A recent survey conducted by One Hour Translation, the world’s largest online translation agency, has uncovered a significant trend among mobile app developers in the UK. It appears that they are directing considerable resources toward entering Latin markets. The survey focused on the languages into which English-language mobile apps, created by developers in both the UK and the US, were translated. According to One Hour Translation’s data for Q1 of 2016, approximately 55% of translations for UK English-language mobile apps are tailored for localization into languages primarily spoken in Latin markets. These languages include Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian.
The survey scrutinized 2,500 Android apps on Google Play and iOS apps on the App Store, all developed in the UK and the US and translated by One Hour Translation. To determine the relative share of each target language accurately, the survey compared the number of projects translated for various applications.
One Hour Translation’s data reveals that in the UK, no less than 39% of mobile app translations were aimed at localizing into Spanish (comprising 37% European Spanish and approximately 2% South American Spanish). About 9% were focused on Portuguese (with roughly 8% aimed at Brazilian Portuguese and approximately 1% at European Portuguese). Furthermore, around 7% of translations of UK apps were localized into Italian during the first quarter of 2016. Danish and German were also popular languages among UK app developers.
