each part of this, each part of our world, the three by three, basically has like an address assigned to it that’s made up of three words. So the combination, of course, is unique. But it could be something like Apple, Apple dot laptop, that camera. So that could be an address that would only be unique to like a specific GPS coordinates on earth.

Andrej Zito 

And when I heard about this solution, before, it’s really just stuck somewhere in my mind when I was reading this article. So if you are listening to this podcast, you probably live in a more developed country. So you know, we have the regular addresses, we have house numbers and stuff like that we have postal codes. But for example, in places like Africa, where there are no roads, there are no street names and stuff like that this system can actually help people know the location, like where they have to go or where they have to deliver something and stuff like that, oh, I hated when I say stuff like that, with so many times. Anyway. So that was about what three words would they do, I think the idea is very brilliant behind the app. So let’s look at how they approach localization. So what they learned, number one look as their system that’s pretty evident.

Andrej Zito 

Most of the world speaks one of 10 main languages, it would have been easy for us to make three word addresses available in just those languages. However, to create a system that people want to use, it needs to feel natural and intuitive to them, which means it has to be available in their native talks. So we set out set out to make what three words available in as many languages as possible. We currently have three. So but we currently have three, we currently have 36, what three words languages, with nine more scheduled for release by the end of this year. While we develop what three words for each of these different languages, we’ll learn several important insights that may help teams embarking on a similar process. This brings us on to insight number two, which is every language has its quirks.

Andrej Zito 

So the first quirk is problem with a very long words. And remember, that’s what the app basically does every part of the world is basically a combination of three different worlds. So German words can be very long, to the extent that some three word addresses would not fit in our address field. Because of this, we had to update the map to detect the length of a three word address, then adjust the font size accordingly. So for those of you that are just listening, there’s a screenshot here, which shows the app. And on the left side, there’s English, which has the address dominantly insert assumes. And on the right side, that’s German, which I cannot even read, because like the font is really small. But there’s like something something something like it’s really long. That’s the German words.

Andrej Zito 

So in order to fit the whole address in the field on phone, so that you don’t have to, I don’t know like scroll something. They had to reduce the font, but the solution created another challenge. We came across three word addresses so long that the resulting tiny font size caused accessibility issues. Although these addresses are less likely to be used, we’ve assigned longer words to more remote locations, were experimenting with solutions. So they still don’t have like the optimal solution. Correct. Number two spelling variations. Again, German many languages, you can have multiple spellings of the same word. For example, in German, you can spell shuna. When boom loud, you can spell it Oh, he instead of the woman out, or you can ignore the home loud completely. All of these are completely valid.

Andrej Zito 

Well, you spellings of the same word, or system, therefore needs to be able to detect that these are the same word, and autocorrect it to one chosen spelling. Interesting, right to left alignment matters. To make our app intuitive for right to left, lining languages, like Arabic created a mirror version of the entire app interface. And again, there’s a screenshot. And basically everything is mirrored there. Another quirk is good etiquette. So there would be little point making three word addresses available in 36 different languages, the rest of the what? Three words interface wasn’t also translated. Luckily, we don’t have that much copy within the app. So this isn’t too difficult. However, even the small amount of copy uncovered some quirks. For example, in English, we say welcome back, Nikki, pretty normal harbor in Korean, you simply would not address someone by their first name in this context.

Andrej Zito 

To address this, we updated the language strings used to form this message. So instead, the order of text translates as forecast, Nikki, welcome back. This might seem a small detail. But if a Korean open an app and read will come back, Nikki, they would instantly know it was made by a company that doesn’t understand their culture. So this was a little bit surprising to me. Although I know that some of the Asian languages, and I was mainly thinking about Japanese are like very, very sensitive about this. And you have to be like, very polite. So actually check this with my Korean colleague today. And she said, Yeah, it’s true that you usually don’t address people by the first name. And we were looking at this together and the example that they said that how they actually translated his forecast, Nikki will come back.

Andrej Zito 

So I was first confused by word forecast forecast. But I think in this case, it basically means like the last name. So they are addressing their users with the last name and first name, and welcome back. So attention to detail is everything. Okay, let’s move to from quirks. Those are all the quirks. Let’s move to insight number three, which is regional challenges. Every region that your product will be used will uncover new challenges. When faced with this challenges, it’s important to weigh up the impact on their user base against the cost of a solution. Here’s a few examples of challenges we’ve come across with our app and how we address them. I’m running out of breath costs open data, the cost of mobile data in different regions can vary enormously, especially when compared against the local average living wage.

