With Android (News - Alert) being a worldwide phenomenon, it makes sense that Google wants international apps appearing in its Play Store to work well with Android devices across the globe. That’s why the company announced they would be making an app translation service available to all developers. This week, that service became available.
App developers can hire human translators to transcribe their apps into the local tongue. The service is part of a toolbox of localization features that developers can take advantage of as they distribute their app around the world through Google (News - Alert) Play.
Google will also help developers determine what languages to target for translation. A developer can look in their Developer Console to see where their app has users already, and which countries the app has a lot of installs but has yet to be translated into the local language. From there, it's a simple trip over to the Optimization Tips section to make sure their app, Play Store listing and graphics are consistently translated.
Google launched a pilot program last August in which several top Android developers reported seeing high increases of their installs coming from non-English speaking users.
“We were happy to see that many developers expressed interest in the App Translation Service pilot program,” said Ellie Powers, a member of the Google Play team. “It has been well received by those who have participated”.
Google also pointed out that people “turn on” 1.5 million new Android devices a day around the world, and that there have been over 1 billion activations. Google believes that its latest version of the mobile operating system – Android Kit Kat – will help bring the company another billion users.
The new OS is aimed at being able to run on low-end devices, encouraging users in countries running earlier versions of Android to make an affordable upgrade.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi