Ask HN: How Apps Get Localized for the Chinese Market?
But still, I'm confused and I have a few thoughts and questions.
(Background: I'm a native Chinese)
1. I noticed that big name apps usually have done the localization pretty well. Such as Angry Birds, Flipboard, Infinity Blade, Instagram. Besides, what they have done is pretty thorough. Not only have they changed the texts into Chinese, they also have replaced all those social sharing options with their Chinese counterparts. Such as Twitter replaced by Sina Weibo. Facebook by Renren. I guess they must have thrown some big money and have built their own Chinese marketing department for such and such. Or, they must have outsourced the localization tasks to some US or China based firms.
2. But they do have mistakes now and then. And since they're rooted in the foreign language level. Those mistakes are usually persistent, and by saying persistent I mean If I saw them in v1.1. Chances are that I will find them again in v2.0.
3. An example: Instagram has introduced the Chinese language localization months ago. But even in their v2.2.0 update you'll find this funny translation mistake. Description: when you navigate to a stranger's profile page, there would be some texts saying, "You are not following this user". This saying is totally correct in English. But in the Chinese localized version, what Chinese users actually see is "您已取消关注该用户", which actually means, "You have un-followed this user", which is weird and is obviously a mistake. But as I mentioned just now, this mistake is persistent and is not noticed by the developer even after months.
My questions:
4. When you guys (be it big names or small indie developers) considering localize your apps for the Chinese markets, what would you actually do? Hire someone who speaks Chinese in your town? Look for some Chinese users to volunteer? Outsource the translation to a Chinese firm?
5. Since it's a foreign language, developers in the western world would typically have problems noticing those minor defects in the localization. What's worse, the Chinese users will complain about and low-star your apps and will do them only in Chinese. You won't have a clue if you don't understand them in the first place. What would you guys gonna do about this?
Discuss. :D