Google today launched the App Translation Service, first previewed at its Google I/O 2013 conference, to all Android developers. The new offering lets developers browse a list of third-party vendors pre-qualified by Google to offer high-quality translation at “competitive prices.”
Best of all, the service is integrated straight into the Google Play Developer Console (it’s at the bottom of the APK section). Developers simply need to get their APK ready for translation, upload the strings they want translated, select their target languages, and choose a vendor based on time and price. When the translations are ready, developers can easily import them back into their app using the ADT Translation Manager Plugin.
If you’re not sure about which languages to select, Google offers the following advice:
Does your app have a lot of installs in a certain country where you haven’t localized to their language? Are apps like yours popular in a country where your app isn’t available yet? Next, go to the Optimization Tips section in the Developer Console to make sure your APK, store listing, and graphics are consistently translated.
This isn’t a one-way street: the App Translation Service lets developers communicate with their translator in addition to downloading their translated string files. If you’ve gotten that far, you can then do some localization testing and publish your translated app update to Google Play with localized store listing text and graphics.
Google says its hope is to make localizing apps, which is becoming an increasingly important part of building a global userbase, as easy as possible. Currently, Google’s Localization Checklist is useful, but quite lengthy. The App Translation Service should speed up the process.
0 Comments: