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Something that I forgot to mention in my last posting:
Having at least one computer with the operating system of the target
language is almost required.
Programmers re-use a lot of prompts and buttons from the operating system in
your application software. Hence, you're likely to see "Ok" and "Cancel" in
any language version of the software running on your English operating
system.
You can get around this by "faking it out." Create images of those common
buttons from the target language operating system. If you or your co-workers
have to create images on an English operating system for the target-language
software, you could have a second pass on the images to modify
prompts-from-the-system on buttons to be language specific.
FWIW, at my last company we hired a "Hausfrau" part-time and her main task
was creating images in German, French, Italian, Spanish, etc. that were
equivalent to our English source. We had to show her the software and
tricks, but the training carried over into creating the image for other
languages. Having her on staff was a big benefit to me, because then I could
focus on new content and new images.
Rather than having multiple-boot operating systems on her machine, we
figured out what button text came from the operating system. We sent the
text to the translators and created fake button images with the translation
text. Granted, sometimes our fake buttons weren't identical to those coming
from the operating system (e.g., our fake buttons might have been a few
pixels off in width). However, readers aren't going to notice or care.
Glenn Maxey
Voyant Technologies, Inc.
Tel. +1 303.223.5164
Fax. +1 303.223.5275
glenn -dot- maxey -at- voyanttech -dot- com
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