Text expansion in translation of Spanish and other languages can cause problems when companies are not prepared
Letter-for-letter translation appears on kids’ cereal boxes, but not in real life. In real life, the word count, character count, length, and sometimes even the height of translated text will differ from the source text.
Proper preparation can prevent potential problems with expansion. This preparation can include dynamically resizable layouts or buffers that allow for a little expansion. Without dynamically resizable dialog boxes and buttons, expanded text can be cut off as shown in the image where “OK” is translated into Spanish as “Aceptar”. Without proper buffers, text can be so crowded that documents become difficult to read, even when going into Asian languages like Chinese where text length contracts, but character height must be greater than English. Even in audio localization where no extra time is allowed, a multilingual voiceover with expanded text may require that some information be cut out so that the voice talent can speak at a comprehensible speed. Unexpected expansion can result in unexpected costs and delays.
For most languages, it is generally safe to prepare for as much as 25%-35% expansion. However, actual expansion percentages vary depending on subject matter, writing style, and sentence or string length. Very short strings of text (as illustrated above) can expand as much as 100%-300% in length, and longer passages will often expand at the following approximate rates:
Text Expansion & Contraction Percentages for Translation
| Language | From English | Into English |
|---|---|---|
| Albanian | +15% | -5% to -15% |
| Arabic | +20% to +25% | -20% to -25% |
| Burmese | +15% | -5% to -15% |
| Catalan | +15% | -5% to -15% |
| Croatian | +15% | -5% to -15% |
| Czech | +10% | -5% to -10% |
| Danish | -10% to -15% | +10% to +15% |
| Estonian | +15% | -5% to -15% |
| Finnish | -25% to -30% | +30% to +40% |
| Flemish | +10% | -5% to -10% |
| French | +15% to +20% | -10% to -15% |
| German | +10% to +35% | -20% to +20% |
| Greek | 10% | -5% to -15% |
| Hebrew | -20% to -30% | +20% to +30% |
| Hindi | +15% to +35% | -15% |
| Italian | +10% to +25% | -15% |
| Japanese | -10% to -55% | +20% to +60% |
| Korean | -10% to -15% | +15% to +20% |
| Norwegian | -5% to -10% | +5% to +10% |
| Polish | +20% to +30% | -5% to -15% |
| Portuguese | +15% to +30% | -5% to -15% |
| Russian | +15% | -5% to -15% |
| Spanish | +15% to +30% | -5% to -15% |
| Swedish | -10% | +10% |
| Thai | +15% | -5% to -15% |
Again, actual expansion percentages vary depending on subject matter, writing style, and sentence or string length, so the numbers above are rough approximations for somewhat typical expansion and contraction.
Contact GGI for more information about preparing for text expansion in translation.
