0:00:00Welcome to Under the Radar, a show about independent iOS app development.
0:00:03I'm Marco Arment.
0:00:04And I'm David Smith.
0:00:05Under the Radar is never longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started.
0:00:10So today we wanted to dive into the topic of localization, or some people call it internationalization,
0:00:17and some people think those are different.
0:00:18I don't really know, I just call it all localization, and that works for me.
0:00:22But more generally, we're talking about the concept of taking your application and making
0:00:25it, having its appearance and its strings and the things in it be adaptive based on
0:00:32where in the world your user is and what language they're speaking, and being adaptive in those
0:00:37kinds of ways.
0:00:39And generally this is kind of one of those things that I feel like it's a lot of times
0:00:46viewed as kind of like a hygiene thing, like in the sense of it's this thing that maybe
0:00:51you think you should do, but often you don't.
0:00:56For a long time, I had none of my applications localized at all, and it was always this thing
0:01:00that I'd go to the session at WWDC and kind of feel bad about myself and say, "Oh, this
0:01:04year I'll do it," and then I'd go back and I wouldn't actually do it.
0:01:08And I think it's a tricky one because unless you live in a multilingual or international
0:01:14life, you know, where if you speak two languages at home or you live abroad from where your
0:01:20native language is or something like that, it's not something that you would necessarily
0:01:25come across in your day-to-day life.
0:01:28And it's always hard, I think, to write features for an application that you yourself won't
0:01:34benefit from in using it.
0:01:36So when I make my app display all of its strings in German, that's great, but I don't speak
0:01:45German, so I have no idea if, A, if they're right, which we'll get into a bit later, and
0:01:51B, I don't feel that benefit.
0:01:54And so I've struggled for a long time to do it.
0:01:56And I'll certainly say it's a bit of a pain to do because if you want to do this, you
0:02:02have to structure a lot of the visual components of your application very differently.
0:02:07You have to make things very flexible, you can't hard-code a lot of values, everything
0:02:11has to be able to be switched in and out and adaptable depending on what language and locale
0:02:18your app is being used.
0:02:19But one day, I bit the bullet, and the first app I ever localized was Pedometer++, and
0:02:27I localized it and had a pretty impactful change as a result.
0:02:31I found that my downloads outside of English-speaking countries, so outside of the United States,
0:02:37Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Canada with an asterisk, because obviously
0:02:42they speak French there too, but outside of those countries, I found that my downloads
0:02:48went up by about three times.
0:02:51And overall, that meant that my overall sales didn't go up by three times, because most
0:02:55of my sales were still coming from English-speaking countries, but overall my sales did go up.
0:03:00I think it went up by about 50%, which was encouraging.
0:03:08And the effort it took to get there has certainly--it's debatable overall whether it was the right
0:03:15tradeoff, but I think in general it taught me the lesson that there is an impact to this,
0:03:18and it is something that we at least all need to consider.
0:03:22Because I've also had the flip side, where I've localized some of my other applications,
0:03:26and I've had essentially no increase.
0:03:28And so it's not like a silver bullet, it's not like if you localized your app, your sales
0:03:31would go up three times.
0:03:33That's definitely not the case.
0:03:35The experience I had in Podometer++ was by far the best I've had, but it's somewhat distinct
0:03:42from some of my other experiences.
0:03:45Have you ever localized any of your applications?
0:03:48>>
0:03:58I've had a lot of great jobs, and so I kind of know what's involved.
0:04:01And I know--I too have gone every year to the WWDC sessions about localization, and I
0:04:07too have sat there feeling bad about myself, thinking, "Why don't I just do this already?
0:04:11Let's just do it."
0:04:13But as you mentioned, it is not easy to do.
0:04:16And one of the biggest questions in my mind, which I hear people ask me all the time, is
0:04:22will this actually increase sales, and by how much?
0:04:24And as you said, a big increase for you in non-English speaking countries, that's great.
0:04:30However, it's hard to know.
