Bytes Build Character — Especially for Localized Keywords

Read my guest post on MobileDevHQ about Localizing your keywords to attract international users

Keyword localization

Good news for app developers who localize keywords and app descriptions in order to boost sales. Until recently, Apple had the keyword limit set at 100 bytes. This has always worked fine for the English-speaking audience. After all, each letter of the English alphabet is exactly 1 byte. But what about other languages and alphabets?

It turns out that the Spanish letter ñ, for example, is actually 2 bytes. And even those very compact-looking Korean and Chinese characters often weigh in at a hefty 4 bytes. The end result was that, until a recent change in iTunes Connect, your internationally localized keywords were actually far less than 100 characters. In fact, iTunes Connect would truncate the keywords, which often went unnoticed.

Today iTunes Connect will allow 100 characters (including spaces and commas) for any language. (As a side note, spaces are unnecessary, so you should remove them to add room for more keywords.)

Localizing Keywords for the App Store

When you do localize your keywords, you often find that foreign-language keywords are longer than their English cousins. French is estimated to be 30% longer than English (and much more wordy), and German has a tendency for very long individual words. If you present a translator with a full 100 characters of English keywords, you’ll find that, more often than not, the keyword localization returned to you will be over the 100-character limit.

Write your words in order of importance

There is a simple lesson here. When you send us your app description and keywords to be translated, make sure the keyword list in order of importance. Why? That way, if you have to leave out some of the localize keywords we send back, you’ll know exactly which ones you can drop without affecting your international keyword campaign. 

Add more keywords for Asian languages

The extra characters available to you for compact Asian languages like Korean and Chinese are also an often overlooked opportunity. Since you can include more keywords as space allows, we suggest you add additional keyword ideas to your list. As always, you may rely on some professional advice from translators, who usually come up with unique keywords that are local to their audience.

Are you ready to localize your keywords? Contact us. We’re not just a winsome group of translators who localize every language of the App Store, we’re very friendly too.

What is pseudolocalization?

Let’s get the definitions out of the way. Normally, when you localize your app you are replacing your source text with a foreign language. For example, your English-language app transforms into a lovely bit of software for a Japanese audience. Pseudolocalization is just like that, but instead of Japanese, we’ll replace your English strings with à ƒàķé Éñĝļîšĥĥ ļîķé ţĥîš.

Why do I need pseudolocalization for my app?

Why would you want to use ƒàķé Éñĝļîšĥĥ in your app? Well, pseudolocalization is a fast QA method to make sure you’ve found all your hard-coded strings before you send it off to be translated. By doing a test run with ƒàķé Éñĝļîšĥĥ you can quickly check each screen of your app and make sure everything looks localized. If not, you’ll know exactly which strings you forgot to localize and you can go back to your code and add it in.

Pseudolocalization is also a useful way to make sure you’ve left enough room in your GUI for other languages. A common rule of thumb is that non-English languages are 30% longer. That means the Buy button your created — just 3 letters long — probably won’t be big enough for Spanish (Comprar) or Greek (Αγοράστε), and you’ll end up with something like: Com… and Αγο…

Pseudolocalization can help you spot the missing strings and those cramped spaces so that your translations will look as good as they read.

Pssst… Pseudolocalization is free!

Here’s something you probably never knew. We translators want your localized app to succeed as much as you do, and we’re willing to go the extra mile to make sure it does. Pseudolocalization helps us as much as it helps you. It means that you’ll send us all your strings in one neat package right from the start. And, if we’re lucky, you may even have adjusted your app’s GUI a bit to add in some extra space. (Extra padding looks very nice in English too by the way!)

For those reasons, and because we’re nice people, pseudolocalization is an absolutely free service. Just send us your Localizable.strings or strings.xml or any other format you’ve got, and we’ll send you back the pseudo-localized version the same day.

Request FREE pseudolocalization from Babble-on

Not sure how to export your Mac/iOS strings into a Localizable.strings file? Check out our iPhone localization tutorial.