Social & Mobile Apps and Globalization – Confessions of a g11n Veteran

By Danica Brinton, CEO of LocLabs. Connect with Danica & LocLabs on Facebook

at Facebook.com/LocLabs.

I have been in the international-production, international-product-management and globalization business

for over 12 years. Over the past four, I have been focused on online games, social and mobile games and

applications. I realize that my continued focus on and fascination with this particular area has a lot to do

with the instant gratification that results from globalizing in the social/mobile space. Sure I have seen

great results from globalizing software, handhelds, CPU’s, search and web services, but the dramatic

increase in the overall user base and revenue coming from localization of social games, mobile games

and applications provides the best – and the most immediate – business case to invest in international

expansion. I find that I must put in place the following prerequisites in order to secure both a quick

return on the investment and a continued long-term growth:

1. Market-tier strategy based on extensive market research, statistical data analysis, competitive study

and multi-factor estimates/projections.

2. Language-selection strategy based on the market-tier strategy, analysis of the barrier to entry in a

given market, legal and cultural investigation

3. Locale-specific product positioning

4. Internationalization with the standard and scalable framework to support rapid continuous

SBML/simship localization

5. International payments strategy that encompasses a comprehensive set of locally popular payment

methods and local currencies

6. Cross-functional organization to support global operations

7. International production organization that understands the specifics, intricacies and unique challenges

posed by the social/mobile app development and rapid market movements

8. Scalable localization processes, tools and infrastructure adapted to the content, platform, speed of

development, release processes, market requirements, and budget constraints

9. High-quality of translation

Social and Mobile Apps Localization

Fast-moving social and mobile apps prominently require continuous localization, tightly integrated into

the build system, in SBML (single-binary multilingual) simship method. At Zynga, for example, we

introduced daily releases in SBML/simship for up to 18 languages.

Other than aggressive and frequent simship releases, the new social and mobile apps also require that

they be localized at launch into as many languages as planned. Staggered releases will not be nearly as

successful as out-of-the-gate simship.

No doubt about it, social games will be played by millions of people but only if the game and its language

are compelling enough to draw the user into the game. The viral nature of these games allows a player

to pull in dozens of their Facebook friends. This can only happen if a user enjoys the game and its

mechanics so much that they want to brag about it to their friends . The game mechanics are heavily

verbal and any barrier to immersion, particularly any issues in the target-language must be removed. As

a rule, the English text in these games is 1. written rapidly, conforming to the speed of development; 2.

full of American slang. Even though it is string based and highly technical in the approach, game

translation is more akin to literary translation and international copy writing than software string

translation.

Trends in Mobile and Games Globalization

A large % of social game players have friends in other countries and play social games with speakers of

different languages. After all, more than 75% of Facebook is outside of the US. The multilingual nature of

the game virals becomes another unique translation and internationalization/localizaton challenge.

Most prominent social games have over 70% of the overall user base and over 50% of revenue coming

from localized locales – localization can increase the locale-specific traffic by 80%-300%. I’ve seen that

localized mobile apps can expect to expand their user base and downloads by 40%-50% when the

developer adopts the right strategies and is willing to implement an aggressive continuous localization. As

mobile games get more viral features and capabilities AND as the smart-phone adoption grows

internationally, that percentage will continue to grow rapidly.

Another new trend is cross-platform apps and games – releasing games that can be simultaneously/real-

time played on multiple devices, i.e. switching from Facebook to iPhone to Android. Localization of these

apps has its own set of challenges that appropriate locale strategies and continuous localization can

address.

The market tier strategy is different for FB vs. iPhone vs. Android apps. However, the common thread is

that new markets are emerging in top tier language sets in all three platforms. For example, Turkish,

Norwegian, and Brazilian Portuguese are counted in the tier-1 language set for many social games on

Facebook alongside more traditional FIGS. Meanwhile, the poster child of tier-1 markets — Japan — falls

into tier-3 on the Facebook platform. And China is not accessible for Facebook users.

Some new languages can be very profitable but their globalization could become a huge challenge for the

new app makers unaccustomed to i18n or l10n. At LocLabs, for instance, we built large teams and

extensive expertise to support Arabic and Thai globalization for Apple as well as a number of our app-

developer clients.

Mobile and Games Globalization in Emerging Markets

Often quoted is the fact about rapid growth of the India and China mobile markets. While I found that

India and China are incredible new mobile markets, India does not still necessitate language localization

and Mainland China is still not ROI positive for smart-phone app localization. Taiwan and Hong Kong are

profitable but small. Smart-phone manufacturers, however, are eagerly competing for the Asian market

and are incentivizing app makers to localize into Chinese and Korean, prominently.

Much of the above content will be discussed in more detail in the upcoming webinar on Games and

Mobile App Globalization that I am holding on December 1st with Adam Asnes of Lingoport.

About LocLabs

Danica Brinton runs her own company, LocLabs, specializing in international product management,

international strategy, localizability/i18n, localization, localization testing, content management, and

international feature development. Danica has held leadership positions in international product

management, strategy and globalization at Zynga, Yahoo!, Second Life, Ask.com, and Apple,

Inc. Connect with Danica and LocLabs at Facebook.com/LocLabs or send her an email at danica (at)

loclabs.com.