Unicode

[netmaestro]

Most really good translations happen in two steps. A multilingual person whose first language is the source language produces an initial translation which is pretty much accurate but very lacking in polish as far as the target language is concerned. This is where a second translator or "localizer" takes over. This person's first language (and possibly only language) is the target language and he/she is very skilled at written communications in it. The localizer gleans all the intended meanings from the initial translation and converts them into language that nobody would ever guess originated in a foreign tongue. Some large multinational companies use this approach and some don't, and it's never hard to tell which is which.

[Little John]

But a question about translation now: Microsoft said in one of their books, that when translating from English to another language, you should allocate at least 33% more space than the English word, since other languages are usually longer. For example, I have a ButtonGadget() of width 40 pixels and the text "Send" on it. The 40 pixels means the gadget neatly encloses the text, and means I can have a smaller overall GUI too.

But if I extend the ButtonGadget() to 40 + 33% extra pixels wide, and also for every gadget in my app, them my GUI gets bigger and has lots of wasted "white" space for English users. I don't like that, which is actually another reason that I haven't considered translation yet.

How does everyone else here deal with translations and gadget sizes that go with them?

I haven't published many programs yet, so I didn't encounter this problem too often.
However, in one of my programs, there was of course enough space fo the original German text, and the English text actually was shorter. The program was also translated to Dutch, and still everything was fine. Then someone translated it to Polish, and there was not enough space for the Polish text. So I had to adjust the GUI a little. I think many programmers who prepare their programs for translation, later do not check how their GUIs look in different languages. What would be the alternative to reserving enough space for text in any suppored language?

Sometimes even people with good intentions make horrible translations. There are tons of programs written in English (originally) and then translated by people not up to the job (in reality probably both the author and the translator shares some responsibilities) . Some text is truncated because the space for the English text was smaller, some words are poorly translated because the translator know maybe the two languages (a little) but not the technical terms used by the software, and so on.

The first thing I do when I download some shareware or freeware software defaulting to Italian (sniffing my OS locale) is to force it to use English to protect my brain cells.

There is the same problem with the German translations, so that's exactly what I do, too.

Regards, Little John