Quote:
Originally Posted by Feylamia
It's really not that hard if you team knows what they're doing. Certainly a company such as amazon can afford the salary for one or two linguists/encoding specialists.
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The problem usually starts with management chain that do not understand localization process at all. I will give you a small example. It is impossible to translate a phrase "Hi <User>!" into Latvian by replacing these two words. First of all, in Latvian names in this position require ending changes (the vocative case). And the second problem is the difference of acceptable formality.
These issues can be solved with proper changes in UI but usually they are out of scope of translator's direct work. And even if the translator warns the project manager about these issues in most cases they get rejected by the first level managers who do not think that it is important or want to avoid more changes in the product than absolutely necessary.
Example from the real life: I noticed that Google maps now shows projected fuel costs when calculating directions. It is a nice function but I found that the results are not very representative if I select my car type according to offered options: Compact/Standard/High Consumption. I have a Standard car but it appears that even "Compact" option calculates slightly more costs than they actually are. Most likely there is a difference what is generally considered a Compact or Standard car type in different countries. But the localization process of big companies is such that it is very hard to make these changes. Even when managers agree nothing gets done without the approval of the legal department and so on.