Open Translation Tools - 1
Regional and Cultural Issues
While it may go without saying to those with experience in translation and localization, the significance of regional and cultural issues in translation work can not be overstated. As norms and values vary, a range of secondary connotations and associations must be considered in crafting appropriate translations. Some of these considerations include:
- Non-universal metaphors: English-language software tools are often based on western office life. But in Serbia, for instance, there is no notion of inbox or outbox in the work world, so software users have a hard time using such metaphors in those office cultures. As another example, in the UK each house has a mail slot, but in Syria such slots do not exist, while American mail boxes often have a flag that is raised to show there is new mail. Such variances have a clear impact on translating and localizing “mail” and “office” interface metaphors.
- Contextual meanings for colors: In the west red generally means 'dangerous', but in China it means 'safe'. There are myriad other examples of variations of color meaning.
- Concepts of time: In central Africa the 24 hour day is strange, and the time cycle is based on the crop cycle and harvest, so one "year" can vary. The “AM” and “PM” of North America are by no means universal, with many parts of the world denoting time based on 24 hours instead of 12. In addition, Jewish and Asian calendars are different from western ones. And of course holidays are almost always regionally, culturally, or locally dependent.
- Iconography: A “thumbs up” or “hand-stop” sign from western iconography can be offensive in other regions. This implies that “just translating” strings is not sufficient; the CSS (cascading style sheets), colors, images, and positions of elements must be considered as well.
These issues are further exacerbated when translations go through multiple languages, such as from English to French to Arabic. Ideally translation tools would provide support for marking literal and non-literal translations, so that further translations could reference the original source for such passages. English is a highly idiomatic language; when viewing subtitled English films, things like jokes and other highly language-dependent exchanges often need to be redone. In films, these exchanges are sometimes color coded to show where the subtitles are not faithful to the original.
Approaches to the above issues manifest in different philosophical schools of thought; some translators prefer to "make it new and relevant" while others prefer to "be faithful to the original". Being faithful can affect the usefulness, as translating idioms like "break a leg" presents a real challenge. These issues are particularly acute with on-line translation and free software localization, because strings are translated independent of a larger context.
Variances in translations can also reflect political agenda. This can be observed in regions like Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia, where translators may obfuscate a translation to make things very specific to their dialect, or nationalist agendas may be enforced by translating institutions.
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