Talk about "Ready for Localization?" again

Recently my colleague from UK ask me (and our team) for a favor. They encounter a problem that they thought they have localized everything, but the result is many text still show in English. I guess he is a guy who only have a limited knowledge of codes, but he has tried his best to dig into the deeper level of the materials. The localization project seems did not involve any engineer, I would said the project was under estimated.

There are several reasons which result in the fact that many text are still in English. It's pretty bad. The material seems never being examined if it's I18N ready or G11N ready. Not to mention to have a pseudo localization test.

The main product is a set of flash files. Ideally all the front end presented text are stored in the back-end database. The ActionScripts codes will then pull out the text from database and generate several XML in run-time, and then the flash will refer to those XML to present the text.

I saw one of the common problem which most of the UI designer may also make the same mistake. Normally when a UI designer create a new object like a button or a lable (a text field), s/he will also put a default string with it. For example, when creating a cancel button, you might put the "Cancel" in the button's text field, and then in design mode it will just look like what it will be in the run-time mode. It seems to be fine, but actually it's not. It will be hard to detect which object has not yet been externalized or linked with external text source. Because you will think everything "looks fine" in your testing.

A UI designer may not have enough knowledge in I18N or G11N area. In some cases, it's fine. But they'd better learn more from these areas.

A simple way to improve the process and prevent from the problem is to use code-like text. For example, use "_CANCEL_" to be the default text for the button.

Since the product will be localized into many languages, never thinking about to leave the English text to be the default text. Treat English as another language. Load all the English text from external text source just like what you plan to do for all the other languages.

In this way, it will be easier to localize this product and less problem will be.

Ready for Localization?

Is your software or document ready for localization?
It usually is not that simple to localize anything. Giving you "Hello world" and ask you to localized it into several languages might already have some problems to be resolved first before localizing it.

People who speak English may not be aware of that the nouns have gender in several languages. People who wrote technical document in German might not be aware of that other people might not be able to know how to translate it properly due to it's too specific in a particular area.

Imagine if you receive this word "Entropy", how should you translate it properly if there is not enough context to be reference?
"Entropy" is a physic term and widely used in physics, thermodynamic, and some other fancy area such as image processing.
If you are familiar with PhotoShop, then you probably know the term "entropy" appeared there. Translator will need to look up many different areas' dictionaries and might also need to consult some professors in order to translate it properly.

Imagine I now send you "%s Power" and then ask you to translate it into French, the translated result may not be good due to I did not give you enough information. See below examples (translated results from Google Translate):
Maximum Power ==> La puissance d'attaque
Minimum Power ==> Moins d'énergie
Efficient Power ==> Puissance efficace

So, how can you translate it properly if I only give you "%s Power"? If I only give you that, that means it's not ready to be localized. Actually it's an I18N issue that the codes are trying to manipulate strings, which should not happen if you are going to localize it into several languages.

Doing L10N Testing, Asking If It's I18N Ready?

Still, some vendors are not aware of the localization industry, or maybe some vendors' employees are not actually familiar with that, but doing the tasks.

I saw some project team members including the PM and the testers are not aware what they are testing. They thought they are doing software L10N testing, but are they? And are they sure the software is I18N ready?

If you are doing L10N testing, please ask yourself first, do you think the software is I18N ready? Are you really very sure what you are asked to perform the testing is part of L10N testing?

Are you spending too much time on checking the functionalities are working fine or not in localized version? And do you discover many functional defects which are reproducible in more than one localized version or even the English version?