What do a Jumbo jet and your localization effort have in common? Neither will fly until they pass the checklists. Sounds like a strange comparison? Consider the reason for a checklist: It’s human nature to forget the details, to skip steps when you’re in a hurry, to get complacent when you’ve done something a hundred times – or to forget a step when you find yourself doing a less-used procedure in your normal job.

It’s all these reasons that make simple, easy-to-reference checklists a must-have for anyone looking to captain a transatlantic flight – or lead a global product, game, or app launch.

So, we’ve broken down the three major areas of the localization process and built a go-to LQA checklist for each one. Use them on your next project – or simply to familiarize yourself with the LQA testing process so you can add value to your organization’s localization efforts.

LQA Checklist 1: Linguistics

Linguistic QA focuses on finding mistakes in the written and spoken communications in your project. This includes spelling, grammar errors, and mistranslations of all types.

• Grammar, Spelling, and Punctuation Mistakes: including verb conjugation, missing words or punctuation signs, or repeated words and phrases
• Partial or Inconsistent Translations: Individual words translated differently throughout the work: i.e., synonyms like “apply”, “submit”, or “send”
• Natural Language Flow: Phrases sound like conversational/day-to-day speech
• Proper Language-specific Characters: Inappropriately displayed diacritics in Polish, Hebrew, Arabic, etc.
• Number Formats and Symbol Use: Dates (MM/DD/YYYY in the USA vs. DD/MM/YYYY in the UK vs. YYYY/MM/DD in Korea, China, and Iran) and incorrect financial symbols for the country in question

• Proper Metric and Currency Conversions: Measurement units (miles vs. kilometers, pounds vs. kilograms in the US/UK vs. continental Europe), and incorrect price conversions for the market
• Country-related Errors: Incorrect addresses, zip codes, phone numbers and names
• Contextual Inaccuracy: When idioms are translated literally, or sentences aren’t translated for the proper context
• Voice-over Problems: When audio files are translated incorrectly, or subtitles and audio are out of sync
• Sensitive Cultural References: Phrases or language that are considered offensive or referencing cultural taboos

LQA Checklist 2: Visual QA

This critical step checks for any design-related issues that result from translation:

• Text Expansion: It’s not uncommon for the text length in translations to grow 30% longer than in English. If you haven’t planned accordingly, you’ll find yourself staring at cut-off text
• Proper Reading Direction: Not every language reads left to right. Catching this before publishing can save some serious embarrassment.
• Truncated/Ghost Characters: UTF characters may not be recognized and replaced by question marks � or full blocks
• Proper Font Display: Is the font too big to fit the screen/section or too small to be read by the users?

• Untranslated or Partially Translated Content and Graphics: These can pop up from strings that weren’t properly exported into the translation files and remain in their legacy form
• Images Tagged to the Incorrect Copy: As translation strings grow, images can end up next to the wrong words.
• Special Checklist Items for Digital Applications:
• OS Compliance check: Does the game or app look the way it should across PC, Android, and iOS?
• UI/UX Issues: Is text cut off from buttons? A larger button or element may be needed.

LQA Checklist 3: Functional QA for Apps

Functionality QA testing covers art, graphic or engineering bugs that require a code change. As an example, if an App wasn’t developed using Unicode, it is not readily localization-friendly, and there will be more bugs related to special characters.

• Proper Links: Do the text on the buttons correspond with their functions, and does the link take you to the correct page?
• International keyboards: Some keyboard commands do not work as expected

• Cross Compatibility: Do the localized versions of the app work with each other?
• Reliable Performance: Is the app prone to sudden crashes or freezes?

• Text Issues: Incorrect instructions are displayed, the text overlaps incorrectly, incorrect terminology
• Audio Issues: File is corrupted, the sound is played at the wrong time, or the wrong sound is played, subtitles are out of sync

Need a hand with LQA? We’re Here for You!

As a company, our roots are in LQA, and it’s a point of pride that our teams are some of the most experienced in the industry. We’ve been instrumental in quality-checking localization efforts across the globe and through all manner of industries – saving them from costly mistakes and more than a few public relations problems.

And we’d love to offer you the same peace of mind. To borrow from a noted old internet meme: “All your LQA worries are belong to us.”