Lots of people want to know if we’re going to release localized (that’s the same as “translated” for those of you not in the biz) versions of our software. So far we’ve always said “Sorry, not yet.” Of course this leads to the inevitable response of “WHY??” Good news! I’m about to tell you!
It comes down to one simple thing. Support.
Language Barrier
I’ve got this theory about localized software. If a person wants a localized version of the product, there is a very good chance that they need localized support for the product. As many of you probably know, we think that amazing support is part of what you pay for when you plop down your hard earned cash to buy something from Ilium Software. It’s like one of our product’s features.
We do this really well in English, but the minute you start talking about other languages we’ve got a problem. This isn’t to say that no one here speaks a second language. The problem is that either not many people here speak the language or we’re just not very good at it!
And this doesn’t only go for support. Try doing QA on a product that is in a language you can’t read! We test pretty darn vigorously and something like this just doesn’t fit with the way we like things done!
But You’d Make More Money!
Yeah, we know. There is a good chance we would sell more software if we had localized versions. In fact this comes up all the time here in “our direction for the year” meetings. But at what expense? A few extra sales with limited support that leaves the customer unhappy? We just don’t see a big advantage to that.
We Don’t Care! Localize Anyhow!
And we might. We have a few things going on that may require localization. That might make the decision for us. And we still haven’t finished weighing the value of a localized version with limited support against the value of only selling what we know we can support really well.
So there you have it. The secret behind why you haven’t seen ePochette, eMappe, or eCarpeta hitting your favorite software store. Feel free to throw your opinions violently back at us! We’d love to hear your thoughts on this!