0:04:32As you said, it's hard to know whether that will apply to my app or not.
0:04:36And it's hard to know how big the increase will be and then whether it will be worth
0:04:38the cost.
0:04:39But to me, I kind of see internationalization and localization--I also don't know the difference.
0:04:45I know there is one, and people get mad at us for not knowing it, but I don't know what
0:04:48it is.
0:04:50I see them too as kind of a code hygiene thing, and it's kind of similar to accessibility
0:04:55in some ways, where if you make an interface accessible via the iOS accessibility mechanisms
0:05:02for things like voiceover and other assistive technologies, sometimes it takes a little
0:05:08bit more work in the coding and design stage, but it usually isn't that much more work to
0:05:13make it possible and to do it well.
0:05:18Usually it's actually very little work because Apple's stuff is so good.
0:05:20You just kind of have to be aware of it as you're coding.
0:05:23And there are certain aspects of internationalization that are that easy.
0:05:29Things like date formatting and stuff like that, like number formatting, currency formatting.
0:05:34In those kind of areas, Apple provides really easy APIs, date formatters, that kind of stuff,
0:05:40that if you just use them correctly at all, then you will just get nicely formatted things.
0:05:47Your strings won't be automatically translated to different languages, but things like displaying
0:05:52numbers and things like that, that's very easy to get right and to have kind of done
0:05:58for you automatically.
0:06:01In Overcast, I make extensive use of that kind of thing, and for the strings, I do wrap
0:06:07all of my UI strings in NSLocalizedString, which is this macro that you should look up
0:06:13NSLocalizedString if you don't know what it is.
0:06:14You should be using it.
0:06:16I do that for preparation for potential future internationalization efforts so that it's
0:06:23easy to see all my UI strings and easy to pull them out and have them translated in
0:06:29an automated kind of way if I ever need that.
0:06:33But I don't actually do that.
0:06:34I haven't actually translated it.
0:06:36So I have a few instances where I'm kind of abusing the formatters.
0:06:41In my list of episodes, I omit the year from the date from an episode's release date if
0:06:49it's the current year because I think that's just a nice little thing to get a little bit
0:06:53less clutter.
0:06:54If your episode was released on August 1st and that was two weeks ago, I don't need
0:06:59to know that it was 2016 because I already know it's 2016, thank you.
0:07:04And this works.
0:07:05There's no built-in function that I know of to do this very well.
0:07:10So I do kind of a hack which is I get the localized version of the current year and
0:07:15just remove that substring from the date string.
0:07:18And this turns out to be a really dumb implementation because in certain countries, there's a -- I
0:07:23forget exactly where it was.
0:07:24I think it was -- it might have been in a Portuguese-speaking country or a Spanish-speaking
0:07:28country but there was something where I got an email from users saying this is kind of
0:07:32weird looking because there's like -- there's a word between the day or the month and the
0:07:38year in the way it's formatted where it's like of or the.
0:07:42So it's like, you know, July of 2016, you know, whatever the translated version of that
0:07:47is.
0:07:48And so in my version of this, it just says, you know, 16th July of.
0:07:52>> That's not great.
0:07:53>> No, it's not great.
0:07:54So I have to probably revisit this strategy.
0:07:58But for the most part, everything else has been done only in the ways of like using the
0:08:04built-in formatters for numbers and dates and currencies and things but not actually
0:08:08translating the strings but making it easy to do so in the future if I want to.
0:08:11>> Yeah.
0:08:12And I think the approach you're taking is certainly the one that is at the very least
0:08:17the right approach.
0:08:18That making -- as you're going -- as you're building an app, being aware that this might
0:08:23be something you want to do later, I think will certainly increase the likelihood that
0:08:26one day you will actually get to it rather than hitting the point where it's like, okay,
0:08:31I need to now like search in my app for every string that is being displayed and then add
0:08:39the NS localized string macro to it.
0:08:42Or I need to now go and switch everything over to using formatters.
0:08:47And I'm an iOS 10.
0:08:50I think there's the new units formatters, which are even -- take this even farther that
0:08:53you can now -- it's not even just dates and currency that you can do in numbers.
0:08:59You could -- you can even do clever things about speeds or distances.
0:09:03So like I run into this with a couple of my workout apps where, you know, it's how far
0:09:07did you run.
0:09:08And right now I do some things like where I need to be clever about which unit to use
0:09:14and have options in the application for switching that.
0:09:17You know, on first launch I'll see what country you're in.
0:09:22And I assume that if you're not in the United States you're probably going to use metric
0:09:26units, which in general I think is pretty much the case.
0:09:30And so I do those switches manually.
0:09:32And then, you know, iOS 10 I can do this automatically.
0:09:34But by and large it seems like in general a good idea to keep this as something that
0:09:39-- it's part of building an app properly.
0:09:42And just like you were saying with accessibility.
0:09:44Like if you build an app to do this, you're probably ultimately also going to be a better
0:09:48app because you're being thoughtful about what you're displaying to your user at a different
0:09:54level.
0:09:55And sometimes I run into situations where I'm just being lazy.
0:09:59And so I'll add some words of explanation for something.
0:10:04And in that case it's probably symptomatic of my app actually being too confusing and
0:10:11not obvious enough about how to operate it if I have to sort of build instructions into
0:10:15it.
0:10:16And if you're in a localization mindset, there's a cost to adding that string because now that
0:10:21gets added to your list of things that you need to translate and have localized.
0:10:26And so it's -- in some ways it helps you think about your application in a constructive way
0:10:31to make sure that if you couldn't read anything in this application, could you still use it?
0:10:37And if you can, that's probably a good indication that even if you can read the strings and
0:10:43the labels and things in your application, you know, it's still going to be a good experience.
0:10:48But by and large it's a funny thing because I think doing localizing just to have more
0:10:53downloads is I think a good reason.
0:10:55And I think in general for most people there is going to be -- it's very unlikely that
0:10:59you're going to have a negative correlation there.
0:11:02It would only be if you had a terrible translation and the app was actually worse after localizing
0:11:08it.
0:11:09But generally speaking I think, you know, having something that's more relevant to a
0:11:12customer by nature should increase that somewhat.
0:11:16But the other reason that I think is good to keep in mind when you're thinking about
0:11:20whether you should or shouldn't localize your application is in general I think Apple tends
0:11:25to only feature applications that are localized in the country's app store that they're doing
0:11:32the feature in.
0:11:34And so if you want to be featured in the Japanese app store, in the German app store, in the
0:11:38French app store, in the Spanish app store, you probably need to be localized into that
0:11:44country and probably at the very least have your screenshots and app store description
0:11:49localized and probably even your app as well.
0:11:53And that certainly is, again, it's just one of these opportunities that, you know, in
0:11:57-- as cutthroat of a market as the app store is, those little edges, those little things
0:12:03that in general localization isn't a mountain of work.
0:12:08It's something that you have to work on and it will lose you a day out of a point release
0:12:14kind of work.
0:12:16You will make -- it's hard to put your finger on exactly the impact that it's having, but
0:12:21I think it'll have an impact.
0:12:22And the reality is it's like it's a little advantage that you may as well take, that
0:12:28you may -- you know, it's something you can do directly and it's not like you have to
0:12:32think of this grand new innovative vision for something where you've come up with something
0:12:38totally new.
0:12:39Like you're just doing the basics better and maybe if your competitors aren't localized
0:12:44then you'll have that little edge on them.
0:12:46And especially I think a lot of app store algorithms, as best I can tell, have this
0:12:51kind of -- this built-in sense of as you get a little bit better there's a stronger benefit
0:12:58to the person in front, which is problematic in some ways, but in this case can be beneficial
0:13:03that if you can do lots of little things to be slightly better than your competitor, you're
0:13:07showing up higher in charts, you're more likely to be featured, you may show up higher in
0:13:11search.
0:13:12There's all these little things that can add up and this is just one of them.
