Jesper Holmberg on software localization

Today I discovered a new source of interesting information - Jesper Holmberg's blog. I found out about this site when reading a discussion on The Old New thing (Raymond Chen's blog).

Jesper's stories are very interesting and useful. He describes various issues that arise when localizing (translating) software. The entries cover typical problems such as ambiguities in text, lack of context, clipped strings, cut strings, and so on; they are accompanied by screenshots too.

As a person who deals with GUIs and documentation, I was very glad to find out I'm not alone on this planet :-) Jesper's articles are definitely useful reading material, not only if you are a translator, but also a software developer; and especially useful if you are both (I believe this applies to most of my audience).

What captured my attention is the fact that he writes from the perspective of a "language guy", rather than from that of a "programming guy".

Last, but not least, the articles reveal various facts about workflows inside Microsoft.

Here is a list of articles which I found most interesting:

• Localization adventures in Windows XP
• Interviewing candidates
• Questionable characters
• Localizing accelerators
• String length limitations (and this one)
• On differences between a MUI and a LIP
• The problem with auto-translations
• "Overlocalization"
• Clipped text (and this one too; the German solution is nice)

Jesper's blog is definitely worth a bookmark, I will definitely visit it every now and then.

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