App localisation Archives - sa国际传媒 /category/app-localisation/ Nordic translation specialists Tue, 30 Sep 2025 12:25:21 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 Global UX localisation strategy: Design digital products that scale /global-ux-localisation-strategy/ Mon, 22 Sep 2025 15:26:20 +0000 /?p=49520 There鈥檚 no doubt that you want users not only to click on your app or visit your website, but also to stay for a while and respond to the products or services on offer.

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For a complementary perspective, see Sandberg鈥檚 guide to UX localisation. This article takes the conversation further, outlining how to embed localisation into your global UX strategy for sustainable growth.

The global digital marketplace has never been more accessible or more competitive. With worldwide and annual e-commerce expected to hit by the end of 2025, the opportunity for growth beyond domestic markets is enormous. Yet many companies stumble when they go global, not because their products are inferior, but because they fail to create digital experiences that resonate with local users through proper UX localisation.

Research shows that global UX localisation can , while poor localisation drives away 90% of users after just one negative experience. In today’s global marketplace, designing for international markets means creating digital experiences that feel native to each market you serve.

This guide will walk you through the strategic approach to UX localisation, from initial planning and research to implementation and optimisation. Whether you’re a UX designer crafting your first localised digital experience, a product manager evaluating internationalisation or part of a cross-functional team preparing for expansion into global markets, you’ll find actionable insights below.

Planning for global UX localisation

The most successful global products build localisation into their DNA from day one. This approach, known as internationalisation, saves time and resources and prevents costly redesigns later.

Building digital product localisation into your design process starts with asking the right questions early on. During initial wireframing and prototyping, consider how your layouts will adapt to languages that require 30% more space than English, such as German, or how your navigation will work for right-to-left reading patterns. Create flexible grid systems that can accommodate text expansion and design components that gracefully handle varying content lengths.

Cross-functional collaboration is essential for success. UX designers need to work closely with product managers to understand market priorities, with engineers to ensure technical feasibility and with localisation experts to understand cultural nuances. Establish regular check-ins between these teams and create shared documentation that captures localisation requirements alongside functional specifications.

The most effective teams create a localisation strategy brief for each market, documenting key cultural considerations, technical requirements and success metrics. This becomes the source that guides decision-making throughout the development process.

ROI frameworks and success metrics provide the business case for investing in proper UX localisation. Focus on three key areas: conversion rates (how localisation affects purchase completion), activation rates (how quickly users engage with key features) and market adoption (overall user growth in target markets). Companies such as Airbnb have seen or more when they properly localise their user experience, not just their content.

Cross-cultural UX research that travels

Understanding your global users requires research methods that go beyond traditional Western-centric approaches. Cultural context dramatically affects user behaviour, preferences and expectations.

Conducting cross-cultural UX research demands both local insight and a global perspective. Partner with local research agencies that understand cultural nuances and can conduct interviews in native languages. Use in-market surveys to understand local preferences for everything from colour psychology to payment methods. Remember that research methodologies themselves may need adaptation; for example, .

Testing localised designs with target audiences should happen throughout your design process, not just at launch. Create validation loops that include cultural reviewers, local user testing and market-specific A/B testing.

Creating global user personas requires balancing universal human needs with cultural specifics. Instead of creating entirely separate personas for each market, develop adaptive personas that highlight cultural variables. Focus on how decision-making processes, technology adoption patterns and social influences vary across your target markets.

Crucially, avoid over-generalising cultural differences. Not all users within a culture behave identically, and cultural stereotypes can lead to poor design decisions. Use data-driven research to understand actual user behaviours rather than relying on assumptions.

Design systems for localised digital experiences

A truly global UX design system anticipates linguistic and cultural variations while maintaining brand consistency. The key is building flexibility into your components without sacrificing coherence.

