Software localization
In the age of globalization the markets for all goods become more and more internationalized, enforcing the need to provide information in a variety of languages. This is especially true for the software market, where the product itself consists nearly exclusively of localizable information. This comparative review examines 3 specialized software localization applications and 2 more general translation packages which also cover the localization process of software.
In general, localization tools are highly specialized applications for the LocalizatioN (L10N) of software. The main source and target formats: resource files (RC) or binary files such as EXE or DLL usually do not contain long translatable text strings surrounded by non-translatable code. Localization tools have to extract these short strings properly, provide a convenient graphical user interface (GUI) for the translation of the strings and save the translations correctly back into the surrounding code. In this process, special attention has to be paid to controls embedded in the translatable text like ampersands (&) and shortcuts (e.g. Alt+D),. Another specialty of software localization is that translated strings should be about the same size as the original text. This is because the translated text needs to fit into the appropriate spaces of dialog windows. If a size-equivalent translation is not possible, resizing procedures for the dialog boxes have to be offered. Complex translation memories are usually unnecessary for short text strings. A bi- or multilingual terminology base or glossary is usually sufficient.
In contrast, software documentation files (Windows Help format HLP, HTML Help format CHM, Web pages HTML or Adobe Acrobat PDF) contain much more translatable text in much longer text strings. These files are usually better handled by a translation memory (TM) software, which memorizes already used phrases, typically segmented by full-stops, and enable their recycling. TM software usually implements some kind of fuzzy match algorithm to identify the degree of concordance between a new and an already translated segment and allows their insertion into and editing in the authoring environment.
The Nu-Fantex software localization process
1. Planning & evaluation
First we plan the project with you, listening carefully to your needs to clearly tell you what we can deliver and when. We also inform you of any regulatory and cultural adaptation issues that need to be taken into account for your specific project. In addition, project engineering analysis, including requirements specification and process definition is provided to the client.
2. Extracting/re-integrating assets from source software into translatable formats
Once all issues have been identified and resolved in the pre-project consultation phase, using a variety of applications we extract and re-integrate all of the translatable elements for your software product.
3. Testing
After reintegrating the translatable elements back into your software product, our engineers and translators undertake functionality and linguistic testing.
- Regression testing and bug fixing
- Identifying localization issues in the client's build environment
- Taking localized screen shots
- User interface testing
- Setting up bug report formats or databases
- General QA testing
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