A Localization Horror Story: It Could Happen to You • Hacker News Board

Re: A Localization Horror Story: It Could Happen to You

#121

Post by mfenniak » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 2:26 PM UTC

cj wrote: post #114

I created Localize.js ( https://localizejs.com ), a localization SaaS. Pluralization is a challenge, but we're able to solve this with some pretty simple HTML tags. For example: I have 3 dogs! Localize.js identifies the tag with the pluralize attribute, and pluralizes the phrase to any language (including languages like Arabic which can have 6 different plural forms).

Huh. Localize.js sounds really cool. Fantastic idea.

Can you explain your example a little more? What would translators see in this case for Arabic; would they need to provide three translations? And if there were two variables, nine translations?

"Localization" also implies a lot more than just translation. Does Localize.js handle work like culture-specific number and date formatting? Different collation of records for different languages? How does it identify application-generated text versus user data (eg. on a blog, does it translate blog comments entered by readers, or just text like "Please enter a comment below")?

Re: A Localization Horror Story: It Could Happen to You

#122

Post by cj » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 2:27 PM UTC

julie1 wrote: post #116

cj wrote: post #114

I created Localize.js ( https://localizejs.com ), a localization SaaS. Pluralization is a challenge, but we're able to solve this with some pretty simple HTML tags. For example: I have 3 dogs! Localize.js identifies the tag with the pluralize attribute, and pluralizes the phrase to any language (including languages like Arabic which can have 6 different plural forms).

You don't solve the inflexion problem. You would need something where the lemmization tokenization of the sentence is easily accessible to a grammar engine. Something horrible like: I have

Lemmatization isn't necessary in this case, as there's no need for a grammar engine.

Here's how we handle pluralization on our backend (all abstracted away from the user): For a language with 2 plural forms (ie. French), we create 2 different phrases. One singular and one plural. Or for languages like Arabic, we create 6 different phrases for each plural form. We then send each plural form of the phrase to a human translator, who translates each phrase independently.

This ensures proper plural forms for all variations, without the need for complicated grammar syntax.

Re: A Localization Horror Story: It Could Happen to You

#123

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 2:28 PM UTC

cj wrote: post #114

I created Localize.js ( https://localizejs.com ), a localization SaaS. Pluralization is a challenge, but we're able to solve this with some pretty simple HTML tags. For example: I have 3 dogs! Localize.js identifies the tag with the pluralize attribute, and pluralizes the phrase to any language (including languages like Arabic which can have 6 different plural forms).

[deleted]

Re: A Localization Horror Story: It Could Happen to You

#124

Post by lmm » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 2:29 PM UTC

theoh wrote: post #68

The two Turkish letters dotted and dotless i are often confused by users of poorly localised software. Wikipedia links to a murder case allegedly caused by this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dotted_and_dotless_I A real horror story. (Less seriously, Unicode has counterintuitive case-changing behaviours with those letters. If you are working outside the Turkish locale and uppercase a dotless I and then lowercase it, i…

Upper and lower casing can't be assumed to be inverse; there are plenty of other cases where they will change (e.g. precomposed characters that don't have a precomposed upper case). The correct lower-casing of "I" in English is definitely "i"; the correct upper-casing of "ı" in English is maybe a wrong question, because it just isn't an English letter, so I guess you could argue for leaving it unchanged, but converting it to "I" is probably what the person who wrote "ı" would want to happen when it was upper-cased. Maybe?

Re: A Localization Horror Story: It Could Happen to You

#125

Post by blywi » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 2:30 PM UTC

lmm wrote: post #24

EvaK_de wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should be reflected in the title, if possible, neh?

Cool example, but I think "ne" is the "correct" way to romanize ね.

Could also be from German, although this would also be written ne instead of neh. People from the northern part of Germany use this in pretty much the same way it is used in Japanese (at least according to what I know with my limited knowledge of Japanese) I always thought of this as a strange quirk that the same language construct can evolve in two unrelated languages. It's just like parallel evolution in biology.

Re: A Localization Horror Story: It Could Happen to You

#126

Post by psykovsky » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 2:30 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #83

psykovsky wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an error only an amateur translator would make. Guess who makes free software translations... A professional translator makes sure to check the context of the translation, it doesn't go blindly translating sentences and words without context.

> A professional translator makes sure to check the context of the translation, it doesn't go blindly translating sentences and words without context. From my experience with both software and movies, that's exactly what a professional, paid translator does (or is forced to). Amateurs at least watch the movie/run the software before translating things, which is something I definitely cannot say about "professionals"…

The problem you describe is one of incompetence. The professionals are not really professionals. And yet, someone is paying them as if they were. That is not the case everywhere, I assure you.

A little of anecdata: In Portugal, where foreign stuff is translated and subtitled, the quality of translations/subtitles in english language movies and series in very good. Or at least it used to be, I can't be sure anymore since I don't currently watch TV. I grew up used to reading good translations. Those translations taught me to understand and speak the English language when I was growing up, since age 5. I understand I might be a bit biased because of my personal experience.

