Tag Archives: localization

October 10, 2014 · 9:31 pm

Provinces of Turkey

I was asked to prepare an app about Provinces of Turkey. I agreed because it was an excellent opportunity to get a translation into Turkish that can be potentially used in my other apps and the Turkish app market is going to grow.

The English description of the game is the following:

Learn all 81 provinces of Turkey: from Istanbul and Ankara to Erzurum and Van.
There are 4 different quiz modes about:
* names of all Turkish provinces
* their location on the map of Turkey
* two-digit province numbers (license plate codes)

Become an expert in geography of Turkey!

This app is translated into Turkish language.

*****
Now I am mostly doing updates for my previous apps. When Apple releases a new iOS, the review process is usually slow. This app has waited for review for 11 days. Meanwhile, the Google Play version was published:

Get it on Google Play

Acknowledgements:
I am grateful to Mert for his idea of this app and for his translation into Turkish. It is a quite difficult language, and I wouldn’t be able to translate the app myself using Google Translate.

Icons for buttons were downloaded from iconmonstr or were created with Font Awesome.

Thanks!

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October 2, 2014 · 3:03 pm

Amino Acids v. 1.3


Get it on Google Play

Review of the app on the Pulse of Apps: http://pulseofapps.com/smotrovaya/147 (in Russian)

Following the improved Android version, I updated the iOS version of Amino Acids. Major changes are:
– All flashcards are available for free
– The new “Challenge” mode (multiple-choice questions about all 43 compounds)
– Swedish localization
– The updated app icon

The app is free until the end of this week, so hurry to download it and enjoy the new game mode.

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May 17, 2014 · 2:05 am

Irregular Verbs

The Irregular Verbs app appeared on the App Store several days ago. It took almost 2 weeks for me to prepare it – the longest among all other quizzes. The reason is the vast database: there are 206 distinct verbs in the app and for each verb, I had to find an English definition and a translation to 8 languages. The topic itself is competitive, there are dozens of apps about irregular verbs on the App Store, but none of them use the “letter quiz” approach and after the first days, my app shows promising figures.

The English description of the game is the following:

Begin – began – begun…
The app contains all important English irregular verbs (more than 200 verbs overall). Please choose the learning method that suits you the best.
* Learn by spelling three verb forms: infinitive, past simple, and past participle
* Guess the verb from its definition
* Learn verbs with the help of flashcards

It is an essential app for everyone learning the English language!

*****

There are 3 modes in the app: 1) the first one is universal for all languages; the infinitive (“the first form”) of an irregular verb is given and the user has to spell the two other forms: past simple and past participle. In this mode, I excluded some longer verbs (such as understand/understood) and the verbs for which alternative spellings of inflected forms exist.
2) The second mode depends on the language settings of the device. If the language is English or any language I don’t localize to, the mode is called “Guess the verb” and a short definition of a verb is given, the user has to spell the infinitive form. If the user’s language is Russian, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Swedish, or Dutch, the question is not a definition but a translation of an English verb into that language. The answer is still an English infinitive, even the order of the answer is the same. This type of question may not be directly related to the verb irregularity. It is a separate tool for language learning, I can code any word in such a way. The knowledge that the answer is an irregular verb is just an additional hint.
3) Finally, there are flashcards that show all the above info for all 206 verbs that I decided to include in the first version of the app.

I estimate that there are about 150 basic irregular verbs in the English language. Several of them are archaic, and I don’t use them myself and don’t encounter in the texts I read (“lade”, “beget”). Then there are about 30 verbs which are often conjugated as regular (“shave”, “learn”). In many cases, the frequency of the usage of regular vs irregular form varies between British English and American English. And using prefixes, one can create multiple derived verbs that are also considered irregular (“overtake”, “babysit”). The longest list of irregular verbs I’ve seen had 470 words.

Acknowledgements:
icons for buttons were downloaded from iconmonstr or were created with Font Awesome.

Thanks!

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May 2, 2014 · 11:26 am

50 US States v. 1.2

The second update for 50 US States adds a lot of new content – two new modes.
1. State flags
2. Challenge – a multiple-choice quiz on maps, capitals and flags of all 50 states.

Among smaller additions: Dutch localization and a link to the US Presidents app.

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April 18, 2014 · 9:51 pm

European Countries – Update to v. 1.1

This time I added to European Countries those useful features that I have previously implemented in the update to 50 US States: 14 letters on the “keyboard” and scaling of the answer boxes to accommodate all those 14 letters.

Moreover, I added to European Countries a new mode called the “Time Game”. It is essentially the European Challenge mode with a timer. The goal is to give as many correct answers as possible during 1 minute. Each wrong answer cut the time by 5 sec. A similar mode was in my old app Greek Letters and Alphabet.

The second addition is the Dutch localization. Initially I thought to add it to Chemical Elements but European Countries suited better for attracting users from the Netherlands and Belgium.

