Installing Get Localization Sync for Eclipse

Install from Eclipse Marketplace

Just select Help -> Eclipse Marketplace and search “Get Localization”

Install using “Install new software…” option

1. Choose Help -> Install new software…
2. Click “Add…” button
3. Enter name for repository e.g. Get Localization
4. Enter repository location, which is http://getlocalization.sync.s3.amazonaws.com
5. Click Ok
6. Click “Uncategorized” and check Get_Localization_Sync -plugin
7. Click “Next” and follow instructions

Setting Up Get Localization Sync for Eclipse

Settings are project specific and they can be easily found under your project properties.

In properties, you can find the Get Localization Sync plug-in.

Username – Your Get Localization username
Password - Your Get Localization password
Project - Your Get Localization project name (same that appears in project URL)
Default Platform - Platform you are developing on. It defines the file format of your i18n files. You can also set the format for individual files from their properties if you happen to have multiple different file formats in your project.

Sending Files To Translation

Right-click the file you wish to send to Get Localization and select “Get Localization Sync -> Send to translation”. Note that these always should be master files (files that translators translate from, typically in English), never send files that are in different language than your other master files.

Sync Translated Files Back To Project

After translation, you can easily sync the files back to any folder you wish.

Android Projects

Get Localization Sync for Eclipse handles Android projects specially when translations are synced back to “res” folder. They are automatically placed into appropriate values folders so they work in your application without any modification.

Plugin is currently in beta stage. We hope to receive feedback and further ideas for development.

Using A/B testing to validate translation quality

So could you use A/B testing also to test your translations? You could use A/B method to test how your localized version performs against your baseline version e.g. English. However there’s some challenges and it’s not that simple as it sounds. In order to get valid results from A/B testing, it’s important that the results are comparable. Both control groups should be identical to each other so when you compare languages, you also accidentally compare different markets. This variable, how you perform on each market depends of your product or service. Demand, pricing, local competition and other factors like shipping costs and currency exchange rates can affect it. So how we could eliminate all these variables and test just the translation?

First, test how baseline performs versus translated version on each geographically distinct market.

This gives you valuable information whether your translated version actually performs better. If it doesn’t perform better, you can be absolutely sure that there’s something wrong with the translation. If it provides similar or only slightly better results, there’s room for improvement in the site overall localization that includes design e.g. colors, layout and translations.

When you’re sure that your localized version is actually increasing your conversions and sales, you can use the first localized version as a baseline and start rolling out changes to it. For example, you could order a totally new set of translations from different agency or translator to see how they perform. There’s no limit how much time and effort you can put to this work, but it’s an awesome way to find out what works and what doesn’t. It’s also only way to really know that your translated site is good as you most likely don’t understand all the languages.

So if you’re not yet A/B testing, you should probably start it as soon as possible! Easy and free tool to get started is Google Website Optimizer. There’s also many other free and commercial options that provide powerful ways to test your site.

I’ll go through all these small, but important improvements one by one.

More information on screen, clearer UI

Our challenge with this update was that we wanted to add more information to screen, get rid of clicks and dialogs while keeping the UI still simple and easy. Also we wanted that editor would work better and provide more information on small laptop screen without moving and arranging the windows. Everything that was there before, is still there but we’re now using the screen space much more efficiently.

Bring discussions to more prominent place.

This has been the all-time most requested improvement. String related discussions are now loaded automatically to the right-side of the editor. Previously there was a risk that people didn’t read those comments as you had to click them open, now ignoring them is much harder as they’re visible all the time.

We believe that communication is one of the key elements in a successful translation project, making the context clear is hard and error-prone for developers so letting translators to ask questions when they’re unclear of the meaning is important. Managing and keeping the discussions in a single place, where they’re stored right next to the subject is also more productive for all team members.

Ranking of translations and differentiating sources more clearly

We got a lot of questions about which translation will end up to the final translation file. It has been always the first translation in the list but now there’s also “Rank” column that clarifies this further. You can easily see confirmation that yes, the first translation is indeed the leading one.

We’ve also made more clear where the translation is coming from, an additional icon next to name is now indicating this. Clicking the icon also now leads to the user profile.

Fine-tuning the UI

UI should look much clearer now and be easier to use. Translating longer texts is easier and browsing through the translation aids, suggestions and available translations more straightforward. Or what do you think? We continue on improving so let us know! You can contact us via support portal or leave a comment.

More information about the new editor can be found from our library.

A while after that I browsed to the web site and saw what my translations looked like. Awful. The sentence structure was in some cases clumsy, in some cases the meaning was simply wrong. The placeholder didn’t stand for the user’s company/product, but for the website/service where it was used. And based on earlier translations in the translation memory I wasn’t the only translator who had been mistaken.

After that I sent an email to my contact person at one of the many agencies between me and the end client, and pointed this out. What happened? Nothing. The translations are still there. (But you shouldn’t really blame the project manager, as he was probably constantly swamped with email. Localization project managers usually are.)