Re: A Localization Horror Story: It Could Happen to You

#127

Post by fennecfoxen » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 2:31 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #80

eloisant wrote: post #33

When I was in Japan I did proof reading for a Japanese feature phone. A major Japanese brand, actually. That was really comical. There was an Australian guy for English, an German guy, an Italian lady, and me for French. What they did prior to the meeting is: * translate from Japanese to English by Japanese people with a poor English level (maybe the software engineers actually) * translate from weird English to othe…

I don't know why nobody seems to put information like "warning: this phone's UI in is total and utter crap". Anyway, what you wrote is exactly why I stick to using all software and webservices - OS, text editors, Facebook, et al. - in en_US instead of my native pl_PL. Because translations are always crappy - even for big players. Lack of context is the key here - translated text often feels out of place, because ther…

You know what multi-million movie has a translation that isn't total crap? Frozen. They really put resources into that. You can look up random Disney songs on Youtube in different languages, and then look up the Frozen songs, and you can sort of tell that they've done a better job even if you don't speak the language.

Even relatively obscure languages like Dutch where they usually just watch English-language movies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOueN0sV2SY

Re: A Localization Horror Story: It Could Happen to You

#128

Post by raverbashing » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 2:32 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #80

eloisant wrote: post #33

When I was in Japan I did proof reading for a Japanese feature phone. A major Japanese brand, actually. That was really comical. There was an Australian guy for English, an German guy, an Italian lady, and me for French. What they did prior to the meeting is: * translate from Japanese to English by Japanese people with a poor English level (maybe the software engineers actually) * translate from weird English to othe…

I don't know why nobody seems to put information like "warning: this phone's UI in is total and utter crap". Anyway, what you wrote is exactly why I stick to using all software and webservices - OS, text editors, Facebook, et al. - in en_US instead of my native pl_PL. Because translations are always crappy - even for big players. Lack of context is the key here - translated text often feels out of place, because ther…

> I don't know why nobody seems to put information like "warning: this phone's UI in is total and utter crap".

This is what makes me use SW and equipment only in English.

Translations are pretty much useless (and of course, Googling the English error messages usually gives the best results)

Re: A Localization Horror Story: It Could Happen to You

#129

Post by cj » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 2:32 PM UTC

mfenniak wrote: post #121

cj wrote: post #114

I created Localize.js ( https://localizejs.com ), a localization SaaS. Pluralization is a challenge, but we're able to solve this with some pretty simple HTML tags. For example: I have 3 dogs! Localize.js identifies the tag with the pluralize attribute, and pluralizes the phrase to any language (including languages like Arabic which can have 6 different plural forms).

Huh. Localize.js sounds really cool. Fantastic idea. Can you explain your example a little more? What would translators see in this case for Arabic; would they need to provide three translations? And if there were two variables, nine translations? "Localization" also implies a lot more than just translation. Does Localize.js handle work like culture-specific number and date formatting? Different collation of records…

> What would translators see in this case for Arabic

The Arabic translator would have to provide 6 different translations, one translation for each plural form.

> And if there were two variables, nine translations?

We currently only allow for pluralization based on one variable per phrase. We're hoping address this soon.

> Does Localize.js handle work like culture-specific number and date formatting?

We usually recommend libraries like moment.js to handle date localization. They do a fantastic job at localizing dates.

> How does it identify application-generated text versus user data

We provide a set of HTML markers that you can use to indicate to Localize.js that certain text should be translated. For example...

notranslate> [...]

https://localizejs.com/docs/usage/variables

Re: A Localization Horror Story: It Could Happen to You

#130

Post by entropy_ » Thu, Jan 15, 2015, 2:34 PM UTC

Fuxy wrote: post #86

reidrac wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair it was a beta of the "Ubuntu Netbook Remix" and that bug was shortly fixed. I took some screenshots because I really liked the interface, but none of them show the bug because I usually stick to en_GB and the problem was spotted in my wife's netbook (she's Spanish teacher and likes to have the OS interface in Spanish to amuse the kids).

Am I the only one that gets confused on what the menus and other things on a non English computer or device actually mean when translated. This coming from someone doesn't speak English as their first language. I speak Romanian, Hungarian and English perfectly but my devices are always in English since it would be harder to figure out what they mean otherwise unless you have the structure memorized already.

You are definitely not alone in that. My native language is Arabic, but if I switch my phone or computer to Arabic I wouldn't be able to use it. I dread testing translations of apps I'm working on because it forces me to switch to Arabic. It doesn't help that there's a lot of jargon that just doesn't translate that well. For example, the translation of "Tap" to Arabic is the equivalent of either "Peck" or "Perforate". It's just that that's what's generally agreed on as the proper translation and everybody uses it, however, if I didn't know that it would take me a while to figure it out for myself.