Get ready for multilingual wearables!

Approximately 325 million wearable devices are connected to the Internet, with more added every day. While the iPhone and Android platforms were designed as multilingual from the start, that isn't always the case for wearables. This gives localization teams the opportunity to offer their multilingual expertise early in the design and development phases for these products.

Text by Rebecca Ray

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Get ready for multilingual wearables!

Image: © Shao-Chun Wang/123rf.com

Wearables are articles of clothing, footwear, or accessories that incorporate sensors to enable the items to monitor and respond to the environment or the wearer. They also send and receive data from other devices such as smartphones. The wearables sector is still in its infancy – not even futurists or designers of the current generation of wearable technology can predict what product or use case may eventually allow this sector to become as ubiquitous as smartphones – or if this will ever happen. Even so, localization teams should anticipate the day when product managers start requesting support for wearables apps and devices. They will have to deal with new formats and use cases:
 

  • Form factors. Examples of products that fit on the wrist, or that can be clipped on, include fitness trackers from companies such as Fitbit, Garmin, Jawbone, Misfit, and Withings, and smartwatches such as ...