Building components that work in any language requires thinking beyond pixel-perfect layouts. Create text containers that expand and contract gracefully, design buttons that work with both short and long labels and establish clear hierarchy rules that work regardless of reading direction. Spotify’s design system exemplifies this approach, as their product鈥檚 components adapt seamlessly whether displaying “Play” or “Wiedergabe” without breaking the visual rhythm.

Typography and layout considerations extend far beyond choosing web-safe fonts. German text typically requires 30% more space than English, while languages such as Arabic and Hebrew read right-to-left. Design flexible grid systems that can accommodate these variations. Choose fonts that support the special characters your target languages require. Those Scandinavian letters (脝, 脴, 脜) and European diacriticals (莽, 帽, 啪) aren’t optional.

For right-to-left languages, it’s not sufficient to simply flip everything horizontally. While text and navigation reverse, elements such as phone numbers, timestamps and media controls maintain their left-to-right orientation. Progress indicators show completion from right to left, but a time display of “10:15” doesn’t become “15:10.”

Colours, imagery and cultural considerations require careful research and local input. varies dramatically 鈥 white represents mourning in Japan but purity in Western cultures, while red signifies luck in China but danger in much of the West. Work with local cultural consultants to review your colour choices and imagery selections. in market-specific mood boards and colour palettes, recognising that cross-cultural UX design includes both verbal and visual language.

Accessibility overlaps significantly with localisation strategy. Many localisation practices, including clear visual hierarchy, adequate contrast and flexible layouts, also improve accessibility. Consider localisation as part of inclusive design, ensuring your global experiences work for users with varying abilities and assistive technologies.

Technical foundations

Building global products requires infrastructure decisions that support multiple languages, cultural formats and regional requirements.

Developer handoff best practices for localised designs go beyond traditional design specs. Document how components behave in different linguistic states 鈥 what happens when text expands, how truncation rules work and where fallback content appears. Create comprehensive style guides that specify spacing rules for different script types and interaction patterns for various input methods.

String handling deserves particular attention. Avoid hardcoded text, implement proper fallback hierarchies for missing translations and ensure your designs gracefully handle edge cases such as extremely long or short translated strings. Document these rules clearly so developers can implement them consistently.

Infrastructure that supports global UX starts with character encoding. Unicode support is fundamental to displaying international content correctly. Your APIs need to handle multilingual content, and your database architecture should support multiple languages efficiently. Consider server-side rendering for SEO benefits in local markets, as search engines in different regions may have varying requirements.

Performance matters globally, but network conditions vary dramatically across markets. Implement progressive loading strategies and optimise for regions with slower internet connections. Your users on 5G networks have different expectations than users in rural areas with limited bandwidth.

QA processes for multi-market products require systematic testing across languages, devices and cultural contexts. Create testing protocols that check text rendering, layout integrity and functional behaviour across your target markets. Automated testing can catch basic issues, but cultural appropriateness and contextual accuracy require human review.

Content and copy strategy for global UX

Words shape experience, and in global products, the right words can mean the difference between conversion and abandonment. That鈥檚 why UX copy that works internationally requires strategic localisation, not just translation.

Writing UX copy that translates well starts with choosing simple, unambiguous phrasing in your source language. Avoid idioms, cultural references and business jargon that may not translate effectively. Instead of “hit the ground running”, write “get started quickly”. Replace “seamless integration” with “easy to set up”. These changes often improve clarity for native speakers, too.

Consider context in your copy. Single-word button labels such as “List” become problematic when translators don’t know whether it’s a verb (“to list items”) or a noun (“view the list”). Provide context and examples to ensure accurate translation.

Navigation and information architecture must adapt to different cultural expectations about how information should be organised and accessed. Western users expect a left-to-right, top-to-bottom information hierarchy, but this . Some cultures prioritise different types of information or prefer different navigation patterns.

Microcopy localisation essentials include all the small text that guides user actions, such as button labels, error messages, form instructions and system feedback. These elements often have the most direct impact on task completion, so they deserve special attention. Error messages, in particular, need cultural sensitivity. A direct “Error: Invalid input” might work in German but feels harsh in Japanese culture, where .