0:13:14And so in general I'd say you should localize your app.
0:13:17And I mean I was actually looking at Overcast before your recording and it's a funny app
0:13:23because I think most of the app you could localize very easily because most of it is
0:13:28not -- it's content that's relevant to the user already.
0:13:31It's like it's self-localizing.
0:13:33If I'm in France listening to French podcasts you don't have to like translate the time
0:13:37title of the podcasts.
0:13:40All that is already there.
0:13:41It's just the surrounding infrastructure around it and even the names of the -- the name of
0:13:45the playlist, they're going to name the playlist whatever they want to name it.
0:13:49It's not like you have to do something clever there.
0:13:51It's just some other labels.
0:13:52And so it's probably something worth doing.
0:13:55>> KEVIN: Yeah, I mean, and also beyond like selfish reasons of this will get more downloads,
0:14:01which are very important, beyond that though a lot of people -- if you don't localize,
0:14:07and I know this from the experience of having apps that I haven't localized, if you don't
0:14:11localize a lot of people who don't speak your language will still use the app anyway.
0:14:16They'll just fumble through.
0:14:17Like they'll just -- you know, because like a lot of times like there might not be any
0:14:20other apps to do the thing or they might have heard about yours and yours might be the best
0:14:24one or they just might want to try yours or whatever the reason.
0:14:27A lot of people who don't speak the language of your app will try to use it regardless.
0:14:32And so it's really a design question of like do you want the experience of using your app
0:14:38to be better for people who don't speak the language that it's in?
0:14:40Do you want them to be able to use it?
0:14:44Do you want to be able to provide value to people who don't speak your language?
0:14:46And to some degree, as you said, if you look at Overcast, I've taken a lot of this to heart
0:14:51where I try to basically avoid a lot of text where possible.
0:14:56But just avoiding the need for text and translation will get you a lot of the way there and will
0:15:02let people try to kind of figure out and fumble through more easily.
0:15:07Like I mean I see even like with games, like my four-year-old son can't read yet but he
0:15:12knows how to play a lot of games on his iPad because they don't rely so much on text.
0:15:16They just have buttons and icons and things and he's able to figure those out.
0:15:22The more your app cannot rely on text, the better.
0:15:24But for the text that it does rely on, you're doing a great service to the design and experience
0:15:31of a lot of real-world users by localizing because people who don't speak your language
0:15:36are going to try to use it anyway.
0:15:38But anyway, in the case of Overcast though, I am also a little bit scared of a number
0:15:43of issues that we'll probably get to in the second half of the show.
0:15:44But like I mean little things like what you mentioned, the UI design, like there are so
0:15:49many features and labels in the interface where like I've chosen the words extremely
0:15:55carefully and like I will choose the name of a feature based on what will fit in the
0:16:02table view cell in the settings screen.
0:16:04Like I will often like make decisions about like exactly what words this has to be based
0:16:10on like what will fit.
0:16:11And I know that if I localize everything, it will add a lot of overhead to a lot of
0:16:18the testing and the validation of the UI and everything on different sized devices especially
0:16:23and some of that we can automate, some of it we can't.
0:16:26But also it will be very easy for my app to be misunderstood.
0:16:32But I guess this is kind of the perfect being the enemy of the good.
0:16:34Like right now my app is being understood even worse by people who don't speak my language.
0:16:39So I guess maybe that's just a cost I'd have to bear.
0:16:43Yeah well before we continue on that front, we are brought to you this week by Cococonf.
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0:17:00I'm going to try to go this year I think because I've heard so many great things about it and
0:17:02I keep having scheduling problems and I can't go but I wish I can go to this event.
0:17:06I think I'm going to try to make it work this year, we'll see.
0:17:08Anyway this event, March 20th through 23rd, held again at the Yosemite Lodge at the Falls
0:17:14in Yosemite National Park.
0:17:15Speakers include Ashley Nelson Hornstein, friend of the show David Smith, Andy Anako, Matt
0:17:20Drance, Jamie Newberry, Brent Simmons and Daniel Steinberg.
