Posts Tagged ‘multimedia’
e-Learning Localization Errors Cost $1 Million
Toronto-based AlertDriving, incorporated as Sonic e-Learning, Inc., aggressively expanded into more than 20 countries in two years before realizing its product had serious localization flaws, according to a January 2010 article in the Wall Street Journal. The lessons were poorly translated and culturally inappropriate. The company faced some [...]
Universal Symbols
Symbols have many advantages over text. For example, a sideways triangle symbolizing "play" on a video player will take up less room than the text "play." The same symbol will be understood in many languages, will not require traditional translation in many markets, and will thus avoid problems with text expansion in translation. Some of the [...]
Omniture Billboard: All Your Base
Adobe and newly acquired Omniture display a little humor in referencing a classic translation blooper on a billboard. Omniture has become well known for its unique hiring billboards. A current billboard references a Japanese-to-English video game translation blooper previously spotlighted by one of our weekly translation bloopers. It reads, [...]
Text Expansion & Contraction in Translation
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 [...]
Fly Naked? Spanish Radio Ad by Braniff Airlines
In 1987, Braniff Airlines ran ads on television, on radio, and in newspapers touting its leather seats. Radio ads in Florida were the first to reveal an unintended double meaning. For years, international business books have cited this example without a reference, and other publications have reported that the blooper came from American Airlines. [...]
All Your Base Are Belong to Us | Japanese-English Video Game Localization
One of the most famous translation bloopers of all time comes from a laughable video game translation. In 1989, Japanese video game developer Toaplan came out with a game called Zero Wing. In 1991, the flash animation at the start of the game was translated into very broken English. Nonsensical phrases in the translation include, "Somebody set [...]
Kill the Russians? | Japanese Video Game Localization Error
A few months ago, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was released and began setting numerous world records for video game sales. Unfortunately, the game also received negative publicity for including some frustrating mistranslations. At the center of the issues is the "No Russian" scene, in which Vladimir Makarov is supposed to tell the player [...]