Voice and tone should balance brand consistency with cultural relevance. Your brand might be casual and conversational in English-speaking markets but needs to adopt more formal language in cultures that value hierarchy and respect. Work with local copywriters who understand both your brand values and cultural communication norms to find the right balance.

Implementation playbook: Scaling UX design for international markets

Moving from strategy to execution requires a systematic evaluation of your current product and clear processes for improvement. Use this practical framework to assess your localisation readiness and implement improvements systematically.

Evaluate your product’s localisation readiness with this comprehensive checklist:

  • Languages and formats: Does your design accommodate text expansion, date/time formats, currency display and number formatting for target markets?
  • User flows: Do your critical user journeys work with different cultural approaches to decision-making, form completion and payment methods?
  • Accessibility: Are your localised versions accessible to users with disabilities, considering assistive technology availability in target markets?
  • Research validation: Have you tested key interactions with users from your target markets?
  • QA coverage:听Do you have testing processes that catch linguistic, cultural and functional issues?

Tools and platforms for global design teams should support multilingual collaboration and review processes. Figma plugins such as “Figma Localization” help manage translated content within design files. Translation Management Systems (TMS) such as Phrase or Lokalise integrate with design workflows and maintain consistency across projects. Choose tools that allow designers, developers and linguists to collaborate efficiently without losing context or introducing errors.

Launch strategies and optimisation work best with a phased approach. Start with pilot markets that represent your broader international strategy but allow for learning and iteration. Implement continuous improvement loops that capture user feedback, analyse behavioural data and refine the experience based on real-world usage.

Monitor market-specific UX metrics closely during initial rollouts. Conversion funnels often reveal cultural assumptions that weren’t apparent during design and testing. Be prepared to iterate quickly based on user behaviour and feedback.

Metrics that matter in UX localisation strategy

The most important metrics for global UX focus on user behaviour rather than just business outcomes. Track task completion rates, error rates and user satisfaction scores across markets to identify where cultural adaptation is working and where it needs improvement. Monitor support ticket themes by market 鈥 patterns often reveal UX issues that metrics alone don’t capture.

ROI measurement should account for the long-term value of market entry. While initial UX localisation investment may seem high, companies with properly localised experiences typically see sustained growth rates 2 to 3 times higher than those with poor localisation.

Turn strategy into action

UX localisation represents a fundamental shift from viewing international expansion as a scaling challenge to recognising it as a design opportunity. The most successful global digital products resonate with local users by addressing their specific needs, preferences and cultural contexts.

The framework outlined here provides a roadmap for creating digital experiences that truly cross borders. To succeed in this, it’s instrumental to work with experts in the local culture of the market you’re targeting, to know the needs of the market you’re seeking to serve and to work closely with translators, so that both the content and the user interface are reshaped in a way that localises not just words but the customer’s experience.

The opportunity is enormous, and the first step is understanding your current state 鈥 where are you starting from and where do you want to go? In addition to the readiness checklist provided above, you can get a detailed report straight to your inbox by taking five minutes to engage with our localisation maturity questionnaire.

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UX localisation: how to design a digital experience that crosses borders /ux-localisation-how-to-design-a-digital-experience-that-crosses-borders/ Thu, 30 Mar 2023 14:18:59 +0000 /?p=39450 There鈥檚 no doubt that you want users not only to click on your app or visit your website, but also to stay for a while and respond to the products or services on offer.

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Editor’s note (September 2025): This article introduces key principles of UX localisation and how to design digital experiences that cross borders. For a deeper dive into building a scalable global UX localisation strategy, read our latest guide: Global UX localisation strategy: Design digital products that scale.

There鈥檚 no doubt that you want users not only to click on your app or visit your website, but also to stay for a while and respond to the products or services on offer. If this is the case, you need to have a UX that works for the user 鈥 and that means one that works differently for different people in different places. Read on to find out how you can build on the best practices in UX localisation to thrive on cultural differences and drive business your way.

