Just knowing French is not enough to actually localize to the particular French culture that is your target market. For example, if you're targeting a Parisian French audience, well, the culture of a Quebec is much different than that of France. The expectations of the audience are different. Even some of the words differ, for example, blueberry is "bluet" in quebecois but "myrtille" in French. To really localize a site, you need to have locals who actually grew up in that culture and know what the audience expects. That said, just to make sure there are not any grave errors like a literal translation that means something completely different or even offensive in the language and to make sure that there are no grammatical/spelling errors, like "mis a jour" instead of "mise au jour" :-D, you could use French speakers of the target dialect, beta testers, so to speak, who could catch these things. Also, if it's a particular kind of site that requires expertise, you would do best with francophone experts in that area.
Good luck! Courtney -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of live Sent: Wednesday, December 30, 2009 3:47 PM To: Bernie Monette Cc: Ixda Design Ixda Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] French shopping cart terminology... Ditto! Translation is NOT localisation. And you want your content to be localised. Either hire someone who knows French, or find among your friends or peers someone who knows French well. On Dec 30, 2009, at 10:48 AM, Alain wrote: > You'll have to get your hands on a French speaker, before any other > consideration. All of these terms can create absurd situations, when > taken out of particular contexts. So any list of that this kind will > be totally useless to you, alone if "What makes sense to a French > speaker makes little sense to me." > > Alain Vaillancourt > > --- En date de : Mer, 30.12.09, Bernie Monette <[email protected]> a > écrit : > >> De: Bernie Monette <[email protected]> >> Objet: Re: [IxDA Discuss] French shopping cart terminology... >> À: [email protected] >> Date: mercredi 30 Décembre 2009, 10 h 02 I did! But then you have to >> go through the checkout process, register, and then find the word >> that you *think* is right. What makes sense to a French speaker makes >> little sense to me. >> >> What I am looking for is a list of matching terms Checkout = >> Commander, Mis a jour = Updated (I think). >> >> Cheers, >> >> Bernie >> ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
