The fruit of our passion

Objective

Appigo needed a reliable and agile localization process to keep pace with the growing global demand for their successful productivity app, Todo. Glyph’s team worked in close collaboration with Appigo’s developers to test a variety of tools and workflow options in order to find one that allowed us to keep update costs low and localization cycle tightly coordinated. The final customized workflow involved the use of iPhone SDK utilities, third-party localization tools and custom tools developed internally by Glyph. "Glyph has been very responsive to our specific localization needs while translating our popular iPhone Productivity Apps," comments Appigo founder Boyd Timothy.

Solutions

Team Selection: Glyph assembled a team of linguists that fit the iPhone app user demographic. Trendy and tech savvy, knowledgeable regarding mobile apps and the kind of experience users in the target market are expecting.

Extraction: After an initial review of the source code, all hard-coded content was modified to allow for systematic extraction using SDK tools. Glyph worked with Appigo to help them implement the right tool set to merge localizable content into .strings files.

UI Modifications: During localization Glyph worked to ensure that string length was closely monitored and retained by translation teams. During testing, localized UI elements were viewed in Interface Builder and UI layout components were adjusted to accommodate string length changes.

Encoding & Character Integrity: Prior to delivering localized content, Glyph ensured that all .strings files had retained the necessary UTF-16 encoding and that the correct display of all special characters had been retained.

Testing: After initial testing using emulators, Glyph performed testing on live iPhone devices to ensure that all linguistic and UI elements were flawless.

Results

After putting this powerful process in place, Appigo was pleased to find its Todo application among the Top 10 Paid Productivity Apps in almost every market for which Glyph localized. They are making plans for new language releases in the coming year.