The key UX localisation challenge

Since the first 500 apps for smartphones were released by Apple鈥檚 App Store in 2008, the market for apps has exploded, with 8.9 million apps globally by 2020 and 40% of spending in the Chinese market. Another two million apps were launched in 2021 alone.

E-commerce has generally grown over the same time period: there are now more than five billion internet users world-wide, with e-commerce generating an estimated USD 5.7 trillion of revenue in 2022. Consumers spent 3.8 trillion hours on mobile devices and USD 320,000 every minute through apps in 2021, an increase of 20% on 2020.

Plan for UX success

In the wake of this, a new discipline has emerged: User Experience (UX) design, which embraces not only the functionalities of an app or website, but how the user interacts with these and how well they succeed in making the user want to stay online and use the product or service that you are trying to sell them.听

What is UX localisation?听

A simple working definition of UX localisation is the adaptation of the user experience to local expectations in terms of language, culture, norms and formats, as well as offering products suited to the local audience.听

Using best practices in UX localisation can increase your conversion rates fourfold while making users more engaged, satisfied and therefore more likely to return 鈥 this matters because 9 out of 10 users are , app or other software-based interface after a bad user experience.听听听听听

UX design

Localised UX works best when adaptation has been at the forefront of the UX design process. It鈥檚 easy to get caught up in the excitement of the user interface and all the wonderful functionalities for users of an app or website but forget that unless the page or app loads in three seconds, more than half of visitors will not stay to enjoy the party. What鈥檚 more, the remaining half are 62% less likely to come back and interact again if they have had a negative brand experience on your app or site.听听

A functioning UX 鈥 and therefore a well-localised UX 鈥 is absolutely key to winning in the marketplace and ensuring that the return on your UX investment is as high as it can be.听

Indeed, the value of UX design became apparent to the entire world in November last year, when Adobe acquired Figma 鈥 a platform for visual communication design 鈥 for USD 20 billion.

Key UX challenge

Not every company has the luxury of having a localisation owner to draw up a plan and a strategy for them 鈥 at least not at the time that they need one. But in this article, you will learn about best practice and some key considerations for preparing to take the next step in localising your user experience.

Plan for internationalisation

As in the old joke where a tourist asks a local for directions, and the reply is 鈥淚f I were you, I wouldn鈥檛 start from here,鈥 it鈥檚 always best to design your UX with a global perspective in mind. For example,it is much easier to structure your original UX, which is most likely in English, in a localisation-friendly way if you have built it with translation and local adaptation in mind.听听

For start-ups with global ambitions, this is second nature, but even well-established businesses can design their apps and websites in a way that makes them localisation-friendly or tweak existing content where needs be.

User interface elements

The question that we need to ask is: what does the user experience upon opening your app or website? What are the menus like? How does navigation work? How are the forms laid out? In short, how do all these UI elements feel and behave for the user? Will a Spanish user find it easy to enter their surname? (In Spain people have two surnames, one from the father and another from the mother, but in everyday usage only the first one is used. However, in English speaking countries, the very last name is usually taken to be the surname).

If users are left confused or having to navigate back and forth to guess where something should go, where it is or how it works, they are far less likely to continue using the platform.听

Currencies and numbers听

One element, or rather elements, to reckon with are units of currency and measurement. Whether you make sales in dollars, pounds or euros, you will need to take the target market鈥檚 preferred currency into consideration.听

In some cases 鈥 most notably B2B sales 鈥 sticking to one international currency can make sense. But if you are selling to private consumers or small businesses, their ability to see prices in their own chosen currency !听听

Current currency

The two most common methods for stating local prices on apps and websites are dynamic currency conversion (DCC), which is regulated by Visa and Mastercard, and multi-currency pricing (MPC).听

The former is linked to a foreign exchange system that automatically localises the prices, whereas the latter requires the seller to set different prices in different markets. The advantage of the latter is that it can also be used with alternative payment methods (APMs) such as iDEAL, UnionPay or Przelewy.

