Event apps keep getting easier, a boon for those who are, to put it delicately, tech-averse. Event app-maker Attendify just announced that their apps now support eight languages, including Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.
The multi-language event apps automatically detect the language preference of attendees by aligning with the settings on their phones, so there is nothing to set up or configure. Planners and event organizers can add content to the Attendify app in any of the supported languages, and the Attendify Hub will present it to the attendee in their preferred (supported) language, after they download the app. How cool is that?
The content is not automatically translated – which you wouldn’t want anyway, to avoid misunderstandings and wrong information. If event organizers need to support two languages in one app, they can add multiple sections of content (for example, two schedules) and add content in each language.
Attendify says “many more” languages will be available in the coming months.
The company, founded in the Ukraine in 2012, is not the first event app-maker to enter multi-language territory. For example, QuickMobile claims to have developed the first multilingual event app back in 2013. EventMobi, GenieConnect and EventPilot are some of the others with multi-language capabilities.
AppBurst offers native mobile event apps supporting multiple languages on iPhone, iPad, and Android. In addition to English, French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish, it supports Turkish.
Given that we’re pretty much all operating in a global and multicultural setting now, the more app makers who can present information and connections in different languages, the better. AppBurst’s web page notes that “many attendees at an international event based primarily in English may also feel more comfortable with menus and other functions of the event app in their native language, or perhaps a selection of important content–supplied by the event hosts–available in multiple languages.”
It’s a bottom-line issue as well: As the 2014 survey by Double Dutch and Meetings Professional International pointed out, it’s estimated that roughly $500 billion is spent annually on events worldwide; events make up the biggest portion of an average B2B marketer’s budget at nearly 20 percent of their overall spending.
