Translating Simple Different Apps & Websites
Our Approach to Translation, and some tools to help you work
The Simple Different Company's apps and websites are designed with a learner-centered approach. We aim for a friendly and helpful tone of voice towards our target users, who are aged from 13 to 70 years old. We try to help people with no previous experience and no technical knowledge to build good websites, teaching users through their experience of the app, step-by-step, how to create the right website to present their activity.
This informs our approach to translation also. Our users' experiences of our apps in different languages and in different regions of the world are important enough to us that we have invested a lot of time and energy into developing in-house localization tools. If you have worked with us before, you will have made use of Babel, our translation management system, and Labs, the test version of our software, which updates in real time so that translators and others can see their work in context.
We made this site to help you help our users
Localization work for SimDif is more than just translating text on a page. Time must be taken to navigate the apps, the different screens, tools and settings, and to see the language from the perspective of the user, in true context.
Context Helps Create Great User Experience
Seeing a word or phrase in the context of a particular screen of an app can lead you to spontaneously think about who the typical user is, and what they are trying to do. It can sometimes help you find a deeper, more helpful translation than you might have settled on if you had only looked at the word in a text box in Babel. Without the workflow and context we have designed, it can be easy to fall back on cliched, cute or over-hyped terms.
The App Stores
Of course, we also have competitors, and the main arenas of competition are the app stores. Accurate translation is of course always important, but the language used here has a strong marketing requirement. We must communicate with people who are not yet our users, and be aware of how people find and choose apps in the Apple and Google Play stores.
The Web
All of our apps also exist as services on the web, and they are also represented by websites. These websites serve many purposes: they are an introduction, they provide detailed information, they are sometimes designed to be found in Google searches, they provide help and support to our users in the form of FAQs and guides.
Tools For Keyword Research
Beyond accurate translation, there is Localization, which involves catching the spirit of the moment in a particular language, culture and place. These tools can help you better catch the words and phrases people are using to describe and to find apps and services like ours.
