Windows Vista Multilingual User Interface

Have you started localization testing on Vista yet? They've taken the fun out of it.

Windows 2000 was easy. The OS is relatively small, and you could even maintain multiple native systems (Win 2000 Ja, Win 2000 Ko, Win 2000 Es) on separate partitions or virtual machines. If your testing wasn't that rigorous and you just wanted the localized UI, you could slap the Multilingual User Interface (MUI) onto an English version of Windows without much headache.

XP required a bit more work, not to mention disk space, but it was still manageable, especially with drives as large as they are.

Vista feels like another order of magnitude in complexity. Actually, the process of building the testbenches is not that formidable, but the space requirements are. Just to reduce overhead, one of my clients has asked that we plan to test on MUI instead of native OSes from now on. Not the optimal vision, but we'll work with it.

MUI is not air-tight. The font and locale support is good, but it leaks English all over the place. (Apparently you can install MUI only on top of an English base OS.) It's not great for screenshots because you cannot always rely on perfectly localized UI, but it's a fair gauge of how your app will work in the target market.

There's an intimidating procedure on Microsoft's localization Technet for configuring MUI under Vista. I couldn't believe it was really this difficult - it need not be - so I poked around some more and found a different, simpler way.

1) Upgrade to Vista Ultimate or Enterprise. Vista MUI won't work with Home or even Business Editions, so plan to spend the money on the upgrade. From Windows Anytime Upgrade (WAU) you can pay US$139-159 for a license key to Vista Ultimate. If your company manages such things, you can find out whether it already has a site license for either of these.
2) Depending on the media you received with your machine, you may need to order (US$8) the WAU DVD also. The MUI files are not on it, but the files needed to upgrade the OS are.
3) After installing the upgrade, be sure to activate it.

Congratulations! You now have Windows Ultimate (and several fewer GB of disk space).

4) Go to Windows Update, which is where the language packs live. Microsoft used to make these available via MSDN - perhaps they still do - but now they're available as optional Windows updates.
5) Your upgrade to Ultimate/Enterprise may entail a few required updates. Install those first and get them out of the way, or else your request for the language pack may not take.
6) Select the language packs you need, start the download and go on vacation. The Japanese language pack is about 800MB in size, so you may do well to install one, play with it for a few days, then install others.
7) Go to the Regional and Language Options control panel. On the Keyboards and Languages tab, choose the display language. Windows requires only a logoff (not a restart) and at login you'll see something like this:

(Click image for expanded view.)

Explorer's menu is localized, but Wordpad's is not. Most of the Windows-specific titles are localized, but the date on the clock is not. It's a hodgepodge, and MUI may not meet all your needs.

Our resulting testbench comprises Vista Business, the upgrade to Ultimate, the Ja language pack and McAfee VirusScan. Call me a dinosaur, and many other people have complained about Vista's disk usage more eloquently than I can, but I'm up to 12GB (2GB of which is the hibernation file that won't go away), which strikes me as quite a bit. So, if you plan to create several localized Vista testbenches, get a fat drive.

By the way, we experimented with localized virtual machines based on Vista. Even devoting 1 of the 2 GB of physical RAM to it, the VM ran so poorly that it was just plain not worth it.

If you liked this article, you may enjoy another related article, "Localization Testbenches - Part I."

Localization, Globalization - What's in a word?

I repeat the title: "Localization, Globalization - What's in a word?" Plenty, if you want people to find you on the Web.

If you're a language provider trying to get noticed among search engine results, you know that it's important to choose your words carefully. In my post Top 5 Web searches I outlined several keyword combinations people frequently use to reach this blog and our Web site. Two of the most important terms in our industry deserve some attention.

Globalization/Globalisation. Many vendors use this term, and many of us in the industry apply it to our job titles: "Globalization Consultant," or "Sr. Globalization Manager." There was a time when I used it as a keyword for Web pages, pay-per-click campaigns and even my business card.

I stopped after a while, though. "Globalization" is often associated with rioting by farmers in developing countries, and multinational companies that behave like sovereign states. Yes, I do riot and behave imperiously from time to time, but those are not the services I'm advertising, so the use of that word brought me erroneous visits from people doing research on the World Trade Organization and coffee prices.

If you qualify it with "software globalization" or "Web globalization," the search engine delivers more accurately, but it's still a prickly bit of jargon. Try telling your uncle or somebody you're cold-calling that you're in globalization; they'll think you're talking about leftist politics. The word just gets in the way.

Localization/Localisation. This term is different. As with "globalization," most uncles and persons you cold-call don't know the term; however, it's unlikely that they'll confuse it with something else, because it's unique.

Or so I thought.

I replaced occurrences of "globalization" with "localization" among my keywords and I now receive far fewer mis-visits as a result of search engine results, but I think the mis-visits will increase before long. The English word "localize" means "to fix or assign to a particular place," but it's not a very common term in English. The term is a bit muddy now (because of French), and will get muddier in the future (because of cellular telephony).

Early on, I received queries from France, Italy and Canada using "localisation" in combination with words that suggested "how to locate something" or "where somebody is right now." These people land on my site or blog by mistake; they're trying to find a device for locating merchandise in a warehouse, or want to know how to restrict malaria to a particular region. This is just a case of mistaken (keyword) identity.

