Your Documentation & Localisation Partner

Software Localisation Offer

Internationalising and localising your product

Translating and localising is a specialist task. Contrary to popular opinion, having learned a foreign language or lived abroad for a few years is not enough to produce high quality translations. Not even with the help of automated translation systems - or rather, especially not. I am a qualified translator for English, German, Spanish and French and I work closely with mothertongue translators for other languages.

Internationalising your software

Internationalising your software is part of the development process and should be taken into account in the early stages of software development to cause the least cost in terms of time and effort. It involves:

  • Designing a localisation system and integrate it into your software with the least costs to your development team and your budget.
  • Designing a system that allows to easily add more languages later on.
  • Creating the locale files and writing the rules for the locale strings to facilitate their translation.

Localising your software

Localisation is the translation and adaptation of a software or web product that includes the software application itself and all related product documentation. It involves:

  • Translating the complete user interface into the target languages and testing.
  • Translating embedded help, that is, help that is displayed in the user interface, such as tool tips or balloon tips and inline tutorials and testing.
  • Translating the documentation including all graphics and creating all necessary outputs.
  • If you are using screenshots in your documentation, these also need to be redone after the software has been localised in the respective language.

What I can do for you

  • I localise your product to different languages and manage the localisation to the languages I cannot do myself.
  • I translate your documentation to different languages and manage the translation to the languages I cannot do myself. Documentation translation does not only refer to the words and text, it also includes layouts, graphs, screenshots and images.
  • Most software is written in English in its source, however, if your developers are more comfortable in French, German, Spanish, Italian or Portuguese as the user interface source, I provide you with the English version for it. If your developers are non-native English speakers but have written the original user interface in English anyway, I proof-read this version.
  • Translating or editing the documentation to at least one other language by someone who knows the product allows for an extra level of documentation proofing. Is it really understandable? If the translator does not understand a phrase, a customer more than probably will not either. If I am your translator as well as your technical writer, I can provide this extra service which results in real documentation localisation and not just word by word translation and to a possibly even better source documentation.
  • For the languages I cannot translate myself I work with an established translation agency with who I have a long-standing relationship.
  • I can also help you design the most cost-effective and easily maintainable localisation system for your software. This ensures that you can progressively add new languages with very little time and effort to your development team and the translation costs are kept down as well.

Click here for some cost estimations

Click here to learn more about including localisation into your product