0:17:23Sessions run in the mornings and evenings and afternoons are spent exploring Yosemite
0:17:27National Park with activities including ranger led hikes, a bus tour of the valley, a photo
0:17:33walk by TED photographer James Duncan Davidson.
0:17:35These are all great options for you to choose if you want to.
0:17:37There's also music by James Dempsey and the Breakpoints and by Jonathan "Songaday" Mann
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0:17:47So head on over to cococonf.com/yosemite to register.
0:17:51David you'll be there obviously because you're speaking, I really hope to be there, looks
0:17:54to be a great conference and thanks a lot to CocoConf for sponsoring our show once again.
0:17:59So to pick back up what you were talking about, I think there is a fundamental thing and I
0:18:04think for the rest of the show we'll kind of dive into a bit of the mechanics of what
0:18:08localization is, that once you finally decide it's something that you're going to do.
0:18:13I think you kind of have to let go a little bit on perfection in order to approach this
0:18:21because just fundamentally the width of words in languages is just mind-bendingly different
0:18:31between languages.
0:18:32The classic example is something like German which tends to have these very long words
0:18:37for relatively simple concepts.
0:18:40You go all the way to some of the more Asian languages where you'll have a single one-character
0:18:45symbol as the equivalent of what's being said there.
0:18:48And so you'll never have, I know the feeling of what you're talking about where you want
0:18:52to have just that perfect word that makes everything line up nicely or it gives you
0:18:59a good balance to the screen.
0:19:03And when you're localizing, you just at a certain point have to say, "It's going to
0:19:07be impossible."
0:19:08And I'd rather it be understandable than visually perfect.
0:19:16And maybe there's a way that if you were really a linguistic genius that you could find different
0:19:20words that are more appropriate or might convey the same meaning but have a more similar length,
0:19:27maybe that's possible.
0:19:28But I think I've just had to accept that going down this road is probably better because
0:19:34not doing it, it's like having something that looks visually slightly less balanced perhaps
0:19:40is going to be better than something that looks balanced but is unintelligible.
0:19:46So when you're localizing something, I think there's probably, I think briefly I'll just
0:19:51say there's two things that you're sort of typically doing.
0:19:53You're localizing the language, so I'm an English speaker, that's the only language that
0:19:59I really can speak with any fluency, and so I write my applications in English as a result.
0:20:07And I can take all the English words and translate them into another language.
0:20:13And then there's the more cultural differences, and this can both be things like we were saying
0:20:18with units, so metric versus imperial units or date formats, or even getting into differences
0:20:25within a language.
0:20:26So for example, we spell the word "color" differently in the United States than they
0:20:30do in Great Britain.
0:20:32And so you can get into those kind of cultural differences.
0:20:34But we're right.
0:20:35Of course we are.
0:20:36You don't need that U. That U is completely unnecessary.
0:20:40And that's the way it is.
0:20:41UIColor doesn't have a U in it, so for the way I'm working on iOS.
0:20:44UIColor.
0:20:45UIColor.
0:20:46UIColor.
0:20:47So you can do those two different things that you can be localizing.
0:20:51And in general, the more cultural ones are a lot of the things that you're probably going
0:20:56to want to lean on Apple for, for their date formatters and unit formatters and number
0:21:02formatters.
0:21:03And the language ones is probably what I'll talk mostly about now, because that's what
0:21:06most people think of localization.
0:21:07I think that's what we think of.
0:21:08And that's taking all of the strings that are displayed in your application and wrapping
0:21:13them up in NSLocalizedString macros.
0:21:17And I don't actually know how you do this in Swift, but I'm sure there's something similar
0:21:22to it.
0:21:23But it's probably not called NSLocalizedString.
0:21:26But there's something I'm sure that can translate back and forth.
0:21:29And you run a little script that pulls all those out of your application.
0:21:33And you end up with this little configuration file that's basically just a string and then
0:21:38a translation.
