Today is a special day for our team – Scanner Pro is now in Ukrainian: I am proud that an app which is loved by 10m users is acquiring an interface in my native language.
How important is this event for our team based in Ukraine, who have grown this into the best iPhone and iPad scanner app? Extremely important… But why has it taken so long to give this app the chance to speak in its native Ukrainian language?
Language is a complicated issue in Ukraine. The national language is Ukrainian, but many grew up speaking Russian because of the body of laws and other actions undertaken by the Imperial Russian and later Soviet authorities. Of course, Russians failed to impose their political and linguistic positions and destroy Ukrainian culture.
The war in Ukraine has made more people feel that by speaking their native language they can express their support for Ukraine. It took time to see this change, both culturally and in other spheres. Putin’s full invasion has only highlighted how different Ukraine is from Russia and has achieved the opposite effect – Ukraine is now more democratic, driven by the conscious decision about values with a strong belief that free people will make their country better.
Now when I see the Ukrainian ‘Привіт’, it warms my soul, in the same way, your heart misses a beat when the eyes see a familiar ‘Hello’, ‘Hola’, ‘Hallo’, ‘Bonjour’, ‘Ciao’, ‘Bom dia’, ‘こんにちは’ on the screen.
The art of localization
The localization process is not simple or easy. It’s immeasurably complex, vastly underestimated, and almost an art of multilingual gymnastics.
I’ve sat next to translators and seen them take days, not hours, to find a way to express into just one word the functionality of certain features in an app. Some foreign words are virtually untranslatable. It’s why the process takes a long time. Typically, around six months to release a new locale. In addition to text writing, proofreading, and approval, QA testing, post-editing, and final checking are all required.
So who taught Scanner Pro Ukrainian?
The journey of translation began more than seven years ago. The pioneers of UA localization were us, the Readdlers. Work on words took place in our little chat room on Slack. As a team, we argued, agreed, and played with words. And then, two years ago, fate brought us together with wordsmith and master of syllables – Yurii Polischuk.
That’s hard not to see that Yurii’s talent is boundless. He is an excellent translator of the Ukrainian language, and also, a man with a brave heart fulfilled with a tremendous love for his country. He joined the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the first days of March 2022. From then on, Yurii, as part of a separate rifle squadron of Kyiv, has been successfully performing the combat mission of defense of Kyiv. Among the usual cases, passing training and performing combat tasks, he finds time for helping volunteers and manages to complete translations like ours.
The first app that was wholly localized in UA was PDF Expert Mac and was dedicated to the 24th Ukraine Independence Anniversary on Aug 24, 2015.
Over time, the UA language support was added to Documents, PDF Expert iOS, Spark iOS, Spark Mac, and Spark Android. Now is the time for Scanner Pro & Mini.
Why is Scanner Pro so very special?
Scanner Pro from Readdle turns your iPhone and iPad into a portable digital scanner, allowing you to take a photo and create a high-quality digital scan of any piece of paper, wherever you are.
- No mess, no chaos: Smart Categories automatically sorts & organizes your documents by categories like Invoices, Receipts, Forms, Business Cards, etc.
- Filthy fingers, say no more: The AI-powered Eraser detects fingerprints on your scans and removes them with a single touch.
- Always beautiful: Feel free to fuss over the angle of the photo and the colors. Scanner Pro enhances an image automatically. Even if you need to take a picture of the receipt in the back of a bus, the scan will turn out perfect, even, and spotless.
About the app: Scanner Pro is Readdle’s powerful scanning app for iPhone and iPad, with 9M downloads and Apple's “Editors’ Choice” award.
The awards list feels endless. As someone who studied language and is lucky enough to write for a living, I know how important this introduction of Ukrainian into Scanner Pro will feel to our friends and family across the globe. We love our mother tongue. Love every letter, every sound. The language of your country is the soul of our ancestors. Every language has a history, full of both sad and joyful events. We need to nurture it like a flower that needs water. Bringing Ukrainian to Scanner Pro is a small but vital step to save the language from extinction and let it grow.
Do you want a scanner in your pocket? Give Scanner Pro a try 😉
Vita Vypovska 
