
Pimp My Code, Part 17: Lost in Translations - naish
http://wilshipley.com/blog/2009/10/pimp-my-code-part-17-lost-in.html
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zokier
And then there are the small oddball countries who actually enjoy material in
their original language. In Finland almost all tv-shows and movies are subbed
instead of dubbed, and many people I know prefer (in addition to myself)
english software instead of translated. One of the most horrible examples is
Microsoft Excel which has actually translated the names of formula functions.
Or GCC having translated error messages. Also having "," as a decimal
separator instead of "." is sometimes a PITA. Helpdesking people over phone is
much harder when you actually need to translate/guess menu items/button label
texts etc on the fly from english to finnish. And then there is the problem
that there is always some software in english, and its much nicer when the
whole system is actually in the same language. And then there is the problem
of just plain crappy translations, especially those made by some hobbyists.

English is lingua franca of the internet. Even if having own language is kinda
nice, its just not that practical in globalized world.

nb. Localization is a lot more than just translations. Even if no translation
is made, proper localization should be still made. Number and date formats are
a common example. Another example I have heard is actually having different
icons in different areas/cultures.

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bemmu
Hear, hear. You didn't mention how frustrating it is when software tries to
"intelligently" guess which language you want based on where you are. If you
are in Finland and not logged in to Reddit, it shows the UI in Finnish, even
though all the articles are in English. When I go to Google.com, sometimes it
decides I want to go to Google.fi instead, and then I'm left wondering why my
searches are bringing up odd results.

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allenbrunson
i did something similar to this once. i came to the same conclusion as
shipley: trying to have other people edit your nibs is madness.

i chose to solve it in a different way, though. i kept all my localized
strings in my own simple text file, and did away with nibs altogether,
preferring to build all views and windows and menus in code at runtime.
probably wouldn't work so hot for really complicated user interfaces, but it
worked for me.

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matty
If you are running your code in an iPhone environment and ever want to
modularize code. (Say having a tab in someone else's app without revealing
your source) Not having XIBs makes using a static library much easier and
cleaner.

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allenbrunson
i am even _more_ anti-xib/nib when it comes to the iphone. they are almost
always useless in that case. i've written three fairly substantial iphone apps
so far, and i haven't used a nib yet.

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bemmu
So by doing some translation effort, you can get perhaps +20% more users, but
this should be compared with spending the same amount of effort on some other
part of the program. Maybe some nice new feature would also have resulted in
+20% users with less effort?