0:21:40And you can take that file and send it to a translation service.
0:21:44There's many of these.
0:21:45I've used a bunch of them.
0:21:46In general, I'm sure there maybe are some differences, but by and large, I've used a
0:21:51couple and they've all been about the same.
0:21:53At this point in iOS development, I think the tools are mature enough that any of these
0:22:00-- and I think Apple even has a website where they recommend a bunch of them -- you just
0:22:04take your strings file, you send it to them, and they'll have a translator translate it
0:22:08back.
0:22:09One thing you want to do there is in NSLocalizedString, you give both the string you want to translate
0:22:13and you can have a little comments field.
0:22:16And it's very strongly recommended that you put something useful in that comments field,
0:22:19not just the same string again or leaving it blank.
0:22:22Because you want to give the translator a sense of what the string actually means in
0:22:28context.
0:22:29I know some translation services also even request that you send screenshots of your
0:22:33application to the translator so they can see what it looks like in context.
0:22:37So they're going to translate it and send it back to you.
0:22:39Or something you can also do is ask a friend or a colleague.
0:22:42I've started actually doing this a few times, especially when I'm doing small translation
0:22:46batches.
0:22:47I'll just ask on Twitter, "Hey..."
0:22:49I'll make a little Google form and say, "Hey, here's this one string that I need for a point
0:22:53release."
0:22:55If you speak any of the languages that my app's translated in, which I think right now
0:22:59is German, Spanish, French, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, I think are the ones
0:23:05that I use typically, maybe Portuguese.
0:23:09If you speak any of those languages, translate it.
0:23:11Obviously that's nice for me because I have a large enough audience that I can find someone
0:23:16who speaks one of those languages.
0:23:19But otherwise just use a translation service and it's the same.
0:23:21I will say generally what you want is somebody who is native to the target language but fluent
0:23:29in yours, not vice versa.
0:23:32If you come up with somebody who grew up speaking English but learned a bit of French in high
0:23:37school, ideally you want a French person to do the translation for you instead who just
0:23:43knows enough English to understand what you're trying to say.
0:23:48Because a native speaker, there's a lot of differences and nuance to these languages,
0:23:52to any language, and ideally you want a native speaker.
0:23:57And I've run into this a few times with translation services in an ideal way, and this is why
0:24:03I've actually started leaning more on asking friends and people I know who speak the languages
0:24:08that I'm translating into, is if someone who actually uses your application on a regular
0:24:13basis will have a better translation.
0:24:16Because I've definitely had a thing where they say the word you're using here is the
0:24:20right word.
0:24:21It's not like you messed up the translation.
0:24:24But the way in which they're using it is different than what a typical person would expect it
0:24:29to be said as.
0:24:32And I will raise my hand and confess that I have used Google Translate a few times.
0:24:39>> COREY: Oh, don't do that.
0:24:40>> BRIAN: When I was trying to rush out an update, and I didn't--usually this is the
0:24:44problem with localization, is once you do it, you kind of have to keep doing it.
0:24:47If you make a small change that adds a string or changes a string, it's like, "Oh, I don't
0:24:51want to have to go through a translation service or go through a big process."
0:24:54So I always just go to Google Translate and did a few translations.
0:24:58And it's a train wreck.
0:25:00I've done it, and I've lived to tell the tale, but I would not recommend it.
0:25:05It is definitely not something--you'll get some very strange customer support emails
0:25:10where they're just like, "So, I don't know how to say this best, but the person who did
0:25:17your translation didn't really translate it so much as turned it into unintelligible gibberish."
0:25:24And so, avoid that.
0:25:27If you're just wanting to have a placeholder there, a much better placeholder is in Xcode,
0:25:32you can launch your application with a pseudo-language, which is designed to test your layout, and
0:25:38so things are really long and have to use different character sets and things.
0:25:42If you want to just have something there to test, validate your layout with, use that.
0:25:49Don't use Google Translate.
0:25:50I made a mistake.
