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Grow with Global Apps

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Mobile is predicted to be a $119B industry in 2015 (see MobiThinking article). With the current 5 billion mobile subscriptions, 3.8 billion outside the US, it is hard to ignore the burgeoning market and the huge potential for reach. If you’re developing an app in English only, you are ignoring 73% of the mobile market–this is not something a global organization can afford to do.

I recently read an article in Multlingual Blog, in which Ultan Ó Broin makes the contention that quality translation is not necessary for global app roll out. Some support is that Apple hasn’t asked for superior linguistic quality and that many apps rely on inferred understanding and graphical/audio context instead of linguistic content. Ultimately, according to Ó Broin, the market decides what’s acceptable or not.

Mobile Platforms

Well, I agree…sort of. Certainly the market will tell us what is acceptable and what it not, but some of us want to be sure we stay on the side of acceptability. We’d prefer not to roll out an app into the global marketplace only to find that it is deemed unacceptable. Shouldn’t we take a few precautions to ensure that doesn’t happen on account of linguistic quality? This is especially relevant when we’re discussing mlearning. Yes, we should avoid a content firehose situation, but doesn’t that make our linguistic selections all the more important?

There is a sensible list of development considerations in an article by the Acclaro team–some of a technical and others of a linguistic nature. I found the following to be most notable:

  • Target your market properly by doing some research to determine need. (cost/time savings and increased success probability)
  • Internationalize your app by ensuring you have space for text expansion. (cost/time savings)
  • Develop for a mobile environment. Remember that your screen size is smaller, and interaction with a mobile device is different from interaction with a desktop. (just required)
  • Leverage translation tools like glossaries, translation memories and so forth. (cost/time savings and improved linguistic consistency/quality)
  • Test in as many environments as possible for a smoother roll out. (increased success probability)

The above not only has bearing on global business at large, but very specifically to global learning. As companies expand into and grow their international markets there are sure to be training requirements. Not only is mobile training a handy thing for a traveling sales person, but in developing areas in which internet is almost exclusively available on mobile it will be the only way to deliver centralized learning. The question is not whether we’ll embrace mlearning, it is whether we will have all the tools we need to effectively deliver it.


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