With cellular communications, however, come location-based services equipped to help your favorite people (and favorite retailers, it goes without saying) "localize" you. For example:

About Krillion - Krillion is a premier provider of local shopping search information, serving today's ready-to-buy consumers who research products online for purchase from retailers in their area...The powerful combination of our patent-pending Krillion Localization Engine, localized search results covering over 10,000 products in 40,000 U.S. locations, and unique, real-time StockCheck(TM) tool enables consumers to speed their research-to-purchase process and take advantage of in-store pickup services offered by many retailers near them.
(I have no financial interest in Krillion.)

We've all dreamed of the day when businesses would begin to talk more about localization, because we could spend less time educating and more time improving the process. If the term gets muddied, however, we'll spend time explaining which "localization" we offer (language, not global position).

Translators and instructions - hit or miss

What do you do when it seems that the translator is ignoring your instructions?

I have boundless respect for translators. I couldn't do their job as intensely as they do. But sometimes the intensity creeps into artistic license, and we worker bees get burned.

We had a high-pressure rush job last week. The Taipei office had a 30-page report translated from English into Chinese for Taiwan, and wanted a sanity check on the translation. The document was ready after close of business Friday in Taipei, and the reviewed version had to arrive before start of business Monday in Taipei.

We scoped the work as follows: The translator's job would be to "review the Chinese document for grammar, usage, punctuation, and to ensure that the English meaning is preserved in the Chinese version. All modifications should appear as tracked changes to make them easy to find." That seemed as clear as I could be about what we expected, and the translator's manager acknowledged the request.

The translator returned the document on Saturday, one day early, having modified almost every sentence in the entire document. As I looked through it, only a few possibilities occurred to me:

• The original translation had been a train wreck, and the reviewer had to clean up text everywhere.
• Something had gone wrong with change tracking in the document.
  
• The translator had not received my instructions and had introduced stylistic changes.
• The translator had ignored my instructions and had introduced stylistic changes.
  

Somewhat tentatively, we delivered the reviewed Chinese document to Taipei on time, mentioning the extensive changes proposed by the translator. Meanwhile, I told the translator's manager that I felt he had ignored the instructions. The translator replied, "There was a room to improve the readability of original translation. Although some mistranslation existed, the translation generally was still good."

The translation generally was still good?

Now, I appreciate a thorough job as much as the next person - even if I can't read Chinese - but this was not the time for it, and my instructions had been quite specific. Nobody in Taipei had the time to go through and accept or reject each change. That's part of the "rush" in "rush job." There's no easy way to go through 30 pages of changes and separate the instances of mistranslation and loss of original meaning from stylistic changes intended to make the document a better read.

How do you get your instructions across to translators?

If you enjoyed this post, have a look at this related article: Instructions to In-country Reviewers

Offshoring Localization and On-shoring the Communication

You're offshoring your localization or development work to China and saving lots of money. Upper management is delighted. Your localization dollars are going further than ever. The offshore partner's project managers are professional and responsive. It's everything you'd hoped it would be.

Almost.

There's a little something that feels strange on your conference calls and status meetings. The work is getting done - mostly - and the schedules met - mostly - but there are gaps here and there in the relationship. It feels as though, when there are misunderstandings, they seem to get resolved, but not in quite the way you expect. Sometimes their approach to solving a problem seems off the mark to you, even if it works out in the long run.

In short, you feel as though the communication could somehow be better. You can't quite describe what's amiss, but it nags at you.

Believe it or not, your partners in China may have the same impression.

This week I met with one of the U.S. representatives of a large Chinese offshore development company that offers, among other services, localization. Besides finding new customers, he's tasked with acting as the on-shore presence for existing customers.

"There are subtle ways in which our managers and developers don't quite connect with some clients," he told me, "and it's not just because of the language barrier. I look at it as two layers of cultural difference: first, there's the east-west difference, then there's the cultural shift the client undergoes when product structure changes to the offshore model. In other words, it's strange enough that an outsider is now responsible for large portions of your product or service, and even stranger because that outsider is somebody with a completely different kind of life and world-view from yours."

This is a novel role. He's not the project manager, moving files back and forth and matching jobs to translators. Nor is he the account manager, working out contract details and managing payment schedules. He's the communication manager, or the relationship manager, helping to fill in the almost undefinable gaps that sometimes prevent clients from really clicking with their offshore partner. In fact, the company hired him to place his localization expertise and customer skills on this side of the Pacific, within a couple of time zones of its key clients.

"So I spend a lot of my time just listening, "he continued. "I'm on conference calls, I'm visiting client sites, and I'm getting face-time with our clients and our staff, picking up on the subtle things that we can deal with now, so that they don't blow up later on."

Whether they choose to believe it or not, most people who are offshoring work to China (and India and Romania and Lebanon and...) know that those countries will get it right sooner or later. In fact, it will take fewer years for them to get it right than it did for us to get it right.

A client-side relationship manager will play an important role in getting it right, and the position will become mainstream before long. The opportunity for both vendor and client is ripe, and the benefits are long-lasting.

If you learned something from this post, have a look this related one: "Making Sense of Outsourcing"