What did I learn from this? Well, first of all it is critical to include enough information about placeholders for the translators. Even if they would be experienced users of the application, it might not become clear to them what different placeholders mean. Secondly, it’s important to have a translation process that supports communication and updates even after the initial translation has been finished. Communication has to be so easy that important issues aren’t left lying around even by mistake.

Now additionally to websites and applications, we manage documents too. Yay!

This is a part of our project to create more clearer design to whole service. We’re doing these improvements incrementally in simple batches so your team’s productivity doesn’t suffer due to major updates. Don’t forget to let us know how you feel about this change, we truly love feedback!

No, I’m not going to start by selling the concept of localization to you. I know you’re a smart developer so it’s no news to you that localization benefits your revenue stream. But nevertheless I’ve added a couple of links at the end of this post, there you can find some insightful blog posts about this topic.

Getting Started

First of all, think about which markets you want to target and where you already have some users. Google Analytics or other analytics software can give you a good indication on where your users are coming from. Another option is to run a crowdsourced translation project to get some understanding on how active your users are in specific language areas (but we will discuss that in separate post).

As a developer you need to make sure your app is internationalized. That’s the process of separating your content to resource files so they can be translated more easily. You can learn more from our earlier blog post Software Internationalization for Dummies.

Additionally, internationalization is about making sure that the app can be easily translated. Here are a few hands-on tips:

1. Don’t split sentences into several strings. This makes it really difficult to translate and the quality will be bad. If you have to split texts, make sure you give proper context information.
2. Feel free to use tags e.g. %s, it’s much better than splitting the sentences. A proper translation tool will make sure that translators won’t mess them up.
3. Keep in mind that expressing the same thing in other languages can take up to 30% more space in the user interface compared to English (e.g. German). On the other hand, some languages might be “short”, but demand more height for the characters to look good and be readable (e.g. Chinese).

Get Everybody Together

So how should you actually implement the localization process for your product? It is very important that the translators are a part of your development team. Strings can be translated in many different ways and the translators need context information to produce good and correct translations. Context is almost as important information as the text itself. That’s why the translators need to know your product, inside out like every other team member. Typically you can differentiate good translators from bad ones by the questions they’re asking, the good ones ask questions about the context and the product.

The key question of the localization process: Will you update this app, website, user manual and/or other related documents after the first version? 

If the answer is yes, you need a localization platform where you can work with your translators. A localization platform is like a version control for your localization files. It knows which parts of the app are translated and can give you the exact status of the translation. A good platform also enables just-in-time (JIT) translations, so your app or document can be instantly translated after modification. The localization platform also helps you to communicate with the translator, you can be sure that same translator is always translating the updates and is a part of your development team. Key considerations when planning the long-term localization approach for your app, document or website:

1. You want to avoid feeling the localization pain when you have to make the change, right? Make it easy to do changes from the start.
2. Get to know your translators so that you can trust them. It’s the only way to be sure that you’re getting the right stuff.
3. Enable communication between translators and rest of the team. Kill the silos!
4. Make sure that translators are using your app!  They need to be a part of your team.

Translation – It’s Actually Really Affordable

Thanks to an industry that has been pushing prices down in fierce competition, you can get quality translations for really reasonable prices. You can find several translation sites and companies that offer translation in bulk. However, spend some time to find your own translators. They’re as important as your other team members. There are several sites, where you can find freelancers, for example Freelancer.com and Elance. There’s also ProZ.com that is targeted specifically at translators. We’re also working on our own marketplace that will allow you to find and hire professional translators directly to your Get Localization project.

Remember, localization is not just about translation. Your translators can give valuable feedback on how your app works in their local market. So make sure to collaborate with them!

You can learn more about our localization platform Get Localization at http://www.getlocalization.com.

Get Localization is a social platform for creating apps that really feel local for every user.

And here, those promised links:

The Importance of Localization in App Stores

Localization is the Key to Be Part of China’s 5.5 Billion App Downloads in 2012, Says ABI Research

Localization: the next big to-do for mobile app developers?

1. First import the file from GitHub to Get Localization. You can done this from Files → Import from SCM → GitHub

2. Select the file you would like to import to master files, typically it’s the English resource file.

3. Now as soon as file is imported successfully, go to your GitHub project and open ‘Admin’-page.

4. Click ‘Service Hooks’

5. Select ‘GetLocalization’ from the list of service hooks.

6. Enter your project name, it’s the same as in your Get Localization address e.g. http://www.getlocalization.com/<project-name>. Also copy your project token from your Get Localization project settings page and paste it to corresponding project token field in GitHub.

66. 

7. Set project ‘Active’ and then click ‘Update Settings’

And that’s it. Now when you do the commit, all the files you’ve imported to master files will be automatically updated from GitHub.

We’ve heard your feedback and the feature is called “Import notifications”. You will get an instant and simple notification when you’ve changed a master string a bit (in other words, not much) when comparing to previous revision. We let you decide whether you want to keep all the translations for this string or not. In most cases, small change doesn’t necessarily mean that the meaning is changed. Even if there’s a small typo, translation is not typically affected by it so you can safely let system to keep translation.

Here’s also video that demonstrates the feature in more detail.