If you want to translate your software into other languages (or foreign dialects of the same language), please be sure your translations are accurate – otherwise your users might be confused, irritated or even offended. This should be self-explanatory advice, but for some developers – including large multi-national companies like Microsoft, Apple and Yahoo – it’s not.
Image from here
In the German translation of Microsoft Exchange 2007, a particularly ridiculous error turned up in the user interface – ‘state’ (as in ‘status’) was translated as Bundesland or ‘federal state’. This is like a piece of English-language software asking for the ‘province’ of an internet connection. According to the website I found this image from, Microsoft may have been using an automatic translator from English to German, which is fraught with pitfalls. Don’t use automatic translation without having a fluent speaker read the translation to see if it’s accurate. Computerised translations can often be wrong, and your user base will let you know it. It takes longer, but it’s worth it. The example is from Microsoft, a billion-dollar company – surely they, of all people, have the resources to create an accurate German translation?
A lot of people end up using English-language software even though they’re not fluent English-speakers or readers, simply because the translations into their native language are that bad. If you plan on marketing outside your home country and have the resources, make the effort to provide good translations. Not perfunctory machine translations that haven’t been reviewed by native speakers or reasonably fluent second-language learners – good translations. It’s absolutely inexcusable that a billion-dollar company like Microsoft couldn’t proofread their software well enough to avoid asking their German-speaking users about the ‘federal state’ of a connection.
