|
|
What Planet Are They On?
“Translator X from Canada” is back! This time he takes on programming language developers. Read on… I firmly believe that programming language (PL) developers are very intelligent people, who, for some reason, have not yet noticed that we now live on such a small planet. They should have already realized that successful applications must be multilingual to be easily translated and localized. Microsoft is both a major PL vendor and an applications vendor at the same time. I assume that it develops its applications and its operating system with its own languages. Then it probably pays many times the original development costs to make all of its programming languages internationalization (i18n) / localization (l10n)-aware. Most PL vendors have one or two cool features with regards to i18n/l10n, but I don’t understand why they can’t offer PL with a localization toolkit that would include the following features:
Being able to switch between these two states would make me a very happy person! Plus many, many functions and technical elements that will better handle the character sets, locales, display algorithms and so on… all items that developers familiar with i18n/l10n issues can define and explain much better than I ever will. Is my wish list so extravagant? There must be some PL vendors who understand all of the leverage and the many benefits to be gained from implementing some or all of these features… In the meantime, I wonder what planet they’re on… P.S. If any PL vendor has a job for me, I am available only in Canada because there is so much fun to have in the snow around here. :-)
Reprinted
by permission from the Globalization Insider,
6 May 2003, Volume XII, Issue 2.3. Copyright the Localization Industry Standards Association (Globalization Insider: www.localization.org, LISA: www.lisa.org) and S.M.P. Marketing Sarl (SMP) 2004
E-mail this article to your colleague! Need more translation jobs? Click here! Translation agencies are welcome to register here - Free! Freelance translators are welcome to register here - Free! |
|
|
Legal Disclaimer Site Map |