When you manage localization and translations for your companys’ localized products, marketing material or website, you are naturally expected to deliver quality, on time and within budget. If you are like so many other organizations, deadlines may often take precedence over almost all other considerations. I this case you might find yourself trying to meet those deadlines and save budget at the expense of the localization testing.
How then do you solve this dilemma? Is it really worth forgoing the QA? Skipping this crucial stage has in the past produced error filled low-quality products which in some cases were unintelligible for the target user. Even today you run the risk of at the very least upsetting your potential customers and more than likely you will adversely impact your brand.
Your Multilingual software, website, and marketing materials simply stated, should not be released when only the translation is completed, but rather you must close the loop by undertaking, a thorough QA of the translations. The elements of this localization testing should include linguistic, cosmetic and functional testing, to ensure that they look, perform and are contextually correct as should be expected. Your target customers expect your product and collateral to appear as if they had been created with them in mind.
If you are concerned about having adequate and competent resources in both technical skills as well as language skills, you can rely on LangSouls to provide you with the right type of personnel for your project as well as the knowledge that will enable you to undertake the rigorous testing you need.
Our localization testing services focus on all product components, including software, documentation, user interface design and online content, which are affected by localization. Localization testing is an involved process, but it’s a necessity.
What are they not telling you?
Well, to be honest, there is another option for your software. Historically localization was very much a legacy type of activity, companies that are localizing for the first time may wait until almost the end of the development before deciding how to proceed with their translations. Often, they extract their strings into external files, translate them, reimport them into the localized versions and only then are they faced with the daunting task of testing. Some companies may use more sophisticated platforms, yet even in an ideal world where there would be a full round of localization testing there may still be additional tasks such as screenshots to be taken. This is not to mention that the fast pace of today’s development and updates which sometimes can even happen a few times a week. Many customers while doing an initial round of testing may forgo testing the incremental updates only because they often are not able to identify where those new or changed strings may be. This naturally poses the same risks as not testing at all. Some companies may work using more sophisticated tools such as Translation Management Systems that integrate with their development tools, even this however does not mitigate the need for localization testing.
There is however a solution, LangSouls provides its customers with a platform that enables them to translate in-context, in real-time, resolve internationalization issues, take screenshots and improve the documentation all at the same time. No more missing deadlines, no more skipping testing, no more incorrect translations.
Localization Testing
When you test your localized software, you should be testing three different categories.
1. Linguistic
With our platform you can be sure that only native speakers of each target language translate, review and edit any of the content that they encounter in your application. As for the screenshots, those can now be prepared independently of the linguists, all you need to do is take the source screenshot, and our system does the rest.
2. Cosmetic
With Visual Localization you can nearly eradicate cosmetic issues such as truncated text due to the size of buttons, dialog boxes, tool tips, etc. While Truncation may occur when the target language is longer than the source, you can now discover that problem during the much earlier phase of translation and save valuable time tracking bugs that shouldn’t have happened in the first place. And in the event that a translator does discover something that they cannot fix, they can open an issue right in the Visual Localization tool which can integrate with popular tracking tools such as JIRA. You also are able to verify the appearance of special characters, such as accented vowels (e.g., ü) that don’t appear in the source language text.
3. Functional
With Visual Localization you can discover potential internationalization issues such as text that was not externalized. Of course, you still will need to continue functionality testing, but at least you will not have to worry about anything beyond that.
Learn More About Visual Localization
LangSouls is here to help you with your localization challenges. We are dedicated to being more than just another face in the crowd, we are here to help you as your localization partner.
