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Good resources for implementing localization at a software company
Thread poster: Ben Shaw
Ben Shaw
Ben Shaw
New Zealand
Local time: 05:08
German to English
May 24, 2018

I'm a senior technical writer at a software company that develops a large suite of applications in the legal/financial domain. I have a background in translation and localization, so I am trying to push for my company to invest more thoroughly in a better localization solution (our current solution leaves a fair bit to be desired).

What are some good resources for me to ensure I am considering and planning for all issues? The main points I'm using to try to convince the powers-that-... See more
I'm a senior technical writer at a software company that develops a large suite of applications in the legal/financial domain. I have a background in translation and localization, so I am trying to push for my company to invest more thoroughly in a better localization solution (our current solution leaves a fair bit to be desired).

What are some good resources for me to ensure I am considering and planning for all issues? The main points I'm using to try to convince the powers-that-be that we need a more robust solution are:

- Context: all UI text in its editable form currently exists in an almost absolute vacuum - without asking specific questions to that end, translators have no idea of the context of a particular string (and our software is too vast and too tight with intellectual property to offer a test environment to every translator that works on our project).
- Consistency: with no approved terminology list, our current hands-off approach leads to a very unhealthy amount of inconsistency around common terms, structure, style, etc.
- Culture: localization should encompass differences in culture, not just language. We need to consider whether certain features should work the same way, whether certain fields are even useful for a foreign client, how foreign legal systems work and how that impacts how our software works.
- I could go on...

I'd love to find an article or resource out there that outlines at a fairly high level all the things to consider or cater for when beginning to implement a localization solution at a previously monolingual software company. Every day I think of something new, and I'm sure I'm missing a whole lot else - I need to make it clear to my superiors how big the role of a Localization Coordinator is and why offering our product to speakers of other languages isn't an easy or straightforward task! ▲ Collapse
 


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Good resources for implementing localization at a software company






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