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What they don’t tell you when you translate your app

ericwbailey.design

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Re: What they don’t tell you when you translate your app

#211

Post by d1sxeyes »

andruby wrote: post #46
lksaar wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a similar experience as a german on the internet. Aliexpress (straight up wrong translations), Discord (anglicism, adjective ordering and weird sentence/tone structures) and plenty of others I don't remember, the list is pretty long. Size doesn't really seem play an effect aswell. Another big issue are potential bugs you encounter. If you just get a translated error message without any error number or somethin…

Aliexpress in Dutch is lovely! Plenty of items on Aliexpress can be shipped from multiple locations. "China" is almost always one of the options. Well, in Dutch they've translated that to "Porselein". That is a valid translation, if you are talking about plates and dishes made from porcelain) I wonder how actively harmful this bad translation is to their business. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_(material) screen…

"Ships from" though is perfect Dutch.

Re: What they don’t tell you when you translate your app

#212

Post by zapzupnz »

908B64B197 wrote: post #74

One nitpick about localization: If you speak several languages, try setting your device to use one _language_ and keep your locale to US. Now you can spot which developer understands the difference between a language and a locale and which one doesn't (hint: on large enough apps you'll land on pages using the wrong one, ie determines the language using locale). Or the opposite (watch the UI quote you prices in Euro d…

I got stuck with this a few years ago. I live in New Zealand. My bank used iOS’ number pad keyboard to let me enter a deposit amount in its app.

When I switched my phone to French language but left the region and formatting as English (New Zealand), it was clear the app developers didn’t know the difference between language and locale because suddenly I couldn’t deposit amounts with a decimal point; they didn’t account for the fact ‘,’ would show up on the number pad rather than ‘.’.

It meant that they detected my phone’s language rather than locale. It used French’s locale settings for the decimal separator despite the fact I had specifically set my locale settings to remain in English (New Zealand).

I complained and it was later fixed to detect locale instead — but seriously, language vs locale, not rocket science.

Re: What they don’t tell you when you translate your app

#213

Post by zapzupnz »

lmm wrote: post #197
duskwuff wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't. Flags are not languages. ( http://www.flagsarenotlanguages.com/ ) There are many languages which cannot be clearly distinguished with a flag icon -- for example, there are dozens of languages which could be represented by an Indian flag (Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Urdu...), and some languages which don't have any clear flag, or whose flag could be politically complicated to display (like Catalan, Romani, o…

> It's unambiguous On the contrary, if you just use the name of the language then it's not at all clear to a user who's using the "wrong" language where the language selector is.

Then supplement it with a standard language switcher icon: either A/文 or a globe.

Re: What they don’t tell you when you translate your app

#214

Post by seszett »

zapzupnz wrote: post #204
seszett wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You really think someone as big as EasyJet would get that right. Well even Apple has a wrong translation on the iOS keyboard in French. The "Return" key is translated as "Retour" (generally meaning "Back" rather than "Carriage return") instead of "Entrée". It might have changed in the last years though, I don't know.

That’s not a mistake. The English term ‘Return’ refers to a carriage return (on a typewriter, it means to move the carriage back when you’ve reached the edge of the paper). The French translation of “carriage return” is “retour chariot”, hence the ‘Retour’ key on French keyboards. In Apple terminology, the Enter key is a completely separate key on the number pad with a different function and has no equivalent on iOS’…

> hence the ‘Retour’ key on French keyboards.

But as far as I know there has never been a key called "Retour" on French keyboards. Both Return and Enter are called "Entrée" in French by everyone I know, maybe because Apple's keyboards don't have any text on them, while PC keyboards do have "Entrée" written at this location[0].

Retour is only ever used to mean "Back", and Back is also translated as "Retour" on iOS. Which means in some cases (like in the Mail app) you have two different "Retour" buttons, one that inserts a newline while the other one cancels what you're doing.

I'm certainly not the only person to have a problem with it because I'm the one having to explain why the keyboard says "retour" to iPhone users, even though I mostly use Android phones.

[0]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/KB_Franc...

Re: What they don’t tell you when you translate your app

#215

Post by zapzupnz »

yoz-y wrote: post #198
david_allison wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mainland China did mostly. Everything is +8[0] (besides Xinjiang Time[1]) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_China [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_Time

Yes. But, that’s also only 4 time zones squashed into one, with vast majority of the population living in 2. EU could remove time zones, US too, but worldwide it would be quite unpleasant to completely lose the notion of when a « morning » is.

My 5 cents from the antipodes (NZ, so it really should be 10 cents): yes.

For so much of what we do, we have to do it on Europe and North America’s time. Being able to say “if we want to join that 9am conference call in New York, we have to be up at 1am”.

