Monday, December 13, 2004

The Hazards of Localization Saw a press release today that nearly made me cry--from laughing. Future Technologies, an Italian Linux training company (and would-be distributor), recently released an eBook from its founder, Giovanni Orlando, titled The Art of Build your Personal Operating System. At first I thought the problem was just with the release; things happen, you miss a colon, forget an ...ing, you know. So I looked at the site they were plugging. Staring at me was this beautiful cover shot (it really is nice!) of the book (which, incidentally, we're led to believe is a book with covers and pages) with the same title as in the release! Click the cover for a 12-page PDF table of contents, and we see some of the same sorts of errors in English that I'm sure Europeans see every day in translations of technical material from English. Somehow I fear this well intentioned effort will not get many buyers at US $50 a pop. Unfortunately for them, their website is not much better. Silicong Graphics, anyone? The lesson here is simple: No matter how well you believe you speak a foreign language, if you're going to put something out in print, have a professional translator (preferably a native speaker of your target language) take at least a quick look at your copy. The investment, in this case, would have paid off big time. 8:03:56 PM    comment []