View the Universe

Starmap is the perfect app for viewing the universe with realistic maps and detailed factual information. Based on the iPhone compass geo-location technology, Starmap Pro pinpoints your exact location and lets you view the sky in real-time, and zoom in/out on objects in the sky as you please. Starmap has several other features to enhance your space-viewing experience, including information and images on celestial objects, sky-gazing information specific to your area, and more.

This application, which has been localized into 10 languages, is perfect for the casual stargazer or the professional astronomer. Starmap Pro is available in iTunes for iPhone, iPad, and iTouch.

Let Yourself be Taken on a Star Voyage

Spacemap –also a multilingual app- takes you on a star voyage, beyond the Solar System, to the outer bounds of the known Universe. Beautiful animations, sound effects … but overall scientific precision. All known comets, asteroids and planets orbital paths are exactly rendered. 25000 objects, like galaxies or stars can be located in this 3D model of the Universe. Even extraterrestrial planets and objects that may collide with the Earth are included.

Reaching Wider Audiences & Reaping the Benefits

Both astronomy apps as well as the website have been localized by our professional translators, and carefully reviewed, providing quality versions in the different languages: Finnish, Norwegian, Portuguese, Swedish, Danish, Dutch, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish.

Frédéric Descamps, Starmap CEO, makes use of WPML in combination with ICL professional localizers for translating the strings, the help pages and the site content.

About ICL translation services, Frédéric told one of our supporters: “The system is very good and professional. I always got quick answers to questions.” With big volumes of recurring work since 2009, time when cooperation started, some issues have come up at times, but he expressed his satisfaction about the immediate support provided.

Now Starmap is available to native speakers from different parts of the globe. He also added: “Having a multilingual version of an app really increases sales. People like to have them in their own language. And this increases the overall app quality.”

Frédéric Descamps

Starmap CEO

Overwriting Existing Translations

When users uploaded existing translated resource files for their software localization projects, the system ignored any string that had already been translated. Now you have two options when you ‘Upload exisiting translations’.

Project Administration

Option 1

So far, if the string was the same and it had different translations on ICanLocalize and on the file you’re importing, the system just ignored the translations from the file and took ICanLocalize translations. This is still possible, if you mark the first option ’Skip strings that are already translated’.

( ) Skip strings that are already translated

Option 2

Now you can replace the translated strings in the system with translated strings in your file. If you select ‘Overwrite translated strings’, you can substitute any translated strings in ICanLocalize with the string in the resource file you upload.

( ) Overwrite translated strings

You just need to select the format of the file you’re uploading, the language you want to apply this to and select the file the translation is for. See:

Adding Existing Translations

Example: Let’s say in the system you have a string “Label” => “Text” => “Apple”. Then you are uploading a resource file that has the string “Label” => “Text” => “Microsoft”. If you pick the “Skip strings that are already translated “, on the end of the process, the project will have the string “Label” => “Text” => “Apple”. If you choose “Overwrite translated strings”, it will have the string “Label” => “Text” => “Microsoft”.

And there’s still more to come soon!

“Promoting aesthetics and excellence, Visio-Technic offers professional and individual clients a variety of decorative solutions that are durable and can be personalized in unlimited ways.”

Viso-Technic has been built upon essential principles like innovation, excellence, and aesthetic innovation. And their “Creation & Design” department is made up of graphic designers, designers, and colorists trained to work within their production limitations, both in terms of feasibility and application possibilities for their various material bases and their specific uses.

The services offered by Visio-Technic can be divided into three categories:

- Transfer of digital design onto all material bases

- The managing of decorative projects that are delivered ready to use

- Design of finished products that unify decorative and utalitarian dimensions

Martin Saunier-Plumaz, Marketing Director and also in charge of the English localization of the site, was interviewed by ICL support guru. He said the concept is great, they entered the French pages and WPML got them back the pages translated very quickly. WPML was the technical stuff they needed together with the professional translation offered by ICanLocalize.

Martin enjoyed using both for his WordPress site: WPML plugin and ICanLocalize. “I’d never heard about this before, and I’m very happy. It’s very simple to use.” He said.

Translation Experience

His experience with the English translator selected was really good. They got applications and were able to select the right translator for their project. The expert was in touch and asked for clarifications on some issues, which is what a professional localizer does to achieve top notch results. Considering it was Christmas time, he thought the project would get delayed, but he told us that “thanks to the plugin and the translator the job was done very quickly”. Martin added: “The translator did a terrific job”.

