A new survey from One Hour Translation (http://tinyurl.com/z2dc859), the world’s largest online translation agency, maps the leading languages into which English-language are translated by app developers from the United States and United Kingdom.
According to data from the first quarter of 2016, about 28% of all mobile applications written in English by U.S. developers are intended for localization in Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. In the United Kingdom, the rate is even higher: 55%.
“Mobile app developers are thinking of ways to reach their target audience beyond the markets they usually work in, and they know that the way to do this is by localizing their apps,” says Yaron Kaufman, One Hour Translation’s co-founder and vice president of Marketing and Sales.
The survey examined 2500 Android apps on Google Play and iOS apps on Apple’s App Store developed in the United States and the United Kingdom and translated by One Hour Translation.
One Hour Translation U.S. data for translations of mobile apps show that about 15% of all mobile apps in English were intended for localization into Spanish (10% for Spain Spanish and 5% for Latin American Spanish, approximately); about 6% to Portuguese (5% to Brazilian Portuguese and 1% to Portugal Portuguese, approximately); and about 7% of mobile apps developed in the U.S. in English were referred in the first quarter of 2016 to Italian localization. Other popular languages among U.S. developers are Japanese (9%), Mandarin Chinese (8%) and French (6% for France French and 1% to Canadian French). All numbers are approximate.
Another One Hour Translation examination of the subject showed that in Great Britain, no less than 39% of English-language mobile apps were intended for localization in Spanish (37% to Spain and 2% to Latin America) and 9% to Portuguese (8% to Brazil and 1% to Portugal). About 7% of the volume of mobile app translations developed in Britain in English during 2016’s first quarter was slated for Italian localization. Other popular languages among British app developers were Danish and German.
