World 0.1 – Localization and Internationalization

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.

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Spreadsheets and localization

Posted on Wednesday, 7 March, 2007

Just noticed: It's not only Microsoft Excel, even OpenOffice.org does localize keywords. Why? Why?!

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Corrupted Plain-Text Email Messages – Ever Heard Of Base64?

Posted on Tuesday, 23 January, 2007

Guys – and by guys, I mean the developers of about 90% of the emailing routines behind the avalanche of friendly emails from one of my mobile phone carriers, some well-known on-line retailer (don't remember whether it was ebay or Amazon) and a bunch of marketing communication from different shops, corporations some of which don't even have the excuse that they primarily target a pure-ASCII American public – guys, I've got a nice Conway quote for you:

[...] if you're ready to concede that ASCII-centrism is a naïve façade that's gradually fading into Götterdämmerung, you might choose to bid it adiós and open your regexes to the full Unicode smörgåsbord [...].

Well, actually that's the part which, as it appears, most people seem to have got by now (provided that they check user input at all, that is). However, it also seems “rather déclassé for an überhacking rōnin”, to quote Conway once again, to first ambitiously open up their regexes to the world and then leave those poor Unicode characters to their fate when emailing them in plain text over a 7bit ASCII mail server. Ever heard of base64? Or Quoted Printable encoding for that matter?

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Regional 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.

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Cucumis, a Social Translation Network – What Is It Worth?

Posted on Tuesday, 21 November, 2006

Today, Techcrunch featured Cucumis, a Paris-based free translation community. It is basically a platform for exchanging translations. To become a member, you have to know one or more foreign languages, and your translations will be rated by your peers. It is important to note that they do not sell translations, but merely act as a platform for exchanging services.

At first, I had mixed feelings. As a professional translator and a member of an association of professional translators, I should say something along the lines of how translators have an academic background for a reason and merely knowing a few languages does not make you a professional linguist. However, as a believer in all things Web 2.0, I cannot deny being intrigued by the idea. At the end of the day, it depends on the nature of your translation needs.

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The 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.

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Crimson Editor, Unicode and Single-Malt Whisky

Posted on Wednesday, 8 November, 2006

When one has used a great, free text editor for years, it's probably about time to say thank you. Therefore, first of all, I'd like to thank the developpers of Crimson Editor, my favourite editor. It's free, slim, stable, offers a neat tabular interface, handy syntax highlighting, and a lot of other features, combined with great ease of use. I can only recommend it to anyone looking for a nice, user-friendly text editor.

I've just got two small suggestions and wonder if anyone shares my thoughts. Both concern Unicode support which was added just in time before I thought, working in the localization industry, I had to switch to another editor.

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Happy Birthday, Ehrensenf – Congrats, Ruud Elmendorp – Long Live Internet Video Journalism

Posted on Thursday, 2 November, 2006

What the heck is Ehrensenf, you are possibly going to ask. Since you're asking, it's more or less like the German equivalent to Rocketboom. If you don't know Rocketboom, check it out. If you speak German and don't know Ehrensenf, have a look. Right, I am writing about video blogging/Internet TV/geek TV, whatever you want to call it.

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The Fear of the Blank Page – or: Why yet another blog?

Posted on Friday, 1 September, 2006

My first post on my nice little blog – and the fear of the blank page is overwhelming. A good place to start might be to attempt to define what this blog is actually about and to outline why I believe it might contribute something new to this continuously evolving maze of more or less serious thoughts and interactions commonly referred to as the Worldwide Web.

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