Martin also found the rating system absolutely interesting. He used it to decide on the translator, and he is convinced he made the right choice.

Market

Translations have been done a few weeks ago, but Martin is sure the impact in the market will be noticeable. They have a great deal of customers and potential clients whose native language is English; all the info is now widely made available to users on the Website. They get visitors from India, the United States, South Africa, UAE, and Europe in general.

And the next round of translations, as Martin has started, will be their blog with the latest news. There is no doubt that having a website available in English makes for a traffic boost!

Martin Saunier-Plumaz

Marketing Director

Viso-Technic

Today’s system upgrade is meant to save precious time to both clients and translators, working on Software Localization projects.

Here’s the problem:

1. A client creates a project, uploads a resource file and selects 12 languages
2. There are a few unclear strings (like “Please %s %s sending!”)
3. 12 translators see this strings and ask the client to explain what it means. Overall, 11 translators have wasted both their and the client’s time asking the same thing.

To avoid this, translators will now see issues that other translators have opened for a string. Instead of asking again, all other translators can subscribe to that issue and receive updates from the clients. This way, the question is asked and replied-to just once and everyone is happier.

Here is how it works.

Step 1 – a translator needs help with a string

The translator goes to the string and sees that it already has an issue.

Instead of creating yet another duplicate, the translator goes to the existing issue and clicks on the ‘subscribe’ link.

The client and the translator who opened the original issue can see who’s subscribed to it.

Step 2 – the client replies and everyone gets the update

When you reply to one translator, the others will see it too -and even get notified if they have already subscribed to the issue in question.  This means you’ll not be getting the same question twice.

Hey, there’s more coming soon!

We have more goodies coming soon to make your localization work as pleasant and efficient as possible. I’ll write about it when it’s ready.

After getting feedback from our clients, we made a big change to the system and wanted to update you. Now there’s no more need to press one button per language to send strings for translation; you can send strings to as many languages as you wish in one go!

After uploading the file with your app strings, you have two options:

1) Tick the box ‘All languages’ and send to translation to all the languages you entered by clicking on the button ‘Begin marked translations’, which you’ll find at the top and bottom of the languages:

Sending for translation to all languages

2) You can tick the boxes only for the languages you want to translate, and then click on ’Begin marked translations’. This way, you’ll be sending the strings to translators only in those languages you want to get translations. You can send the strings in the other/s language/s whenever you want.

Sending for translation to selected languages

As you can see in the sample above, the client selected only Italian. Let’s suppose you have five, ten or fifteen languages -it does not matter- in all, you can send them by bunches. It’s up to you.

ICanLocalize Team works hard to make your localization experience simpler.

This is the first step in a major re-haul of the Software Localization projects interface and functionality. We’ll write about the next round of changes soon!

Phuket.Net was launched in 2005 as a Phuket portal site with information on where to stay, what to do, etc. The company began offering holiday rental bookings from which they began to learn about the holiday home market in Phuket. From our holiday rentals business we began to receive many inquiries from people about investing in real estate on the island, particularly in regards to holiday homes that would generate a healthy investment return.

“The natural progression for the website was born from the lessons we learned from the inquiries we received. It became clear that there were many people out there looking for holiday or investment properties here in Phuket, as well as homes for rent, and that they needed advice and guidance from people who know the market on theisland as well as we do.”

Richard Jones, Chief Technology Officer, was in charge of localizing the site contents. They didn’t translate their whole site, but chose ICanLocalize to translate the underlying template (or theme) of their sites, then they used their own real estate agents to translate individual properties. ICL string translation was the ideal option for their needs, in this case.

Translations Help Businesses

Phuket is a tropical island paradise which is developing rapidly. In recent years a growing number of foreigners are choosing Phuket as a destination where they holiday, relocate, invest or work and the need to have their websites in multiple languages has grown from the diversity of individuals from different nationalities who are interested in Phuket.

Richard explained: “as a first time user of ICanLocalize and also this being the first multilingual site that we have worked on, we were overly impressed by both the system and service offered.” He told us that getting started was very straightforward and they were up-and-running translating within 10 minutes and by the end of the day they had been contacted by a number of ICanlocalize translators. They reviewed their profiles and selected both their translator and reviewer.