Taking out time zones and saying “oh good, the meeting is at 9am” doesn’t help me to know what time in the middle of the night I have to be up — other than that it’s 9am, which isn’t helpful.

Re: What they don’t tell you when you translate your app

#216

Post by hrishi »

I'll add my few experiences. The primitives of UI that we use in English are often untranslatable, or need really verbose translations simply because they've been inducted into English as part of the tech UI lexicon.

I speak four languages fluently, and 'OK', 'Abort', 'Retry' and 'Load' are some of the hardest things to translate.

Re: What they don’t tell you when you translate your app

#217

Post by zapzupnz »

seszett wrote: post #214
zapzupnz wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not a mistake. The English term ‘Return’ refers to a carriage return (on a typewriter, it means to move the carriage back when you’ve reached the edge of the paper). The French translation of “carriage return” is “retour chariot”, hence the ‘Retour’ key on French keyboards. In Apple terminology, the Enter key is a completely separate key on the number pad with a different function and has no equivalent on iOS’…

> hence the ‘Retour’ key on French keyboards. But as far as I know there has never been a key called "Retour" on French keyboards. Both Return and Enter are called "Entrée" in French by everyone I know, maybe because Apple's keyboards don't have any text on them, while PC keyboards do have "Entrée" written at this location[0]. Retour is only ever used to mean "Back", and Back is also translated as "Retour" on iOS. Wh…

> Both Return and Enter are called "Entrée" in French by everyone I know

Most likely because everyone you know has learnt learnt that PCs. On PCs, they're the same button. In Apple's ecosystem, they're completely different buttons that do entirely different things.

> But as far as I know there has never been a key called "Retour" on French keyboards

On Apple keyboards, it has always been referred to in the operating system and documentation as the "touche Retour". Though you're right, there isn't a symbol on the keyboard in Europe in order to sell the same model for the whole region.

> Back is also translated as "Retour" on iOS. Which means in some cases (like in the Mail app) you have two different "Retour" buttons, one that inserts a newline while the other one cancels what you're doing.

The latter is actually a UI error in most cases. Apple's HIG demands that "But yeah, they have a hard time following their own advice.

> I'm the one having to explain why the keyboard says "retour" to iPhone users

Now you can explain: it's just Apple terminology dating back to the 1980s. :-)

Re: What they don’t tell you when you translate your app

#218

Post by iggldiggl »

yoz-y wrote: post #198
david_allison wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mainland China did mostly. Everything is +8[0] (besides Xinjiang Time[1]) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_China [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_Time

Yes. But, that’s also only 4 time zones squashed into one, with vast majority of the population living in 2. EU could remove time zones, US too, but worldwide it would be quite unpleasant to completely lose the notion of when a « morning » is.

Also not to forget that currently midnight and the associated change of the calendar date happen at a time when most people are either asleep or otherwise don't really care about that fact.

Not having time zones means that everybody except the privileged minority living near wherever the new meridian ends up will have the calendar date change during their waking hours, which will be rather confusing.

Plus how are things that are currently specified at the granularity of calendar dates supposed to work? Do public holidays and suchlike suddenly start and end at something like for example 3 o'clock (solar time) in the afternoon, because that's when the new midnight (global time) happens at your location? Or does everything now need to specify starting and ending hours, too? Or do you decouple the change of calendar date from midnight (global time), which basically means reintroducing time zones through the back door…

Re: What they don’t tell you when you translate your app

#219

Post by is_true »

crazygringo wrote: post #162

> People may prefer the English experience because they expect the translated version to be inferior There are multiple comments here about how it usually is inferior. But even when it's not , there can still be reasons to stick to English. I've done a lot of work with Brazilian graphic designers, and they all use Photoshop/Illustrator in English -- the Portuguese version is essentially "unusable". Not because the tr…

English is a good choice usually because tutorials are easier to follow, there are way more tutorials in english than in other languages.

Re: What they don’t tell you when you translate your app

#220

Post by yoz-y »

zapzupnz wrote: post #215
yoz-y wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. But, that’s also only 4 time zones squashed into one, with vast majority of the population living in 2. EU could remove time zones, US too, but worldwide it would be quite unpleasant to completely lose the notion of when a « morning » is.

My 5 cents from the antipodes (NZ, so it really should be 10 cents): yes. For so much of what we do, we have to do it on Europe and North America’s time. Being able to say “if we want to join that 9am conference call in New York, we have to be up at 1am”. Taking out time zones and saying “oh good, the meeting is at 9am” doesn’t help me to know what time in the middle of the night I have to be up — other than that it’…

The whole am/pm thing would also probably need to be ditched for military time. (Now that is a thing I would agree on doing anyways)
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