Andrej Zito 

This was a particular issue in South Africa, where we discovered users were reluctant were reluctant to download our app due to its file size, as discussed earlier. Our app my recording, as discussed earlier, our app is available in 36 different languages. However, we soon discovered that getting the user to download on the languages that they need, it reduced the average file size of the app by how this increased downloads by 60% when we a be tested in Colombia, which also has comparatively comparatively expensive data charges. However, even at the small size, the 65 megabyte average size of our app still reduces the accessibility to what three words, which is why over the next few months, we’ll be optimizing and improving our map site to reduce the reliance on users downloading our app.

Andrej Zito 

Although a website version may not be able to provide an optimal and experience as a native app, it could increase access to core features. GPS accuracy. Was there anything here? our app relies on the GPS of the user’s device to help find their current location and three word address However, the currency sorry, however, the curacy the accuracy of the GPS can vary between devices, and also affected by other. And it’s also affected by other factors such as proximity to tall buildings and atmospheric conditions. This is something we have absolutely no control over. However, we’ve discovered that providing an estimated three word address, as long as we notify the user that it’s an estimate suffices for most situations, especially in emergencies where time is precious, the user is notified of the accuracy of the GPS via the size of the blue circle.

Andrej Zito 

And they can choose to refine the three word address by using geographical landmarks on the satellite view to pinpoint the exact location if required. The best, this is inside number four, the best localization is local integration. So this talks about the team wants to make the best app and it should be accessible to the largest audience possible. And for that they want to integrate with as many apps as and services as possible. This is because when people use it within apps that they already use, the user experience is more seamless than having to download and learn to use a new app. That’s very important. Therefore, it’s important. Therefore, it’s important to consider the user experience from a holistic level and consider how your product fits into the lives of your users.

Andrej Zito 

Although you may not have control over the design and implementation, local integration can improve your product accessibility, and get more people using your product. And final insight is diversity is key. At what three words, I may be in the minority because I only speak one language. We have people from all over the world working in our London office. We also have offices in South Africa, Mongolia and Saudi Arabia, filled with people that have a deep understanding of each region, our network of 50 native language, consultants, pair language, are also very much a part of the community. This knowledge base is invaluable when it comes to understanding local cultural sensitivities. marketing trends are crucially, whether or not the app actually works in a region.

Andrej Zito 

Many issues we’ve come across could not be recreated or diagnose from an office in London, we need local knowledge. As we’ve seen, localizing an app can be an expensive process, as well as a bit of a rabbit hole. some challenges you’ll be able to foresee while others you only come across once people start using your app in their region. Rising each of these challenges is an opportunity to improve your product and can make for an incredibly rewarding experience. It’s amazing to be receiving positive feedback from people using the word pre words app all around the world. And a significant step in our journey towards becoming global addressing standards. Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention one, put a marker here. Because this is a little bit off. So one thing that I forgot to mention in the beginning, I mentioned that I cleaned up all the episodes.

Andrej Zito 

And in order to do that, I actually had to listen to my very own podcast. And it was the first time that I actually did that. So after 13 episodes, it was the first time that I listened to a full episode. And I listened to, I listened to all the episodes from the beginning to the end. So I can kind of understand like how you guys feel when you are listening to this. And I really liked the episode one was talking about my engineering experience from robbia. And the reason for that is not only because like I was sharing, like a lot of my experience, and I could contribute a lot, but it’s mainly because I was speaking more fluently. The other episodes I make, like a lot of long pauses, actually is quite new for me.

Andrej Zito 

Because especially like when I’m reading something new, that kind of like makes me think about stuff and I then like need to like voice my new ideas that maybe I just got like on the spot as I was reading your article, I really have to think like about words that I use. And it’s not like to be like careful about what I say, although I have to be more careful about that. But it’s mainly because like, I’m thinking about it, and I’m trying to formulate the sentences. So I guess, sharing my experience, it’s more natural. And it’s like, not natural, but it’s more easier for me to share and talk about. So, yes, so I listened to everything I had to do like my voice. I think that’s not an issue.