Local payment methods contribute to a customer鈥檚 confidence and the fact that you have made an effort to cater to their local requirements is unlikely to be a bad thing from their viewpoint. Stripe may be a very convenient and global tool for payment, but across Scandinavia, Klarna or Vipps are more commonly used, so it would make sense to incorporate these into your localised e-commerce pages if you are targeting those markets.

Units of measurement听

However, being on the money with currency is not enough. Although currency is extremely important if the consumer gets as far as considering a purchase, remember that a large proportion will drop off long before this step if they are annoyed by other aspects of the UX.听听

For a European, this could come in the form of confusion caused by the increasingly ubiquitous American date format, where the month comes before the day. Additionally, many non-British Europeans struggle with the AM/PM system 鈥 it鈥檚 not always obvious that Ante Meridiem and Post Meridiem should mean that a meeting booked in at 12am will become a midnight rendezvous rather than the intended lunch meeting.听

Britain has everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language鈥.

Americans may perfectly understand the use of Fahrenheit rather than Celsius, and gallons per mile may also be obvious to them, whereas a consumer in the Nordics or on the European continent would struggle with all of those. Add to that the fact that an American gallon is different from a British gallon, and you can see how careful you need to be to create a truly localised user experience that is not going to annoy or confuse people in different parts of the world 鈥 as Oscar Wilde said, 鈥[Britain has] everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language鈥.听

Phone numbers and addresses

Has it ever annoyed you when you were asked for the 鈥渮ip code鈥? It鈥檚 not so bad if you can enter your postal code using your own country鈥檚 system, but wouldn鈥檛 it make sense if the request changed according to where you are in the world? 路

Data encoding 鈥 ASCII vs Unicode

A technical aspect that is worth thinking about is the difference between Unicode and ASCII, which are the two most common character encoding standards in use all over the world. Unicode can support a larger range of characters whilst ASCII can be considered a . Unicode is said to have to application developers, not least reduced time-to-market for localised products. Make sure that the character encoding you end up using will support your internationalisation strategy.听

The font of wisdom

Fonts can matter in unexpected ways when localising a UX design beyond being clear and pleasant to look at: some languages, for example German and in some cases the Nordic languages, use more characters than would be used for the same words in English, and using a font that takes up less space on the screen whilst remaining clear and legible can enable you to have a unified style by using the same fonts even as the interface language changes from one to the other.听

A simple command such as the seven-character 鈥淩estart鈥 can require 13 characters and 3 words in Norwegian: 鈥Start p氓 nytt鈥. Will it fit, especially on a small smartphone screen? Japanese or Chinese characters may need more vertical space, so if you are moving into those markets, that must also be allowed for.

Localised characters

In addition, some languages use characters that do not exist in all English-based fonts. This could be the Scandinavian letters of 脝, 脴 and 脜, or the special characters used in many European languages, such as the cedilla, the little 鈥渢ail鈥 added on to the 鈥淐鈥 in 鈥渇a莽ade鈥, or the caron, the little 鈥渉ook鈥 on top of some letters, such as 鈥溓庘.

The challenge when carrying out localisation is that if your original text uses a font that does not support such characters, you may end up asking us, as one client did, whether we could simply avoid those characters when translating. As these characters can often make up about a third of the letters in the target language, the answer to that question is very likely to be 鈥渘o鈥. In the case of our client, the font had to go, but you can ensure that your font is a 鈥渨eb safe font鈥 from day one by consulting .听

What鈥檚 left is right

Make sure that your UX is easily adaptable for languages that read from right to left (RTL) 鈥 most notably Hebrew and Arabic, though there are also others. This can not only have ramifications for buttons and text boxes, but also for scroll-down menus that open on the 鈥渨rong鈥, i.e. left side of the screen, meaning that the text has nowhere to go except either beyond the edge of the screen and be truncated or wrapped up so much as to be difficult and awkward to read. Creating a right-to-left design and then changing it to left-to-right is certainly not a smooth process, so it is best to consider this in the early design stages.听听

It is, for example, . Phone numbers and time formats are not read from right to left, whereas action progression is, which means that Image A Image B becomes Image BImage A, but 10:15 is still a quarter past ten, not ten past three in the afternoon.

