Re: Interesting approach to internationalization

[Dick Margulis <margulisd -at- comcast -dot- net>]

I thought it was interesting, first, because I've never seen a 404 page
in anything other than English, so I thought that demonstrated a certain
amount of thought. On the other hand, if anyone knows what language you
prefer--an an account the user is signed in on--it's Google; so it was a
bit of a surprise.

In addition, given that there is no other obvious reason for the
sequence of the 25 languages (including British English as separate from
US English, by the way), one might suppose that they are in descending
order of their occurrence worldwide in the online community--a handy
guide if confirmed. You're on your own to scan down the page and find
your own language--although I'm not sure what system would be better.

I also found it interesting that regardless of the language or writing
system, Google AdSense appears in the Latin alphabet, using a product
name that makes sense in English and is not translated into target
languages. I understand that a trademark is trademark (although there is
no notice on the page regarding whether AdSense is, in fact, a
trademark), but the name AdSense is clearly English-centric; so one
might think Google would have come up with translated versions of the
name in other languages.

It's also of some minor interest in that it's a fairly simple, short
passage, such as one might find in a user interface; and therefore it's
a quick way to estimate the relative lengths of such passages in 25
target languages--handy for UI designers.

Finally, it's interesting that the page is rendered as Unicode text
rather than a graphic. That implies an assumption that virtually all
computers can now display the page as served, which wouldn't have been
true, say, two years ago.

So that's pretty much what I found interesting.

Dick
http://ampersandvirgule.blogspot.com/


James Jones wrote: