Do you always remember to test your localized software or your translated website? There is a good reason to do that.
The Global Software Testing And QA Services Market Growth (Status And Outlook) 2020-2025 published by Wise Guy Reports presents analysis based on geography, application as well as industry. It claims that the years 2020 – 2025 are going to bring growth of the Software Testing and QA Services market.
Why is that?
The growing demand for applications helping people to buy goods, stay connected with family and friends, but also (during the coronavirus pandemic) with public offices and health services require updates and reliability.
In 2008 the iOS App Store had 500 available apps, in 2020 the number reached 1.85 million and is still growing. Android users have even more to choose from with 2.56 million apps available through Google Play Store.
The demand grows and so does the offer. When the number of possible options is rising so quickly, it is difficult to break through with your product.
ATL has been securing the success of leading global business on local markets for 15 years already. Our goals go beyond on-budget, timely delivered translations with top quality.
Failing to provide a localized version of your software or website can mean up to 15% of your potential buyers rejecting your offer. The lack of a correctly localized version can have a similar effect.
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In order to provide the best experience for your international buyers and secure your global success - test your final product after localization. Test your localized software. Test your multilingual website. Include localization testing in your QA (Quality Assurance) plan and start doing it as early as possible.
This article describes and explains the aspects of linguistic and functional testing as well as the reasons why you should implement them in your processes.
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Testing software is a key component in the software development cycle.
It helps to detect and remove possible issues with how the software works and if it suits business requirements.
Software can be manually tested by professional testers who click through the application or interact with the software and APIs with the appropriate tools. It's a rather slow process and prone to human error.
But on the other hand, it doesn't require writing scripts in order for the machines to run tests. Also, it's good for exploratory QA, which is aimed at finding non-obvious errors.
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Automated testing is a key element of continuous integration and delivery. It is run by machines based on scripts that were written in advance.
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Automated testing is only as good as the script. It may vary a lot in complexity, but it saves a lot of time when a new feature is added to an already-tested application.
In this case, individual methods and functions, components or modules used by your software are tested. It ensures that a section of your application meets the standards of its design and behaves as intended. These tests are usually fully automated and find issues early on in the development cycle.
In short, integration tests verify whether different modules or services used by your application work well together. This QA helps to avoid issues when two or more modules cannot communicate properly.
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Functional QA focuses on the business requirements of an application. They differ from integration tests in the fact that functional tests require not only working well together but also working according to the specific requirements.
Performance tests verify the behaviors of the system under significant load, for instance when executing a high number of requests.
Linguistic testing is a kind of non-functional testing. Linguistic testing means using the linguistic version in context.
It verifies for example:
Another form of linguistic testing is localization testing. Localization is a broader term than translation and covers not only changing the message from one language into another, but also adjusting it to the audience.
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In addition to linguistic testing, it verifies for example:
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Linguistic testing is very often used as a term that includes both regular linguistic testing as well as localization testing. When we talk about translated software, what is meant by linguistic testing is verifying if the translated content is correct within the context.
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Linguistic testing or localization testing are services that are in the scope of services of a majority of translation companies. These companies have resources and best practices based on vast experience, to provide you with a seamless workflow that will compliment your development cycle instead of slowing the process down.
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Make sure to ask for a quote for this service together with the software localization or website translation services. This is another, separately paid step, but it is worth the additional cost.
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Linguistic testing is performed by a bilingual linguist, native in the language of translation. This person needs to not only be an excellent translator but also to understand how the software works and be experienced in testing software.
If you want to save time in establishing a new relationship with another vendor, sharing instructions and organizing the work of yet another provider in the project, put the localization testing job into the hands of the company that delivers the localization services.
Linguistic testing is often performed with the help of advanced tools and knowing how to properly identify and describe a bug is a must. You can work with Redmine, Lighthouse, Bugzilla, Jira, Mantis. You can automate with Selenium or Tosca.
It doesn't matter, which you choose, the testing environment is what the translation company needs to adjust to in order to compliment your process and build easy and efficient workflow.
You may also choose to use a separate tool for capturing screenshots. It can be TechSmith Capture (Jing successor), Snagit or Camtasia. FastStone and Shutter are also worth mentioning, but there are many more.
Refrain from using a spreadsheet as it may cause a lot of chaos and complicate the communication between the developers and the linguists. It's always best to work in the same environment, or at least try to integrate separate tools.
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Linguistic or localization testing verifies the quality of the translated language used in context - meaning within the application. It also verifies other language-related issues for accuracy. It focuses on testing the localized functionalities, UI (User Interface), and screens.
In short, these tests aim to confirm that the localized versions are suitable for the target audience.
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If there are no other specific instructions provided for linguistic testing after the software is translated, the general testing scope includes the following checks:
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From the linguistic and localization point of view, testing multilingual website is very similar to software testing.
It's advised to be familiar with how the website is built and how it works in the English language. Then it's time to start testing it in other languages.
Checking the website for linguistic or localization bugs includes most of the software testing steps, as well as a few more.
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Understanding the design of the website is one of the most important factors to running a successful multilingual website QA. It can be a single homepage, a separate homepage for each language, or a homepage with a selection allowing the user to switch between languages.
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Separate domains are needed for each country, or even for each language within a country. For example, in Canada, French and English (en-CA) languages should be available for Canadian users.
A website with a separate URL requires more complex testing. It has a different layout and a different cultural implementation.
During the multilingual website testing, links should be verified. They are checked for their functionality and to ensure that they direct to the correct pages (or modules if we are talking about e-commerce).
Mobile devices provide less space and it is advised to test the website not only displayed on a big screen, but also to check its mobile display. Double check the font display. It's also good to verify the layout on mobile devices.
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Input fields are places where the user can insert data, for example a contact form. Make sure that all the fields are localized. Don't neglect addresses and phone numbers. Different countries use different formats, so allow for this and test the website's flexibility.
Also, double check all error messages. Don't forget to run checks while inserting data in the local language and make sure that the website accepts the data.
Labels are the most static parts, so it's good to start by testing those. Things to watch out for are most often text length and text wrapping.
It would be good to verify if the website displays correctly in browsers that are most commonly used in given markets. Also, remember to provide an option to choose the language in addition to the automated display of particular language version based on the browser's native language.
A multilingual website is not only what the user can see. There are hidden texts like meta descriptions (texts summarizing web content), tags (words describing your content on the website), URLs and ALT text for images (text used to describe the image).
All of the above are said to have an effect on your multilingual SEO.
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When it comes to key words, they need to be reviewed for particular languages and cultures. The same product can be searched through different terms.
Properly planned localization can ward off a lot of issues during the QA stage. This is thanks to internationalization, which focuses on removing all possible localization obstacles from your software or website.
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There are some general rules of internationalization that you should be aware of, like using Unicode, allowing field expansion whenever possible, supporting right-to-left writing, and the metric measurement system.
These are just a few examples. But knowing and implementing the rules of localization, even if you aren't thinking about going global at this point, can save you a lot of time and money when you finally want or have to localize your product.
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Imagine getting back to the point where you have to manually search for hardcoded messages. Sounds like a programmer's nightmare? You can easily avoid it by planning ahead for localization.x
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Don't let your customers be the ones to discover bugs or errors on your multilingual website or in your app. Mobile app users are highly intolerant of performance issues.
If they spot errors or have difficulty in understanding the language of the app, they will immediately uninstall it and leave a negative comment.
Test your multilingual website and translated software, enhance your international customers user experience to stay with you.
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