Avoid hardcoded text

Hardcoding tends to be a quicker method for an interface to get its data, but can be compared to a knitted jumper where the data is knitted into the pattern itself. It is very difficult to replace such data with the data suitable for another country or language group, for example. Softcoding can be attached to various sections of the jumper鈥檚 pattern 鈥 or coding 鈥 and as such make it easier to change. , but if you wish to be prepared for localisation, softcoding is the safer option.

Don鈥檛 string it out

It is one thing to write UX for a strictly English-speaking audience (keeping in mind what we said above about the differences between the various 鈥渇lavours鈥 of English around the world), but when UX writers are designing with a global perspective in mind, they need to balance the potential user鈥檚 goals with the company鈥檚 needs. You may need to include certain information, but you should avoid overly wordy or colloquial forms of听 English , as this can make it difficult to translate into natural sounding text in other languages.听

Words with double meaning听

And that also goes for ambivalent phrases 鈥 English is full of business jargon that can mean different things, such as 鈥渢akeaway鈥 (fish and chips or key lessons?) or 鈥渟eamless鈥, (woven cloth or easily integrated?). Of course, an experienced translator will be familiar with how these expressions are used differently in different settings, but shorter strings can sometimes be almost impossible to translate unless the linguist is given reference information and an explanation as to where the text will go and what it is for. For example, does it refer to an action button or the name of an item? 鈥淟ist鈥 can be the action to list something or the name of a tab containing a list.听

Images that speak to the culture听

It鈥檚 often claimed that a picture is worth a thousand words. In that case, let鈥檚 make sure that those words are not offensive to the people you wish to woo. Some find dogs cute, for instance, but in some cultures it鈥檚 an unclean animal. Alcohol consumption is not equally acceptable in all cultures.听

Images need to follow the local culture of the locations that the app is being used, and one way of ensuring that images are appropriate is to consult with people from your target areas to gauge their reactions to different imagery.听

The music and podcast app of how this can be done by using a variety of models to present the same basic message in different culturally appropriate ways.

Colours and symbols听

Did you know that colours can have different meanings across cultures? For example, Japanese people associate the colour white with mourning, while many Asian countries associate red with good luck. This is why Uber went to considerable length in ensuring that each country has a colour palette of its own, that had positive connotations in the respective country.

The same level of effort must be applied for ensuring that symbols say what you think they do in the target culture 鈥 emojis, for example, can have a wide variety of meanings depending on where in the world you are.

Products are local too

It is one thing to localise the ways in which content is presented, or in other words how you offer your product or services. But UX localisation also requires the tailoring of the products and services you offer so that they are as suited to the needs and demands of the local people as possible. In 2017 Ctrip bought Trip.com and to offer unique services relevant to the customer base in the respective target areas.

A plan for going global

A good plan for going global with your software or application includes the localisation of UX design. To succeed in this, it is instrumental to work with experts in the local culture of the market you are targeting, to know the needs of the market you are seeking to serve, and to take a trans-creative approach 鈥 working closely with the translator 鈥 where both the content and the user interface are re-shaped in a way that localises not just words but the customer鈥檚 experience.

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3 ways to ensure that UX translates into user delight /3-ways-to-ensure-that-ux-translates-into-user-delight/ Fri, 06 Nov 2020 11:42:14 +0000 /?p=27019 You鈥檝e spent countless hours and unending effort creating a great user experience 鈥 and then you need to localise it for a different language and culture. How do you ensure that your users in non-English-speaking markets get the great experience that you intended? The ideal user experience (UX) would be designed with all the various ...

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You鈥檝e spent countless hours and unending effort creating a great user experience 鈥 and then you need to localise it for a different language and culture. How do you ensure that your users in non-English-speaking markets get the great experience that you intended?

