Localizing Graphics - The Last Thing Anybody Thinks About
Now, then. A word or two about localization and graphics. If localization is the last thing anybody in an organization thinks about, where does that leave localized graphics? The last thing after the last thing.
Screenshots are taken for granted. If you're localizing from English into Russian, and the documentation contains 50 screenshots, you naturally steamroll right over the English ones by running the Russian version of the software, taking the same screenshots as in the English doc and replacing them (same size, same bit depth, same filename, etc.). The original En screenshots may even be in the doc project, but you know you're not going to use them, so you don't give them much thought.
But good writing usually requires good graphics, and writers funnel graphics from sources all over the building into their books. Engineers convince the writers to include flowcharts, Visio diagrams, spreadsheet charts, schedules, timelines, Gantt charts and other pictures in the docs, and they often include translatable text. NOBODY ever knows where the source file is.
"We need to translate labels in the flowchart on page 73. Where did it come from?"
"Bill in Engineering gave it to me, but he's left the company."
"Do you have the source file?"
"Oh, sure. Bill sent it to me in this PowerPoint presentation."
Well, yes, it's in there, but it's just a .jpg file pasted in from someplace else. I get engineers crawling through source code and around long abandoned hard drives on a quest for the source files, to find out that somebody cobbled it together using Microsoft Word Art in a .doc file. That's if I'm lucky.
Most of the time it's a .gif or .jpg that came from Marketing, or from some designer who did it in Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop. "Can you get me the .psd for this?" "No. Work with what you have."
So we do. It's not impossible to hack an existing graphic file, but it's not a very clean process, and if it's of any size, the mismatched text will be pretty obvious.
Screenshots are taken for granted. If you're localizing from English into Russian, and the documentation contains 50 screenshots, you naturally steamroll right over the English ones by running the Russian version of the software, taking the same screenshots as in the English doc and replacing them (same size, same bit depth, same filename, etc.). The original En screenshots may even be in the doc project, but you know you're not going to use them, so you don't give them much thought.
But good writing usually requires good graphics, and writers funnel graphics from sources all over the building into their books. Engineers convince the writers to include flowcharts, Visio diagrams, spreadsheet charts, schedules, timelines, Gantt charts and other pictures in the docs, and they often include translatable text. NOBODY ever knows where the source file is.
"We need to translate labels in the flowchart on page 73. Where did it come from?"
"Bill in Engineering gave it to me, but he's left the company."
"Do you have the source file?"
"Oh, sure. Bill sent it to me in this PowerPoint presentation."
Well, yes, it's in there, but it's just a .jpg file pasted in from someplace else. I get engineers crawling through source code and around long abandoned hard drives on a quest for the source files, to find out that somebody cobbled it together using Microsoft Word Art in a .doc file. That's if I'm lucky.
Most of the time it's a .gif or .jpg that came from Marketing, or from some designer who did it in Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop. "Can you get me the .psd for this?" "No. Work with what you have."
So we do. It's not impossible to hack an existing graphic file, but it's not a very clean process, and if it's of any size, the mismatched text will be pretty obvious.
Labels: localization graphics, localization visio
posted by John White, Localization Guy at
10:59
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