With translation and review there’s no margin for error. The output was a 100% quality translation!

“The process for selecting translators was very easy, transparent and we were confident to go ahead with the service.” Richard told us.

Richard also stated to have found online documentation that was clear: “Documentation was clear, in-depth where necessary and, again, installed us with the confidence to go ahead with using the service without hesitation or further consultation.”

Quality and Interaction with Translators

Richard expressed his full satisfaction with ICanLocalize translation & translators. “The quality of the translators and reviewers that we experienced was the most impressive part of the whole service. They were simply great. Quick to respond, working all hours of the day, extremely fastidious and, again, installed us with confidence that we were getting a professional and bespoke translation of our website.”

He found communication with the translators through the ICanlocalize system pretty simple, intuitive and aided in getting the French translation of the site done quickly and to the highest of standards.

Richard Jones

Chief Technology Officer

Phuket.Net

B3 Hotel Broker is made up by a team of real estate professionals with a passion for the hospitality industry. They are based here in the Canary Islands, one of Spain’s most important tourist destinations. B3 Hotel Broker team specialises in the brokerage of quality hotels for sale across Europe. Their areas of expertise include Sales and Marketing of Hotel Assets, Acquistion of Hotel Assets, Asset Management and Operator – Brand Search.

Even if based in the Canary Islands, B3 Hotel Broker deals with people from all over Europe, so they need to offer their company info and details in other languages, apart from English. The site is currently available in 7 different languages!

Brian Brosnan -site owner, principal of the company and site designer- chose ICanLocalize as his localization service portal. He considers it’s a very good system that matches his needs.

Localization outcome was great for Brian. He tested the system with one language first; his opinion about translation quality is really positive. During an interview with our support guru, Brian said “I sent the work and translators were always available for comments, suggestions and questions; they were all really helpful.” Being a translator of French and Spanish language as well -not working on that profession due to time restrictions-, he states that the French and Spanish versions of the site are excellent. In all, he got very good feedback from users/visitors for ALL the languages.

ICanLocalize & WPML

Being the business owner and having worked with WordPress for a couple of years, Brian is convinced he opted for the best combination available in the market for the translation of WordPress sites: ICanLocalize and WPML.

Brian talked about his experience with WPML and told us: “I did not have to copy and paste any texts. I just clicked on a box and sent the files. It’s fantastic!” As a developer of his own site, he had hard work putting all contents, pages, menus together, and ICL plus WPML were an excellent option. He got the help he needed to have his site running mulilingual with no effort. Integrating translations in his CMS –and sending them right to the site- was really easy!

This new venture was launched in all the languages at the same time. B3 Hotel Broker’s going to reach those markets where people speak Polish, Turkish, Russian, Croatian, Romanian, Spanish, Chinese (Simplified), and English -language in which the site was originally created.

B3 Hotel Broker is reaching new audiences and new markets, it’s definitely expaning to the world!

Brian Brosnan

Principal and Web Designer

B3 Hotel Broker

With over 60 years combined baking expertise, They offer an unparalleled portfolio and full range of unique and innovative thaw-and-sell, ready-to-serve, freezer-to-oven and proof-and-bake products.

Ben McEvoy is the producer and web designer for both sites: oakrun.com and gourmetbaker.com. Ben decided to make use of ICanLocalize professional services for the localization of both websites into French.

It’s necessary to localize your website in the current globalized world we’re living in -unless you’re willing to miss big sales oportunities!

Gourmet Baker is a leading manufacturer of baked and unbaked desserts and breakfast pastries for the in-store bakery and foodservice business segments. Theymake a wide variety of fully decorated cakes, Danish pastries, croissants, crumpets, deluxe dessert bars and squares. They have two bakeries located in Burnaby, British Columbia and one bakery in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Their focus and success is based on using the finest quality ingredients, employing rigorous product safety standards in their bakery operations, and their ability to customize and build strong relationships with our customers while delighting consumers.

Oakrun Farm Bakery is a high-quality, highly efficient supplier of affordable fresh and frozen baked goods to the retail, foodservice, private label and co-pack business segments. They produce Danish pastries, cakes, tarts, bagels, English muffins, crumpets, sweet muffins, hotcakes and proportioned frozen batters. Oakrun Farm Bakery is located in Ancaster, Ontario.

