JoJo le reptile at [EMAIL PROTECTED],Internet writes:
>1) Forget Ireland. That's where Microsoft subcontracts its grunt jobs
That's hardly Ireland's fault! You might want to contact them anyway,
just in case the people have a better understanding of localization
than their clients let them put into practice.
>2) Forget about America, except perhaps Apple which made an honorable
>effort in this direction a decade ago. Some people in the States wrote a
>lot about multicultural issues but it's one thing to write about them and
>another to live them daily the way we Europeans do. I must say I am still
>astonished by the way Americains discovered localization and just had a go
>at it with a total ignorance of the issues involved.
I would tend to agree, especially since so many of the American "localizers"
are on the TECHWR-L list for technical writers and have provided ample
evidence of their ignorance. Never in a million years will you get a normal
American citizen to understand that you can't localize by telling a
unilingual
speaker of U.S. English to do it with a Petit Robert and the AltaVista
online translator, especially since it's so much cheaper that way. [;-)]
>Interestingly, when you look e.g. at the localized versions of
>Word, it ain't too bad. Probably c'ause they went to Ireland...
Actually, I suspect it's because before they sent the work to Ireland, MS
used to hire skilled translators who were natives of the countries to
which the software was being localized.
>3) My advice for what it's worth. Go after companies in the industrial
>field (or engineering departments in European universities) [...]
> people working in this field tend to take localization rather more
>seriously than in non safety-critical fields.
I agree completely here -- the people who make the life-and-death software
are the ones to seek out, since they know they have to adapt their products
properly and can't try to save a few cents by hiring the unskilled. Amongst
the engineering firms, you might try Ericsson (Sweden) and Philips (Holland)
who have been adapting their equipment and manuals into many languages
for many years. (I worked for the latter back in the Pleistocene era, in
their
Montreal X-ray equipment department, and never found a blooper in
either the English or French Canadian documentation but haven't seen
their manuals in about 30 years.)
>(L=E9g=E8rement adapt=E9 d'un manuel -- chose lue. "Toucher =
>le bo=EEtier. Si votre main dispara=EEt en fum=E9e, cela signifie
>que la temp=E9rature du bo=EEtier est trop =E9lev=E9e.")
I've seen things like that, too. More to the point, I've also seen
documentation in pure American destined for the U.K. where a
number of expressions would be either incomprehensible or
laugh-provoking.
One other suggestion: try contacting some Canadians. You will find
editors doing U.S. and U.K. English versions across the country,
and plenty of people who do Canadian and International French
here in Quebec --not to mention dozens of people localizing for
other languages. (Try Alis Systems, too --they're working
with Arabic, amongst other things.)
Regards,
Judyth
