Translate the task, not only the headline
A localized onboarding includes questions, answer options, permission explanations, errors, buttons and the destination after setup. Translating a welcome screen while leaving the questionnaire and recovery path in another language creates a broken experience.
Inventory each user-visible string and its context. Give translators the screen, the action and any length constraints. A short English label can have several meanings; context is necessary to choose the right French or Spanish phrase. Keep technical identifiers and customer-authored content separate from interface copy.
Keep values stable across languages
Store a stable answer identifier such as daily_reading, not the translated label as the database key. Labels may change when copy is improved, while saved preferences, experiments and reports must continue referring to the same underlying choice.
Use the platform’s resource and formatting tools for dates, quantities and plurals. Avoid assembling translated sentences from fragments whose grammar assumes English word order. Android’s localization guidance describes resource-based language selection and the importance of complete default resources.
Test expansion, large text and input
A label that fits on one line in English may need two lines elsewhere. Allow buttons and text containers to grow without obscuring the next action. Test the smallest supported device, accessibility text sizes, keyboard appearance and localized validation messages.
Use real translated copy during layout QA. Also inspect voice-over pronunciation, reading order and text direction for the languages you support. A translated screenshot cannot prove that the editable native field accepts the expected characters or that its error path is localized.
- Verify every action, error and fallback string.
- Check plurals, dates, decimal separators and currency presentation.
- Preserve product IDs, event names and saved answer IDs.
- Test language changes during an existing saved journey.
Compare language cohorts carefully
Language cohorts can differ in acquisition source, platform, geography and app version. A lower completion rate is a useful prompt for investigation, not proof of a translation defect. Inspect rendering and event quality before changing the message.
For an experiment, define eligibility and the outcome window consistently, and avoid treating many exploratory language segments as independent confirmed wins. Make sure the variant exists in each eligible language; silently falling back to a different experience can invalidate the comparison.
Give web guides their own language URLs
For public educational pages, publish a complete edition on a stable language-specific URL. Use a self-canonical and reciprocal hreflang links between equivalent editions, plus a visible language selector. Do not redirect everyone by guessed location or show translated navigation around an unchanged English article.
Aplyna’s blog uses English, French and Spanish editions with shared illustrations and translated article and chart text. The native SDK documentation remains explicitly identified as English when linked from a translated guide. Translation improves access; it does not guarantee indexing or search rankings.
Sources & further reading
Technical references may be in English. Examples are educational; product behavior follows the current source SDKs and availability reference. No customer performance claim is implied.
Published by Aplyna. Editorial illustrations were generated with AI; they are not product screenshots. Charts use labeled teaching examples or conceptual diagrams.