From: Richard Conroy <richard.conroy@...>
Date: 2007-10-09T04:24:37+09:00
Subject: Re: [OT] Translation Service

On 10/8/07, John Joyce <dangerwillrobinsondanger@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Getting fully human translation is overkill and time consuming/costly
> > when all you want to do is test your BiDirectional text or verify
> > if you
> > have complete translation coverage.
> >
> Overkill???
> If you are serious about multi-lingual support, you don't rely on a
> machine for testing.
> That's lazy, cheap, and pointless because it is a false effort.
> Don't bother with that support if you don't intend to do it correctly.

You have misread my intent.

I am testing the internationalization strategy, not the end release to
users in whatever language.

So machine translations are sufficient to determine:
- whether everything communicated to users is coming from a resource
file
- whether the UI is doing things properly with bidirectional text, or
language-sensitive sorting & text insertion
- whether there is sufficient space in the UI for languages like, German
or Russian which are more verbose in terms of screen width, or if the
HTML is broken in ways that don't support dynamic sizing
- whether the resource lookup code (matching locales to the correct
bundle) is working right
- whether the HTML escaping works correctly across languages
- whether numeric formatting is being done correctly by locale

All of these are testable with machine translations. I would use the
results of this to change the internationalization strategy prior to
localization. Its not my code, the app is suspect in this regard, and
I would appreciate knowing if the strategy is broken now, rather than
in the 11th hour when it is being translated.