Andrej Zito 

So it’s usually, um, that’s another thing is that, and Rs. And so this is something that could be actually fixed, both the pauses, and the atoms and arms could be fixed in post processing. And actually, I still do have that task on my backlog. I mentioned it may be in the previous episode, or maybe even the episode before that, I want to find an editor, especially now that I started live streaming, I think, and I really, really hope that the content that I’ll be able to create more content on the go, rather than what I used to do before, like, you know, like crap, and I don’t know, then I record myself, and then I have to edit everything. And the whole week passes. And I just did like one episode over podcast. Yeah. Okay. So that’s that.

Andrej Zito 

Let’s get to the third article. And I think I will actually stop the recording there. So the other two articles that I had prepared, I’ll skip them. So this article, one of the reasons why I’m actually sharing this article is because I left a comment on this article. So this article from LinkedIn. So I commented there, it’s from Karen, Karen Sexton, and she’s founder at EAP medical translations. And I left the comment that I liked the article and that I will mention it in the podcast. So this is basically me delivering on my words. And this article is, has a nice picture even. Although it seems like pictures from different, different website, so it’s not her own work. But it’s about quality assurance. And title for this article is tips for translation buyers, how to ensure you’re getting good quality from translation providers, this is a very important question for everyone, not only for translation buyers, but also for lsps, which also that can clean by translations from freelancers or other lsps.

Andrej Zito 

So here we go. The article, the main obstacle that translation buyers face, whether they are a translation agency hiring freelancers, or any other business requiring translation, okay, so that’s what she just mentioned, is ensuring the quality of translations. This is key because you your efforts, I think there’s like a typo in your field are only as good as you can communicate them. In other words, your message will have no impact strength in a foreign language if it does not come across in the translation. The first step in ensuring quality is hiring a professional provider. If you’re an agency or have an internal translation team, this is quite straightforward. You set criteria for your desired professionals, then subject those who pass your criteria to a translation test. From then on, you monitor the quality of the work they produce with the help of your native language editors and reviewers pretty much the standard if you are any other business.

Andrej Zito 

The first is do not rely solely on credentials. It is important that your translation provider is certified be an agency or a freelancer, but this alone does not guarantee quality. Thank you for saying that. I’ve mentioned it several times, papers and ISOs and certificates. I don’t give a fuck about that. Maybe like maybe like when it comes to translation quality, but even then, like, I think like translation quality looks really good translations especially like when we are like what we’re talking about, like in the first article, like, there’s no source. So you basically have to write something from scratch. It requires like a certain level of creativity. And I don’t think that’s something that you can be taught and validated by, by some fucking degree or some credentials. So yeah, I agree with that.

Andrej Zito 

One way that you can test the quality of your translation provider is to have them translate a short exert, and have that back translated into your source language. That translation is the process of translating a translated piece back into its original language. This is often used in quality control processes, particularly for very sensitive pieces within translation agencies, and you can use it in your own organization as a means of testing your providers. So I’m not sure about this. Because let’s say that you only understand English. And you’re testing a Japanese translator. So the Japanese translator gets the English source. And then they translate it, or localize it or adapted to Japanese, and then somebody else gets it to translate it back into English.

Andrej Zito 

So because you have the person who’s doing the translation, technically, the quality of the Japanese translator also depends on how well the person who’s doing the back translation can actually translate and understand what the Japanese translator created. So I think like, if you only understand English, it would be quite awkward. Though, the place where I see back translation makes sense, is especially with taglines, or like with marketing, copy, like short texts, especially if it’s trans create it, because if translator like needs to give some creative input into the translation, then you want to understand in English like how they were thinking about the transcreation. And and what it actually means. Anyway, another way to assess quality is to get feedback from your target audience.

Andrej Zito 

Ask a trusted client for for your feedback on the piece. If you cannot do that, then find a provider who can and will not charge you much for this. For example, at EAP. O promotion, we have an extensive network of health care industry context, whenever a client wants a quick check or translation, we can ask one of these professionals to read through the document and give us some feedback. So again, a very good point, get feedback from your target audience. I think I mentioned this in the previous episodes. And it’s something that we should be moving towards more as the industry and that is basically have the end user dictate and tell us what is quality and what is not. So if you have a chance to have translation quality validated directly by the end customer. Ideally, if you have like a very good relationship with them.

