What is UI Localization? 6 Best Practices for User Interface Localization in 2026

UI (user interface) localization is where localization meets design. Although it may seem unnecessary to localize your product application down to the level of UI design, taking this step can significantly improve your product’s success.

Understanding UI Localization

UI localization involves more than just translating your application’s text into necessary languages — it includes adjusting interface layout, date formats, currencies, units of measurement, and even cultural references to suit your audiences’ needs and conventions. 

Effective UI localization will make your software feel native to every user, regardless of geographic location. It’s true that this process can be very involved and requires extra research and work, but, in the end, it will enhance user satisfaction, increase engagement, open up new market opportunities, and set you ahead of the competition. 

In this blog, we’ll share six of our best practices for user interface localization to help simplify the process for you.

1. Design with Localization in Mind

If you design your UI with layout adaptation in mind, it will simplify the overall localization process and save money in the long run. 

The first step is to design elements that accommodate varying text lengths and characters. Word growth during translation can cause UI misalignments depending on your target languages.

Using Unicode, a universal character set, can ensure that the interface will handle multiple languages seamlessly. Additionally, keeping code and content separate using resource files will simplify updates and modifications because you can change text and other localized elements without altering the underlying code.

2. Prioritize Cultural Context

Different symbols, icons, and even colors can have varying meanings depending on one’s cultural background. A look at any country’s flag shows the importance of color choices and their meaning among different nationalities. 

Additionally, it is important to avoid (or incorporate) icons based on your audience. Icons such as thumbs up, piggy banks, and check marks have different meanings in different cultures.

3. Streamline Translation

The best way to streamline the translation processes is to use a Translation Management System (TMS). A TMS will help centralize and automate translation workflows, as well as collaborate between translators and project managers. 

In addition to a good TMS, it’s important to provide visual, linguistic, and situational context information for your translators. This will help eliminate inaccuracies and misunderstandings.

Visual context shows your translators where the translated content will sit on your application or website. Linguistic context includes glossaries with key terms and strategies. Finally, situational context provides a more nuanced context for your translations, such as your target languages’ culture, humor, and conventions.

As a rule of thumb, it’s always better to provide your translators with as much contextual information as possible to ensure accuracy and relevance.

4. Test in Target Locations

Testing in target locations will help ensure that the user interface (UI) is user-friendly in all your target languages and regions.

This kind of testing should involve both linguistic and functional testing. Linguistic testing focuses on verifying the appropriateness and accuracy of translations, ensuring nuances are accounted for and that all text fits naturally within the UI.

Meanwhile, functional testing examines how the localized UI operates, checking for technical issues due to language expansion and contraction, different character sets,  and locale-specific formats, including dates, times, and currencies. 

Testing this way will ensure your product communicates properly and functions flawlessly across all your markets.

5. Maintain an Adaptive Layout

User interfaces should dynamically adjust to different text lengths and formats across all languages and devices. Fluid layouts will automatically resize and rearrange UI elements in response to content changes. This is particularly important for text expansion and contraction when your text automatically translates.

Here are a few techniques for maintaining relative sizing:

1. Include flexible measurement units such as percentages instead of fixed pixel dimensions.
2. Employ grid systems that allow for proportional arrangements.
3. Implement responsive design principles such as media queries and flexible images—this helps layouts adjust seamlessly to different screen sizes and orientations.

6. Incorporate Feedback Loop

Feedback loops ensure your product design will improve— especially its linguistic and cultural elements. It is always a good idea to prioritize gathering and analyzing user feedback to find out what your audience thinks about your product.

Taking this extra step will help you improve your product and help your designers make informed adjustments to your UI.

UI Localization Tools Checklist

UI Localization should be top-of-mind as you launch your product—not an afterthought as you expand. Designing this way will help your product succeed from the beginning and simplify expansion. 

Having tools available when you launch your product that can accommodate your product’s growth will help you stay ahead of the competition, keep your processes neat and streamlined, and save money in the long run. 

Here’s a checklist of UI localization tools worth investing in:

1. UI design tool
   Choose a design tool that can handle design pitfalls— particularly text expansion issues — that occur with multilingual apps or websites. Software such as Figma and Sketch offer plugins that simulate text lengths in different languages, ensuring design adaptability.  
2. TMS (translation management system)
   A quality TMS system will provide a central platform for managing translation workflows and collaboration between linguists and developers. This streamlines the translation process and collects analytics on how your application or website is performing.
   
   Translation management systems such as Bablic offer automatic translation, collaboration tools, translation memory and terminology management, reporting and analytics, and quality assurance tools. 

3. Automated translation tools
   Finally, automatic translation tools are necessary throughout the localization process. While this tool is usually included in a TMS, it can be useful to leverage different translation tools to help with initial translation drafts, easing the workload on human translators who perform the necessary revisions.

Integrating these tools can help you achieve more accurate and culturally sensitive UI localization, improve user experience, and enhance engagement across different markets.