Bring es zum Laufen

https://i.ytimg.com – 13/05/2016

I have no idea what the title of this blog actually means, perhaps Matthias can enlighten me, but this is what Google Translate spat out in an attempt to convert the English phrase “Make it Work” into German, many of us would take this translation as gospel, I mean it came from Google how could it be wrong? right?

What happens, however, if we search these translated words in Google and do another translation from German back to English? Suddenly “Bring es zum Laufen” apparently means “Bring it to work” but despite this new translation, all of the search results are about going for a run.

This is just one example of why, particularly online, interlingual communication is still far from perfect but even if translation between languages was perfect there is more to consider than just directly translating words if you want to avoid miscommunications.

Locales are very important to consider when doing translations as well. Understanding a places locale will identify their different cultural formatting and involves everything from phrasing to date, time and currency formatting. Often the reason direct translation does not work is because a phrase that means one thing where you are from could mean something completely different somewhere else. Date, time, and currency formats are also very important to consider as Matthias explained when he told us about the program he wrote that stopped working due to the system being configured to use a dot instead of a comma.

It is important to have an understanding of all of these factors if you are considering internationalization.

 

What is Internationalization?

https://www.bibb.de – 13/05/2016

Internationalization is extremely important especially in modern society but, quite often, it’s something that’s overlooked, it involves taking something, be it a business, a website, software or a product, pretty much anything, and making it available worldwide, in the various different languages and, possibly more importantly, in different cultural formats, otherwise known as locales. In some cases, this is done well but a lot of the time…

http://davidsrestaurant.com.au – 13/05/2016

It is done very, very poorly.

This is really unfortunate and, although we’ve come a long way in recent years, translations like this go to show just how far away we are from truly being able to seamlessly integrate our different languages and cultures. However, being that in the world there are over 6500 spoken languages spread across 196 countries, many of which have multiple different locales, seamlessly translating between all of them is a monumental task, one that will probably take many more generations to accomplish, if it ever gets accomplished at all.

 

Why is it important and who does it Benefit?

https://www.hrk.de – 13/05/2016

Internationalization, done well, will benefit any person, business or company that wants to expand their market from local to international because the level to which they achieve internationalization will generally impact how well they perform in the international market.

 

Businesses that would benefit the most

I think almost any form of IT related business will stand to benefit the most from internationalization. Businesses involved with software and web development are obvious but also hardware manufacturers and even many IT workers, especially for those like myself who hope to travel and work in many different countries in the future.

Within IT, software development is one area in particular that would benefit the most because, due to the internet making them readily available globally, many programs are used worldwide even if they were not written or designed to be, this often leaves people fumbling around a program trying to understand all of the menus and buttons that are, all or in part, being displayed in a foreign language. If software developers perfected internationalization it would not only benefit the users but also the developers because it would, undoubtedly, increase the number of users their programs have.

In many cases web development could benefit greatly as well. For any business that operates worldwide having a website that translates well into different languages and locales is imperative to leaving a good and lasting impression of their company, that good impression could lead to increased turnover and possibly better international relationships.

 

Countries that would benefit the most

With nearly 1.2 billion speakers, Mandarin is the most widely spoken language in the world and yet, largely due to there being more than 13 different variations of Mandarin, it’s often the language that has the worst translations so I think any countries that have some or many variations of Mandarin as their primary language(s) would benefit the most from internationalization, especially because many of them are large exporting countries.