Andrej Zito 

Or if you have like a large user base, and you can a B test the translation quality, then that’s a better way to judge whether it’s a quality translation or not. Then having just like one person, like a reviewer or editor to give feedback. Okay, let’s continue. Furthermore, certification may take different forms. Our second tip is to look for providers who specialize in your field, particularly in more specialist fields, such as medicine and law, and sharing your provider specializes in your subject matter is extremely important. For example, at EAP our core business is medical translations. So in addition, in addition to certified translators, we work with experienced providers who have licenses that necessary translation qualifications One advantage of this approach is that you have some control over quality, because this is your area of expertise.

Andrej Zito 

And a quick chat with your provider will tell you if there are no enjoyable about your field. So, this is not a very good point. And this is kind of related to it was the very first episode, where there was an article from the father of Kratos, it was saying that the role of translators will shift into a more SME roll, like there was like one of the possible roles that the translators could take on. And at that time, I was saying that like, I think like most of the translators are not SMEs, because they’re not like using the products or the services or like whatever they translate. They’re like smees, they’re like experts at translating something from like a certain industry. But that doesn’t mean that they’re experts in that industry. But what Karen is saying in this case, and I already had that experience, and I forgot about it, was recording the first episode.

Andrej Zito 

And I just actually think I remembered when I was listening to the podcast, for the very first time on my flight back to Vancouver. And that is exactly from medical field is, when I was working at scribble bank, which was my second LSP that I was working for I did some medical translations. And one of the Czech translator, he was actually like a medical expert, but he was just like translated like, in his free time, maybe to earn some extra cash. And usually these professionals who also translated have higher rates, but because they’re actually SMEs, they’re experts in that day, they practice the thing that they translate, then they are probably very much more suitable for these very specialized translations than just someone who is like a translator with like extensive experience just translating the content. So I agree with this.

Andrej Zito 

A pro tip with recent advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies, it is clear that over time, generalist content will be easily translated by machines with fewer errors. So this is another very good point, that the more the content is general, the more it will be easier for the machine to translate it. But if you’re like a very specific and specialized translator, and you bring that SME value, then you have more time to prepare until the machine takes over. Where you will really need to be able to rely on your provider his specialist knowledge and creativity. If your content is mostly marketing, for example, you want to have providers who can tune to your wavelength, and deliver the sentiment of your campaign, not the precise words you use.

Andrej Zito 

If you’re in a specialist field, you want providers who truly understand what your product and services are about, so that they can quickly learn with innovation, and become the ones who can teach and correct the machines. If you’re looking for long term providers, this is a key point consider again, I completely agree with everything. The third tip is to ask your provider about their quality process. Even freelancers nowadays have access to free versions of QA software, therefore a quick spot check and read through the through and read through of the translation against the source is no longer acceptable as a professional standard, your provider must have an established process that involves use of at least one quality assurance software. This type of software detects numbers that are different in the source and target content in consistencies in translation, and other errors that are harder for humans to detect.

Andrej Zito 

So this just reminds me off again, screw my neck surprisingly, and chronic actually this stupid QA checks had to be run by peons who of course don’t understand all the target languages. So I was kind of like ignoring their standards, and I was just delivering stuff straight from the translators back to the client. And I think going back to more Avia tomorrow Yeah, it was of course working much better. Because we had like some checks I think like even like in locks to do, which is like a Microsoft. I’m not sure If they’re still using it for software localization, or if it’s like obsolete at this point, but there were some automated checks, even Microsoft, I think they made like some automated tool. And of course, we were asking the crossfader to give us this report back with their trust aid files, because this is exactly what like Karen was saying that every Freelancer at one day deliver stuff, they should be writing the checks on their own. Because most of the issues are many of the issues.

Andrej Zito 

They are the ones who can actually understand them and correct them. Because it’s like, basically translation that someone who can just speak language cannot. Can’t do anything about. Let’s continue. It’s already 1230 Oh, no. If you’re reading this and thinking, but I just need my website trust I need to do I need to go through all the trouble. In today’s highly globalized markets, if you are translating your website, you’re hoping to do business in foreign countries. In the past, it was rare for foreign companies to enter local markets. So companies got away with translating very little and leaving the rest of their materials in English for the client to figure out nowadays, if your competition is speaking the local language, you must be speaking it to because you do not want to lose out due to miscommunication.