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April 8, 2014 · 2:59 pm

Famous Scientists

Famous Scientists is a bit different from my previous quizzes. This app has so far one linear mode. Each question is a portrait of a famous scientist or a mathematician with an option to view an addition info (when he or she lived and why this person is famous) for 10 hints or open the next letter for 15 hints. If a player makes 5 mistakes, the game sequence returns back to Einstein (question #1). If you hate to lose and want to see all scientist and all info, you may consider buying the unlimited hints in Settings.

The English description of the game is the following:

Can you guess a famous scientist or a mathematician? Do you know why he or she is famous? Challenge yourself!
More than 40 scientists from Ancient Greek philosophers to modern cosmologists and molecular biologists.

*****

1. There are 42 scientists in version 1.0. I tried to choose ones recognizable by a broad audience, not only by chemistry PhD’s. Depending on how successful this app is, I may add a couple of new faces. By the way, the longest part in preparing the app was to find and translate the info about scientists into all 8 languages.

2. Features:
– If first+last names have 11 or less letters, I put them both. Otherwise, only the surname.
– English physicists is the most numerous party in the app.
– There are 2 women scientists and 2 living scientists.

3. Acknowledgements:
icons for buttons were downloaded from iconmonstr or were created with Font Awesome.

Thanks!

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March 24, 2014 · 10:40 pm

Inorganic Acids v. 1.1 – an Update with Localizations

Today the Apple review team decided to eliminate the backlog of apps awaiting for the review and they approved my 3 apps and this update of Inorganic Acids and Polyatomic Ions. I submitted it just 14 hours before its status became “In Review”.

There are two major things:

1) Localization into Italian, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Swedish languages. It’s probably the hardest of my apps to localize because the database is vast, strings are messy, and many compounds are quite obscure, so it’s impossible to find everything quickly in Wikipedia. But I designed the first version keeping only English and Russian in mind, and I don’t want to remove any compounds now.

As for the Italian translation, I am obliged to Sandro Soldano who did a great job on translating a lot of compounds’ names and fixing my lame Italian translations that I had done before. Thanks!

2) In v. 1.0, only the simplest acids and ions (“Acids 101”) were available without buying the in-app-purchase. This is less than one third of all compounds and since the purchasing activity was quite low, I decided to make the next level (“Acids 201” – 30 more acids and 30 more ions/salts) free. However, it is required to give 100 correct answers in the first level to get a free access to this second level. The IAP opens both the 2nd and 3rd levels immediately as it did before.

When I downloaded the app today, I noticed that I forgot to add one picture (more precisely, I added it but it has a wrong name: a little hyphen is missing). So it’s likely that I will soon submit Inorganic Acids v. 1.2 with “minor bugs fixed” in the What’s New section.

About three other apps that have been approved today, I’ll write in my blog later.

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March 14, 2014 · 5:22 pm

Learn Numerals 1.1 and Hydrocarbons 1.2

Two apps have been updated today: Learn Numerals and Hydrocarbons. In Learn Numerals, I changed an icon to a brighter one, with an yellow background. In both apps, I added the Swedish localization. I consider this language the next most important in Europe after those 7 already present in my apps. The next will be Dutch. Besides the new localization, I added 5 new hydrocarbons and the “Unlimited Hints” purchase to the Hydrocarbons app. It is easier to get to the Settings now when the buttons of paid modes became active.

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March 7, 2014 · 12:12 pm

Learn Numerals in 7 languages

You may find the Learn Numerals app useful because it’s not about chemistry. It’s about another thing where you have to learn by heart a lot of new words: numerals (numbers) in 7 major European languages.

The English description of the game is the following:

In this app, you’ll learn the names of numerals in 7 important languages. Please choose the learning method that suits you the best.

* Tables
* Flashcards
* Quizzes

– Spanish
– French
– German
– Italian
– Portuguese
– Russian
– English!

*****

1. The app got into an “overnight” review. Yesterday, 8 days after the submission, the status changed to “in review”, but it was not until this morning, it was finally reviewed and placed on the App Store (formally after 17.5 h in review).

2. New features:
– It’s my first app since Monster! that uses different languages as quiz modes.
– The game is localized to those 7 languages as well. I believe that the localization at the time of the release (rather than in an update) was a key to the relative success of Hydrocarbons.
– There are interstitial ads that appear randomly around the 15th question (or flashcard). I’m disappointed with the “Press button to watch ads – Get 30 hints” approach that generated some impression but very, very little money.

3. Acknowledgements:
Icons for buttons were downloaded from iconmonstr or were created with Font Awesome.

Thanks!

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March 3, 2014 · 3:12 pm

SI Unit Prefixes – Update to v 1.1

I updated SI Unit Prefixes. Download numbers were very low for this app, and I blamed the wrong category (changed it from Reference to Games Educational / Trivia). I also localized it to 5 additional languages: German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. There were several minor fixes in app design as well but the question database remained the same as in 1.0. Enjoy!

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