In Belgium, the language question comes up earlier than elsewhere. The country has three official languages, Brussels is bilingual, and a good share of users also expect English. Yet many projects start in a single language with a promise: “we’ll translate later”. It is one of the most expensive sentences in a project, because translating an app is not just translating its text.
Text is only the visible part
An app says a lot without sentences. Numbers, first: the same amount is written 1 234,56 in French and 1.234,56 in Dutch. Dates, weekdays, times. Plurals, too, which do not follow the same rules: French writes “0 commentaire” in the singular, while English and Dutch put zero in the plural. A counter hand-written for one language will be wrong in the others.
The classic trap is the small detail frozen in the code. A calendar whose weekday initials were hard-coded as “L M M J V S D” will stay in French inside an otherwise perfectly translated app. In Dutch as in English, Wednesday starts with a W.
Layouts need room to breathe
The same idea does not take the same space from one language to another. Dutch and German compound words overflow buttons drawn for English, a heading fits on one line in French and on two in Dutch. An interface designed for one language breaks in translation. An interface designed for several plans for components that adapt, and that is one of the jobs of a well-thought-out design system.
What people forget to translate
The app’s screens are rarely the problem. It is the messages that leave it:
- Notifications and emails, sent by the server, which therefore needs to know each person’s language.
- Error messages returned by the server and displayed as is.
- The store listing: description, screenshots, keywords, one per language.
- Legal pages and support, which your users will read precisely on the day something goes wrong.
An app is translated when no message ever goes out in the wrong language, not when its screens are.
Choosing the language, without guessing
By default, the app follows the phone’s language. It must never infer it from location: in Brussels, two neighbors do not necessarily speak the same one. And it must let people change it, which phones now also offer app by app. That choice is then stored on the account, so the server writes to everyone in the right language.
The right moment is day one
Planning for several languages from the start costs little: a writing habit, a few structural choices, flexible components. Adding them afterwards means combing every screen for hard-coded text, improvised formats and forgotten messages, then retesting everything. Even if you only launch in French, an app designed to be multilingual leaves the door open to a few days of translation, not a whole project.
That is how we build our own products. Nakama, our social network for anime and manga, is bilingual end to end, from episode titles to notifications, and so is this site. If your app needs to speak to all of Belgium, or beyond, it is something we address from scoping onwards in product engineering. Let’s talk about your project, in the language of your choice.