App & Game Translation

Everything translation, localisation and app/game internationalization.

[apptranslation]

I get 10 times more exposure with Social Media

It doesn’t matter where I sell my services. It doesn’t matter what freelance platform I use. Even if I follow all their guidelines I always feel, and then confirm, that I’m not getting enough exposure to my target audience.

Less exposure means less conversion, and fewer sales. An average, not-so-awesome-but-still-good conversion rate is about 5%. This means that if I get a sale out of 5% of the people who visit my site, blog, Fiverr gig, or whatever; I will always want more visits, more exposure.

Years of trial and error left me with a simple conclusion: the more active I am in Social Media, the more visits I get. On average, ten times more visits.

What does ten times more visits means for me. Well, take that 5% conversion rate:

10 visits = 1/2 sale (not even ONE sale)

100 visits = 5 sales

And what does it take to boost my visits 10X? Just 3-5 posts per day with a link to my gig. This is no more than 15 minutes of work per day. It can be short Twitter status updates. It can be answering questions in Quora. Anything helps.

Social media is my simplest marketing tool but the most effective as well. 15 minutes a day make the difference between no sales at all, and more than a couple of them.

Icon in photo made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

[apptranslation]

Do I really need a CAT tool?

Does a plumber need a wrench? Or does a carpenter need a hammer? Not necessarily but tools allow them to make the best use of their skills when working.

I realized this myself not long ago. Prior to even considering getting a CAT tool I would foolishly think that having the source material in a window and a word processor to write my translation was enough.

Looking back I cringe at the thought of how much time I used to waste spend with each piece I had to translate. Luckily enough, my natural laziness made think “There has to be a better way!”

I typed “Computer Assisted Translation Tools” and hit “Search with Google”. There’s a lot of them. A LOT. After narrowing down my search to the most reputable and well known, I was left with a handful of CAT tools to chose from.

I tried a couple of them. Expensive, open source, simple, complex. I didn’t feel comfortable. Something was off, not because the tools were bad, but because I hadn’t found my match. After months of trial and error I found the one. It is just perfect for me.

But WHY do I need this?

CAT tools analyze the text to be translated. They count WEIGHTED words which helps me fine-tuning the costs of a job and allos me to provide more adjusted quotes for my services.

CAT tools keep a translation memory. If I’ve already translated a word, or phrase, or structure, I don’t need to do it again. I spend less time translating.

CAT tools keep my translations consistent by using the same style and word choice along the same text.

CAT tools divide my work in segments making it easier to focus and feel I make progress. It also lets me skip a particularly difficult segment and keep working on others and then come back to it later.

CAT tools make my job easier. They deal with the boring and repetitive side of being a translator and let me focus on what’s important: the quality of my translations.

[apptranslation]

Thanks for all your feedback! Your satisfaction makes me happy :)

[apptranslation]

Translating your app name is hard!

You surely spent a great deal of time thinking of a catchy and easy to market name for your app. If you didn’t, then the name probably came to you in a inspiration strike.

What happens now that you’ve decided to be international?

“Shouldn’t I just translate the app name as well?”, You, probably.

Yes and no.

Your app name translated into Spanish, let’s say, can sound correct and all. Potential users will understand it. Will they LIKE it? No, most likely.

I have recently translated a game called “Seeing Stars”. The hardest part was the game name. “Viendo Estrellas” is somewhat correct -- starting a phrase or sentence with a gerund is kind of a no no. And the name should have something more to it; so I put my thinking hat and, inspired by the game dynamic, and the result was “Estrellas a la Vista”.

If you translate it back into English you end up with “Stars ho!” which is vastly more playful and implies, just like in Spanish, the discovery of something long awaited for.

As you can see, the translation of two words takes more than just a dictionary to transform a text in the source language into the target language. It is a creative process for it must convey a meaning as similar as possible in the target culture.