Andrej Zito 

Therefore, you will eventually need more than your website translated for that reason it is worth going through a bit of trouble finding the right provider at first. Otherwise, all the money you spent on writing, copy and conducting market research will literally be lost in translation. How do you ensure you don’t have to go through this process every time you need to try station? Number one, look for a provider who is looking to partner with you. When you ask for a quote, look for signs that the provider is willing to revise the translation will be available for questions and seems as invested as you are in ensuring the final quality of the product. For example, a provider who is upfront with you about it, that line being too tight for a quality job, or the price being too low to pay for a reviewer, or who asks you questions about the nature of the job and other terminology management issues.

Andrej Zito 

Eg Are there any terms not to be translated, these are signs the provider is invested and takes pride in the final result, which means this provider will work with you to deliver your message. Number two, take feedback from your audience back to your provider and see how this provider works with you to implement. When you get the feedback from your target audience, your translation provider should be willing to comment on that feedback and discuss with you what changes are, are not appropriate. Ultimately, your provider must be flexible enough to accommodate the changes that you deem appropriate and work with you to make them work linguistically. Over time, this will give you confidence to trust your provider, and you will rest assured that your message is being communicated. So that was the article from Karen Sexton.

Andrej Zito 

I don’t have any objections. In fact, I agree with most of the things. I think all of the things. And it is already Friday, my friends, it’s 34 minutes past midnight, and my eyes are actually dying. So I don’t think that I’ll be able to start the editing now. Maybe it’s just because my throat is also very dry, and I need to drink more. So I’m going to leave it with these three articles. I think we are already over one hour, which is like the standard length of this podcast. So do I have any final words to share with you? I think no if you got to this point. Thank you very much for listening or for watching if you are on Youtube. And let me switch back to full cam. And for those of you who are just listening to the podcast, we are growing we’re definitely growing the estimated audience which is kind of Calculate based on the amount of total a place is going up in anchor.

Andrej Zito 

But what I really encourage you, if you guys are listening, try to find me on Twitch. I’ll be, I’ll start sharing the domains, the more I get, the more I get familiar and comfortable with going live on Twitch. So this is kind of like my premiere. So hopefully it will be the same as with recording myself. So it’s really just like about overcoming the first initial fear. And then I’ll just be more relaxed, like even right now. I am wife, there probably there’s probably nobody watching me. There are still too few works. One of them is me. So Oh, actually, no. The other one is also probably because I have a dashboard open and I have the twitch on my phone open. So yes, so if you are interested in seeing me live, if you want to participate in the podcast, or if you just want to watch how I start creating my website, how I create a content and then eventually how I finally get to localizing the content.

Andrej Zito 

Then you can find me on Twitch, and it’s twitch.tv slash Andrej Zito all together. And Yep, you can follow me there. I don’t actually expect that most of you have twitch account. But yeah, that’s the place where you can find me. So I think that will be the main place that I will be kind of like promoting and pushing from, from now on. Because I really believe that live streaming work with full transparency is something that is new. And I’m pretty sure that many people will be interested in that. It sounds kind of weird and naive that people want as they finish their own work, they would actually want to see somebody work. But I really believe in sharing the knowledge know how, and I just want to like create this community that’s like, not afraid to be themselves. And they are open to sharing their insights, their challenges, and even their struggles and their issues.

Andrej Zito 

Or their life challenges or life issues. So So yeah, so I’m all about transparency right now. And kind of like collective nohow and wisdom. So that’s the goal. That’s the mission with the live streaming. So we@twitch.tv slash, Andrej Zito. Most of the information that I have there on my profile is outdated. And, but I’ll I’ll get to update it at some point. So yeah, that’s going to be it. I’m finally finished. I’ve been recording for more for more than one hour now. So this was it for Episode Number 14 of the localization podcast. I hope I didn’t say anything sensitive. I didn’t leak any information. Yet, plants are twitch live streaming, localization life. So stay tuned, and thank you for listening. Thank you for watching, and I’ll talk to you next week. Bye.

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