Many global technology teams plan their APAC expansion with the same workflow they use for European languages. This approach breaks in predictable ways. Chinese, Japanese, and Korean are not simply linguistically distant from English — they require fundamentally different engineering decisions.
We solve the UI truncation and encoding issues unique to double-byte character languages in fast-moving development environments. Japanese UI strings average 40–60% longer than their English source when typeset correctly. Simplified Chinese requires careful attention to register and formality that varies by product category and audience. Korean compound nouns and honorific conventions affect terminology decisions that cascade through an entire product.
LocaTran was established in Shanghai in 2004 specifically to serve this need. Our APAC-first model means native expertise in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and key Southeast Asian languages is the core — not an add-on capability layered over a European-focused operation.