The ideal user experience (UX) would be designed with all the various languages your users need in the markets you serve. But the reality is that often a company grows into new markets faster than planned or into markets they didn鈥檛 plan for originally. As your company scales, it鈥檚 easy for localisation to become an afterthought, with translations tacked onto a structure built for English and little or no attention given to the context of the text.

At Sandberg we have many years of experience partnering with online businesses and creating localised content that delivers the same high-quality experience, tone and delight in translation as in the original. In order to achieve this, there are at least three important points that must be taken into consideration.

1. Context 鈥 is your UX copy written with only English in mind?

Consider a common sentence string that appears on a website:

Your [X] is ready

The 鈥渋s鈥 at least indicates that the X here is a singular item. But 鈥測our鈥 in different languages can be your singular or plural. In some languages, like Norwegian, the form will also change depending on the grammatical gender of the item X, i.e. din or ditt (or deres, if plural). The same is true of 鈥渞eady鈥, which could be klar or klart depending on the grammatical gender. If the 鈥渋s鈥 is not reliable and could be 2 items, then klar becomes klare, the plural form of the adjective.

We recommend that you supply whatever reference materials you have that could be relevant, such as PDFs, screenshots and links to your existing website or social media posts.

The solution to these challenges has been identified by marketing expert Nataly Kelly, Head of Localization at HubSpot. She points out that, 鈥Whatever you can do to provide context to your linguistic talent will yield hugely better results [鈥.  In other words, context is key: we鈥檒l work very closely with you to make sure that the context in which your text appears is fully understood and will work as you intended. Where possible, we use translation tools where descriptions of the text鈥檚 function appear next to the text to be translated, and in some cases the tool may have a context view, where the translated text with examples of the X in question will show up, to see if the sentence still makes sense in the translated language.

To increase the overall quality of the translation and reduce unnecessary back-and-forth, we recommend that you supply whatever reference materials you have that could be relevant, such as PDFs, screenshots and links to your existing website or social media posts. This enables our translators to understand where the text fits into the relevant part of your user experience.

If we still need more context, we will raise a query with you to get the required information. This is always better than producing a nonsensical or potentially dangerous mistranslation.

2. Localising correctly

There are many elements to get right when you adjust a user experience to new markets.

Firstly, different businesses have different voices, i.e. styles of expressing themselves in writing. A streaming service directed at a youthful audience may have a profoundly different tone to a travel booking service for business executives. If you don鈥檛 provide detailed instructions, your carefully crafted copy may suffer changes during translation that could potentially undermine your brand and corporate image. In the best-case scenario, you鈥檒l fail to connect with your target audience. In the worst, you will upset or even offend them.

You may want to keep a playful tone, such as Hey [X]! What鈥檚 up? Our linguists rely on their experience and cultural knowledge to judge what exact words or phrases in the target language will convey the same sense of formality, without going too far for that culture. They鈥檙e able to do this in part because many of them live in the target country, and because the bulk of our translation work is performed by linguists we directly employ. Another advantage for you is that you can use the same appointed linguist 鈥 if you鈥檙e happy with a particular translator鈥檚 style and quality, you can use them again and again.

And for any business looking to make money, currency will be a consideration. Often this is already handled in your code, with currencies changing automatically according to the country of the user. But the format in which the currency appears on the page can vary depending on many factors. In English, saying for example that Price per item is 拢[XX.XX] would be quite common. This would potentially show on a website as 拢10.50. But simply replacing the 鈥溌b for 鈥渒r.鈥 would in Scandinavia be wrong for the following reasons:

  • Firstly, a space is required between the currency symbol and the value;
  • Secondly, a full stop after the currency symbol is usual; and
  • Thirdly, the decimal marker should be a comma, not a full stop. A correct version is therefore: 10,50.

Of course, the value would also change, and that is also a consideration.

