6 ways to have great products in all languages, Product Manager!

It drives me mad that failing a single detail in Product Management can ruin years of work to create a great product! Poor translations are one of such details. Here are 6 ways to get this right:

Before I begin, let me tell you. I was proud of 95% of my work at @Skype and how the product shaped up. That was until I accidentally booted it in my native Polish language.

My god.

The awkward naming, strings, poorly aligned text that doesn’t fit…

Horror.

I was also told it’s the case across many languages Skype is available. Unfortunately, we never had enough time or resources to get this sorted right.

My work on the mobile app at @The Stepstone Group is a different story. We do develop our product in English, but given its main target is the German market, we always have to check if no “Bewerbungsschreibenformatierungsvorgaben*” makes it to the app and makes it look terrible.

That being said, here a 6 ways to make sure your product sounds great in all of the languages you publish it:

1) Make translation part of the process

Just like testing, release, and marketing, the product should not be ready for release until the polished…