Here we want to help you with all aspects of translating your iPhone or Mac app and earning more money from a larger international audience.

As you know, not everybody speaks English. In fact, English native speakers and non-native speakers combined only make up one twelfth of the world's population. 11 out of 12 people worldwide can't speak English. Of course the statistics are likely to be somewhat more favorable when looking at the average iPhone user, but studies have shown that even if people speak English, they are 3-4 times as likely to make a purchase if the item description is in their language. And right now, due to the economy crisis, Europeans have a lot more money to spend than Americans...

Speaking your potential customer's native language inspires trust, and trust is a precious good when they can't give the product a shake or see the face of a salesperson. Moreover, if you use their language, this also tells people that you value them as customers. Of course this only works if your translation is good - using an automatic translator will rather annoy international customers and serve to convince them that you don't respect them at all. A sloppy translation reflects especially badly on your company's professionalism. For this reason, we'd like to help you find quality translators for your apps.

On the technical side, the iPhone SDK fortunately makes it easy to translate your apps. You don't have to code your own internationalization (i18n) solution or worry about foreign scripts not showing up correctly, it's all already included and ready to go. Use our tutorial for a step-by-step guide to localizing your iPhone app.

The difference between internationalization (i18n) and localization (l10n)? They are often used synonymously, but technically internationalization just means translating your apps, whereas localization implies that your apps will 'feel local'. In addition to translation work, localization may require you to exchange pictures, names, layout or sales pitch to adapt to what the foreign market expects. For example, some languages are read from right to left, and this means that websites in those languages would typically have a menu on the right... but more importantly, any "before - after" comparisons have to feature the "before" on the right and the "after" on the left. Even when languages and cultures are very close, such as the American and the British one, you may need to make adjustments. For example, most Europeans would not recognize an American mailbox icon, because mailboxes look very different here (they are built into the house). Part of localization work would be to find a different icon to signify "messages", at least for European versions of your iPhone app. And you've probably already heard about all the brand names and product names that had outrageous connotations in foreign languages - a little localization expertise could have saved these companies a lot of hardship.

At iphone-i18n.com, we are happy to help you, no matter if you are looking for a simple translation or full localization or anything in between. Thanks to our unique combination of linguists with translation experience and iPhone programmers, we can even assist you with the technical side of preparing your apps for an international market.