0:25:51But then, yeah, you just go through that, you end up with the strings back, you put
0:25:54them back into your application, and now your application, when you launch it, will be in
0:25:58the new language.
0:25:59And it's kind of cool the first time you launch your application and you don't understand
0:26:03any of the text.
0:26:06It's kind of a strange feeling, but it's kind of cool.
0:26:08And then you have an app that is localized.
0:26:10And as you go, as you make changes, you just need to keep track of the differences, the
0:26:15new strings, or if you make changes to strings.
0:26:20And your app's localized.
0:26:21And I don't know if that's anything more on that process.
0:26:24Apple has gotten the toolset to, at this point, be pretty good.
0:26:30There was a time, I think earlier, when I looked into localization back in iOS 3 or
0:26:364 days, and it was much more manual and much more cumbersome.
0:26:40But in general now, you just kind of run the few scripts, it pulls it out, you send those
0:26:44off-shore translation service, you get them back, you put them back in, and you're up
0:26:50and running.
0:26:51- So, how do you handle the issue of other language support?
0:26:56If people who don't speak your language email you for technical support.
0:27:00'Cause that's always been my concern with localizing my stuff, is like, well, even if
0:27:03I localized the whole app, am I also gonna localize the whole website, the content I'm
0:27:08showing in the app, the podcast storefronts, all that stuff, and then also my support,
0:27:13which I'm a bad example, 'cause I don't really provide support, I guess.
0:27:17But for people who are better people than me, who provide support, how do you handle
0:27:21that question?
0:27:22- Yeah, and so this is something that actually was the last topic I wanted to touch on, because
0:27:25I feel like it's easy to think, oh, well, then I have to provide support in these languages,
0:27:29and I don't speak those languages.
0:27:31And A, you'll get support in the native language of your users, either way.
0:27:37And so sometimes people who know who I am and know that I'm based in the US and that
0:27:43I speak English will email me in English, even though I know they're German or they're
0:27:49French or they're Spanish.
0:27:50But generally, you'll just get emails from people who found your app on the app store,
0:27:54downloaded it, and have a question, and they'll hit the contact button if they can find it.
0:27:59Because obviously it may, if it's email us is the button label, they may not actually
0:28:04know what that means, but maybe email is a fairly good term, but maybe as a side point,
0:28:09it's a good idea to put an icon on that button, either way.
0:28:14But you get an email, and those will happen either way.
0:28:17And so I really wouldn't worry about it too much.
0:28:20And my experience is I take that, and this is an example where Google Translate is your
0:28:25friend rather than in your in-app translations.
0:28:29If you take what they sent you and run it through Google Translate, it's usually good
0:28:32enough that you can understand what the intent is, especially because customer support by
0:28:40its nature is somewhat repetitive.
0:28:42There tend to be certain issues that come up over and over again.
0:28:45And so you'll get an email and you run it through Google Translate, you'll get a sense
0:28:49of what they're saying.
0:28:51And then what I typically do is I'll respond in English, because I can't write in a new
0:28:59language, so that's all I can do.
0:29:01And then I'll take that and run my response through Google Translate into whatever language
0:29:07they emailed me in, and I put that underneath my English text and send it back, in the hopes
0:29:14that the combination of if they speak some English and then having the Google Translate
0:29:19rough translation, they'll be able to understand.
0:29:22And I would say by and large, that works.
0:29:24That people understand that I don't speak their language, that I don't get a lot of
0:29:29people upset about that or have issues with that.
0:29:31There's this natural thing that I'm an American company, I speak English, and I'm
0:29:36just doing the best I can.
0:29:38And I think I wouldn't worry about it beyond that.
0:29:40I think you might have converted me.
0:29:42Let's see it.
0:29:43I look forward to launching Overcast in German and seeing all those nice big long strings.
0:29:48Oh man, I'm not looking forward to testing that.
0:29:50All right, thanks for listening everybody, and we will talk to you next week.
0:29:54Bye.
0:29:55[BLANK_AUDIO]