Additionally, if a more formally correct version is required, then it is fairly common across Scandinavia to use the three-letter ISO 4217 currency code 鈥 NOK for Norway, SEK for Sweden, etc., rather than just 鈥渒r鈥. You can find out more about how to deal with numbers, dates and times in our PDF guide.

Getting both the tone and the content correct is crucial for your UX design to work as you intended. Your users鈥 experience is about so much more than a quick transaction; it鈥檚 also about experiencing your company鈥檚 voice, style, approach, brand, message and quality 鈥 it鈥檚 your opportunity to impress. UX that doesn鈥檛 work well, or where the text appears nonsensical, is not only annoying to the potential customer, it also tells them something about your commitment to quality.

This could be something as basic as the text on a button fitting within the allocated space. A button on the English site saying, 鈥淩estart form?鈥 could, without proper context, be translated as the grammatically correct 鈥溍榥sker du 氓 starte skjemaet p氓 nytt?鈥 (Do you wish to start the form again?鈥). The latter sentence is 28 characters longer than the first and may therefore not fit in the button layout.

This may not only look strange but in some cases, if the text gets truncated, may change the message. In the example below, the only text showing clearly is 鈥溍榥sker du 氓 starte鈥, which means 鈥淒o you wish to start鈥, and that is a far cry from the actual function of the button. This not only makes the user鈥檚 experience frustrating, but may lead them to ask 鈥榳ell, if the company is sloppy about this, perhaps they are sloppy about other things as well鈥.

English

Norwegian

Apart from the functional text, product names and descriptions can also suffer if careful, professional attention is not paid to them. Recently, a well-known international business expanding their online offering to the Swedish market saw the use of automatic translation software leading to translations that were not only comically wrong but also potentially offensive. One of the less grievous examples was 鈥渢runks鈥, in the meaning of underpants, being translated as 鈥渓uggage compartments鈥. Such mistranslations reflect poorly not only on the host website, but also on the very well-known underwear brand.

3. Understanding your business

At Sandberg, we take the time and effort to learn about your business and to understand what you wish to achieve 鈥 not only in terms of hard sales, but also in terms of style, message and branding. Some businesses are of course digital natives 鈥 apps or online services that grew out of the ubiquity of the internet and the rise of the smartphone. Others have built or are in the process of digital transformation: building an online presence as an extension of a traditional business model. Whatever the case may be, we have the experience and expertise, as well as the established systems, to make sure that your business is properly supported as it enters new markets.

According to payments company , 30鈥40% of online commerce is conducted on smartphones, and every year for the past five, e-commerce and m-commerce have grown 10% to 20% annually. The coronavirus outbreak has only seen this trend accelerate. During the pandemic, online sales with home delivery from an already high starting point in Norway. In 2018, the Nordic online market was across the Nordic countries, with Sweden the biggest player, and Norway and Denmark having the highest spend per customer.

It鈥檚 clear that this is a market worth tapping into, but there is competition. To win and stand out in a crowded marketplace, you need to keep UX at the core of your product strategy so customers are able to engage with you effortlessly. That means that every label for a tiny button, legend on a product, call-to-action or other instructions must work in a way that feels completely natural and intuitive for a non-English speaker.

That鈥檚 where a professional translation provider comes in. UX text translation and localisation are a core part of the services we offer. The deep and broad experience we鈥檙e able to offer you 鈥 built over many years 鈥 means that we鈥檝e developed an approach to UX localisation that works for the user and therefore for you, as you reach out to the user.

A UX-friendly localisation strategy focuses on the importance of research: both to gain a full comprehension of your business or service, but also to understand your users and the market segment you鈥檙e trying to connect with. Our translators are trained in conducting research and support one another in finding the key to unlocking a tricky translation or enabling deeper knowledge about a product or service. Our specialist translators have both the breadth and depth of expertise within such fields as medicine, law, finance, engineering, marketing and more.

Whichever provider you choose, make sure you find a partner who is sure to translate your product鈥檚 user experience into sheer user delight.

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