Quite Some Characters: A Unicode Primer for Linguists
Posted on Monday, 19 March, 2007
For people who are part of a creation process as is the case for us linguists it often proves helpful to have at least a basic idea of the other aspects involved in that process even if, strictly speaking, they are outside our own responsibility. Since computers have become such an integral part of our lives and working environments, computer-related aspects of multilingual content should be of interest to anyone involved in a translation process. This knowledge may not be directly required for our linguistic work, but it can greatly facilitate collaboration and communication with engineers, graphic designers, etc. and make it easier to identify and analyse obstacles that we may encounter from time to time. Yes, you guessed it right, this article is dedicated to the horribly dull and nasty topic of text encodings, in particular, Unicode.
Categories: Language and Translation Localization and Internationalization
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Back to the top of this pageRegional Differences In Written German
Posted on Friday, 19 January, 2007
Now that I am doing freelance translation again, I notice that a lot of clients get confused by my regional adaptation skills. But also there is a lot of confusion in the industry as to when it makes sense to adapt copy specifically for a Swiss or an Austrian target audience rather than just to use a generic German version. Note that this post is about written German, not about spoken language.Categories: Language and Translation Localization and Internationalization
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Back to the top of this pageThe Huge CSV Internationalization Mess-up
Posted on Saturday, 18 November, 2006
So-called “localization professionals” like to point out how complex and difficult internationalization and localization is. I'll let you into a secret: it isn't. It's actually quite easy once you've got around a couple of basic concepts. There are only two mistakes that can make internationalization and localization a real burden: when you think too much about it and when you think too little about it.
Paradoxically, the comma-delimited file format csv, originally devised by Microsoft, is a typical example for both of these errors, at least in its variety as output by Microsoft Office and a lot of third party applications.
Categories: Localization and Internationalization
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