Dillali Language Feature: How we did it

Here is a fun fact about me - I speak only one language well - English. I however understand two other Nigerian languages - Hausa and Yoruba. Growing up in two cities: Zaria and Lagos allowed me to understand these languages.

There are tens of millions of people who are excellent at speaking their native languages. Most Nigerians can speak two or three languages fluently.

For instance, Babagana - a traditional cap trader, is fluent in Kanuri, Hausa and basic pidgin English. He is a digital convert and is an avid user of WhatsApp and Facebook, where he shares and promotes his business through stories and posts. Babagana does all his interactions in Hausa. The same goes for his banking, where he uses the USSD to check his account balance along with managing his transfers.

A missing piece to the equation for Babagana is the ability to use tech to ease his business processes. He is forced to keep financial records on paper or make mental notes because he does not have any digital tool that enables him to record his transactions in a language he understands.

Today, we added three languages to the Dillali app after months of planning and execution.

We launched a language feature with Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba. Now, people like Babagana can use Dillali for their bookkeeping. We believe this is the first step to growing a great business that he can pass on to the next generation.We decided to launch this new feature to increase access for a largely underserved population when it comes to technology.

Just because they are not fluent in English does not make them illiterate - a common stereotype I have seen across Nigeria. They have been excluded for too long and now is the time to change this!

How we implemented the language feature

When starting Dillali, the cofounders sat to discuss the possibilities of what we could do to build more localisation into the app. Interestingly, our MVP made provision of choosing a preferred language (English, French and Spanish). I can recall that during the conversation, Pooja said "we can implement languages if we want to, but we have to make it part of our plan from the start". Luckily we did by ensuring we had the technology to rollout languages in a modular way.

Design Phase

We started with a planning session where the product team discussed the concept. The design team commenced with in-depth research on how to layout the feature of the app. For example, how to make switching easier; user experience in the flow and layout of information on the app.

The design team made different concepts. I believe we brainstormed on the smallest details, particularly where to position the option to switch language on our registration view.

The team also conducted several design sprints with some of our users and received all kinds of feedback.

Development Phase:

This is tricky as we had already from the first day at the planning stage of starting Dillali factored in multiple languages for the app. Our front-end team member was responsible for implementing.

Context is everything.

You would think adding a new language is super easy with APIs and online translation tools like google translate. This is far from reality as context is everything in language. We had three remarkable translators work with us in translating for context . The process took almost a month of back and forth with the translators (and we are still reiterating).

Final testing

When we completed the implementation, another round of user testing took place with a number of our users and non-users of the app. Remember I mentioned context earlier. Some users still asked for some phrases to be changed.

Challenges:

There were several challenges we faced during execution. The most notable was user interface issues: Each language had a different character and phrase lengths. For example, the word income is translated as "Mkpokọta ọnụahịa"; "Lambar shigan kuɗi" and; "Owo to n wole" in Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba respectively. The design and development team had to come up with a solution that best works for any language.

Learnings

This has been a great learning phase for us as a team. Below are some of our key learnings:

• User engagement is necessary at all stages in product planning and execution
• Context matters for translation from English
• Internal coordination between all team members is necessary to ensure seamless execution
• Setting hard deadlines is necessary for project implementation
• Test everything
• Enjoy the process

Conclusion

Languages are a big deal and I believe that by localising and adding key languages, we can expand financial literacy and inclusion to hundreds of millions of entrepreneurs in Africa. This is just the start as we plan to add more languages including "pidgin English".

Thanks to our fantastic team for making this happen.

Finally, a big thank you to the wonderful translators that worked with us because your context makes the difference.

We are on a journey to change the way business is done in Africa.

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