Translating Highly Creative Marketing Copy
One of the first challenges with this project was accurately translating uTalk’s highly creative English marketing and promotional copy into the target languages. This included language introduction text designed to get learners excited. uTalk had crafted lively, culturally-relevant English descriptions of unique “cool” languages like Mongolian and Navajo aimed at their young target demographic. Our task was preserving the creative spirit and local flavor of this copy when translating to other languages.
Lack of Context for App Features
As a robust language learning platform, uTalk has many interactive lessons, games, stories, and exercises. However, we were sometimes provided strings of text without screenshots or descriptions of how the words were used in the app. This made it difficult for translators to discern nuanced meanings or preserve continuity across related features.
Maintaining Consistency Across Translators
With a large app containing thousands of text strings, maintaining consistency was crucial but difficult. We needed to minimize any potential inconsistencies between translators working on different segments. Varied linguistic styles could impact continuity and create a disjointed user experience. However, coordinating among all team members to align on terminology and tone posed logistical difficulties, requiring a comprehensive, scalable solution.
Recruiting Experienced Marketing Translators
We hand-picked linguists who had translated successful marketing campaigns in the past. Our translators could deftly capture the tone and emotion of the English copy by adapting jokes, puns, and cultural references. This enabled preserving the “cool” factor of uTalk’s language descriptions when rendering them for young local demographics. Meticulous translator selection was key – their creative skills ensured the translations inspired learners as intended.
Leveraging Our ChatBox© Feature
We gave uTalk access to our ChatBox© so they could directly communicate with the translation team in real time within our online Dashboard. Whenever the linguists needed clarity on UI strings’ meaning or usage, they used ChatBox© to quickly ask questions. uTalk could provide answers on the fly, giving translators the context needed to make accurate word choices.
Language Lead and Translation Guidelines
We appointed an experienced linguist as Language Lead to develop and maintain Translation Guidelines and a Glossary that all translators had to adhere to. These comprehensive instructions covered uTalk’s preferred word choices, stylistic conventions, tone, formatting, and more. The Language Lead also reviewed all translations to ensure compliance. This strategy allowed us to scale translator volume without sacrificing consistency.
Scope of work
100,000 words per language pair: For uTalk, we translated an extensive range of copy including marketing materials, language descriptions, UI strings for lessons, games, features, and supporting app text. This comprehensive localization enabled uTalk to launch fully translated versions worldwide, sharing their mission of fun language learning globally.
