‘Multimedia Localization’ Archives
Cultural Perception of Gender May Influence Localization
Sometimes cultural perception of gender relations may influence how marketing and advertising is localized for other markets. See several examples in the article "Some international ads are perceived as sexist due to different cultural norms," by Globalization Group vice president Adam Wooten. Examples include a TV commercial that seemed harmless [...]
International symbol, icon blunders can be avoided
Some of my European colleagues still remember when the old Macintosh operating system of the 1980s used a trash icon that Apple’s European users confused for a postal box. Why was the icon confusing? People across the globe have different cultural ideas and assumptions about what things are supposed to look like. In other countries, trash cans [...]
Clinic: How to Create International-Ready Websites and Software
UTC International Clinic: Thurs, April 21st, 2:00 - 4:00 PM Internationalization 101: How to Create International-Ready Websites and Software Without proper preparation, various challenges can arise when localizing websites and software applications into Português, Русский, Français, Italiano, Español, Deutsche, [...]
‘Airline pulp’ and bad translations that can crash a plane
Southern China Airways once distributed a snack package with the mysterious-sounding label “Airline Pulp” and no other description. Yum – sounds tasty! This mistranslated label will probably not get the airline nominated for any airline food awards, but it could be worse. Some in-flight mistranslations will make you laugh, but others will [...]
The wrong marketing picture can be a thousand words lost in translation
Starbucks recently released its new logo, which features a green image of its well-known siren. Noticeably absent from the image is any text mentioning the words Starbucks or coffee. International business experts praised this move as a way to eliminate the need for logo translation. In this case, a single, almost universally understood image [...]
“Conglaturation” from Nintendo Video Game Localization of Ghostbusters
Like "a winner is you" and "all your base are belong to us," Nintendo's Ghostbusters video game from the 1980s included some interesting broken English, "Conglaturation !!! You have completed a great game. And prooved the justice of our culture. Now go and rest our heroes !" View a video of the NES game's ending here.
Color Meanings Can Be Lost and Found in Translation
We often consider only the connotations of colors in our own culture; however, colors carry various different – often strong – connotations in other cultures. What may be neutral in one country could carry sharp political connotations in another. What may be seen as positive in one culture may be negative in a neighboring country. For this [...]
Harry Potter Translation Blunders
The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling has been translated into at least 69 languages. Some of those translations have included significant errors. The website CJVlang.com has documented numerous mistranslations in Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese. The BBC reported that one pirated Spanish translation of Harry Potter included not only [...]
Avoid Copying and Pasting
Limiting the number of human touch points in a project will limit the possibilities of introducing human error. One way to limit the number of human touch points is to avoid copying and pasting text whenever possible. Sometimes it can not be avoided. However, one important way to limit copying and pasting is to work with and extract [...]
Avoid Hardcoded Image Text
Just as it is more expensive to recreate a file from a PDF than it is to localize the original editable files, it is also more expensive to recreate an image with text than it is to localize editable image text. For this reason, it is important to limit embedding or hardcoding of text in images. This is an important element of [...]