During an interview with our support guru Ben McEvoy said: “I’m impressed at how all this worked pretty well. We had about 300 pages which got translated quickly and efficiently.” He explained he was looking for an efficient translation service and came to ICanLocalize. And WPML was the best plugin to manage the whole localization project, and he could do so right from his CMS. Ben talked with his client who said to be impressed by the seamless integration of the translation with their wordpress site.

As regards the translation work itself, he thought he’d get word by word translation at first. Ben explained that, in fact, he found almost a copyeditor who not only reviewed her own translation work with great professionalism but also provided feedback about the original text, asked questions that helped improve the source text. “ICL is not expensive at all and I found a really competent and professional translator here,” he stated.

In Canada national firms need to get localized, otherwise they would miss reaching very important markets. Businesses need to have their English sites in French too.

Having about 300 pages to localize, Ben found in ICanLocalize and WPML the perfect combination for his needs!

Ben McEvoy

Producer & web designer

Until recently, our Software Localization system had one fixed price across all language pairs. As a result, we always had a shortage of talented translators between some European languages. This shortage was worse for Scandinavian and Central European language pairs.

In response, we can now allow exceptions to the uniform 0.07 USD per word rate. The new pricing does not affect any existing language pair in which we currently translate and can meet the demand. It allows us to attract top translators, in languages pairs that we could not offer until now.

We have set a pricing of 0.09 USD per word for the following language pairs: German to Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and French; and Spanish to Italian, German, French and Portuguese. As a result, European clients can now find great translators in these languages in ICanLocalize.

As before, pricing is set per language. This way, translators compete over quality and service, rather than on cost.

If your translation projects demand other language pairs, for which you did not find suitable translators until now, please let us know and we will explore fair pricing, which will make both you and your translators happy.

Our goal is to provide the best possible service, while being attractive to both clients and to expert translators.

We know that you’re with us and we thank you for your support!

Fredrik Henrysson, Director of External Communications, explains “Diaverum operates in 16 countries in 13 languages. Our websites are central to all our external communication. And an efficient translation, translation review and web publishing workflow is essential for our external web presence. After testing and evaluating several different translation solutions, we decided to implement ICanLocalize.”

Diaverum first tested the software and services provided by ICanLocalize on a campaign website built in WordPress implementing ICanLocalize WPML plugin. “The plugin was installed by a developer in an hour. I was able to initiate translations from WordPress the same day.” Fredrik continues.

“I have 15 years experience managing web projects and I was truly impressed about the quality and ease of use of the WPML plugin. But we also learned that a website needs to be coded right to be able to take advantage of the WPML plugin.” Fredrik explains.

The initial project involved 4 languages and 2 000 words of content. The next step was to use ICanLocalize for the main websites, involving 13 languages and 18 000 words of content. Here, Diaverum opted to use Drupal as the CMS and develop an in-house review and approval workflow.

Fredrik also explained: “All our translations need to be reviewed by internal reviewers and approved by 16 country managers with little time to learn complicated web systems and the global Corporate Communication team needed a waterproof workflow to make sure that content is translated, reviewed and approved by the local country organization.” For Fredrik working with ICanLocalize has been a very positive experience as ICanLocalize has enabled them to translate a larger volume of content, which is key to their SEO (Search Engine Optimization) effort. “We have seen an increase in visitors as a direct result from implementing ICanLocalize. For us the main benefits are:

• Cost efficiency. We have cut our yearly translations cost by 50%

• Quality. Our experience is that the translators from ICanLocalize are as good or better compared to other traditional agencies.

• Flexibility. It is very easy to implement the services and software from ICanLocalize

• Support. We have received excellent and fast support from ICanLocalize

The only area where I see ICanLocalize could improve is usability of their administrator interface, but this is only a minor comment. If you have a question, ICanLocalize support will answer promptly.” Fredrik concludes.

When Frederik talks to his colleges about ICanLocalize, they don’t think it’s true. It’s hard to believe a translation service can be both cheap and top notch. But there’s no trick! Frederik proved it and there’s no trick. He saw the resumes, interviewed translators himself and immediately realised that ICL works only with qualified translators.

Why is it so affordable? Because ICL also offers translators benefits that other agencies or portals do not offer, they work on safe grounds and have recurring work, with the necessary tools at their hands.

Frederik Henrysson

External Communications Director

Diaverum Contact