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Subject:Re: Bad translations? From:"Porrello, Leonard" <lcporrel -at- ESSVOTE -dot- COM> Date:Tue, 26 Jan 1999 08:22:00 -0600
Steve equates localization with internationalization. The two may differ in the following way:
Localization means to adapt a text or application to a specific culture or group. This may involve translation.
Internationalization means to, as much as possible, prepare a text for localization: to remove colloquialism, culturally specific jargon and metaphors, and to edit the prose into a fully grammatical form (as opposed to something like journalistic English that, among other things, omits commas and words like "that". For example "please remove from your nose the pencil I was using" becomes "please, remove from your nose the pencil that I was using.")
Leonard Porrello
> as well as software localization (which I personally haven't had to
> deal with yet).
This is also called "internationalization", often with a funky
abbreviation involving a numeral 8 for reasons I cannot fathom.
> For example, I recently had a piece that contained the term
> "corporate watchdog". This required quite a bit of work to get the
> translation to say the right thing - generally using a different
> metaphor, but with a similar meaning. However, some translators
> don't understand this.
