Notes from "Localization Essentials"

Course website: https://classroom.udacity.com/courses/ud610

Lesson 1: Key concepts

Why is localization important
Software companies have "internationalization" teams
uses the Google Fit as an example

Language of localization (key terms used in localization)

Globalization (g11n)
- "Globalization is a marketing strategy to do business in and offer products in international markets."
- “Globalization addresses the business issues associated with taking a product global. In the globalization of high-tech products this involves integrating localization throughout a company, after proper internationalization and product design, as well as marketing, sales, and support in the world market. (LISA definition, cit. Esselink 2000: 4)”
Internationalization (i18n)
- “Internationalization is the process of generalizing a product so that it can handle multiple languages and cultural conventions without the need for re-design. (LISA definition, cit. Esselink 2000: 2)”
- Examples
  - character encoding
  - date and time formats
Localization (l10n)
- “Localization involves taking a product and making it linguistically and culturally appropriate to the target locale (country/region and language) where it will be used and sold. (cit. Esselink 2000: 3)”
- Involves not only text but also "adapting date and time formats, changing currencies, cultural appropriation, changing the design and the way user experience a product and complying with local laws and regulations"
Translation (t9n)
Locale
- "the linguistic, cultural and other requirements of a specific target market"

Useful resource

Glossary for localization from Google

Lesson 2: Content types

Ask the following questions
1. Where?
2. Who?
3. Why?
Marketing content
- e.g.: website landing page
- goal is to be persuasive
- Requires
  - high local sensitivity
  - high creativity
    - consider rewriting taglines from scratch
    - distance yourself from literal translations to engage potential users
Online help
- FAQs, software docs, troubleshooting manuals
- Challenges
  - product knowledge
  - consistent terminology
Audio-visual content (subtitling and voiceover)
- e.g. Google Fit has a video for developers for APIs
- Why?
  - delivers message faster and more effectively than text
  - more user engagement than text
- Challenge
  - how?
    - revoicing
      - dubbing is the most common
    - subtitles
      - two lines, centered
      - limits: 35-45 characters per line
      - less cost than dubbing
  - Consider target audience and number of languages
User interface
- 3 common types of software
  - desktop applications
  - web apps
  - mobile apps
- Challenges
  - lack of context for translators
    - limited space
  - lack of product knowledge
    - important to ensure proper information exchange
      - include message descriptions for strings to help translators
        
        provides important context
      - e.g. software Google Translator Toolkit
      - product teams should provide reference material and guidelines
        
        screenshots, string descriptions, demos, mocks
        
        style guides
        
        character limmits
        
        provide a channel of communication between product team and translators
SEO (search engine optimization), SEM
- organic search results vs search ads
- SEM (search engine marketing) = SEO + search ads
- SEO: what keywords might users use? and include them in the website content
- Challenge
  - local relavance
    - search words vary greatly by locale
    - learn trends for target markets
    - review keywords used by competitors
    - e.g. Google's keyword tool

Lesson 3: Profiles and skills

Profiles and roles in localization at Google
- Product team
- localization team
  - localization production
  - language services
  - localization operations
    - technology
      - technical operations manager
    - business
  - vendor operations
- localization project manager (LPM)
- language service providers (LSP)
- language manager (1 person per language)
  - works on terminology
  - works on naming with product team
  - truncation issues

Lesson 4: Processes

Product preparation
- done by requester (product team)
- market insights
- must analyze local markets
  - group by order of importance
  - language tiering (how important the language is)
- internationalization (happens during software development)
  - product must be designed for the target markets and cultures
  - Google has an internationalization team
  - Steps for internationalization
    - 1. Design and engineering
    - Considerations:
      - Density and fonts
      - layout
      - images: no text in images
      - colors: different meanings for different cultures
      - spacing: text expansion, UI buttons need to be made to expand (or have clear character limits)
      - every piece of text should be accompanied by a message description
      - dates, currencies, units, phone numbers
        
        use tools such as internationalization libraries to automate
        
        https://developers.google.com/international/
      - plurals and genders
        
        use international components for unicode to automate
        
        http://site.icu-project.org/
    - 1. Testing
      - pseudolocalization
      - problems
        
        length of text
        
        direction of text
        
        untranslated text
        
        not enough space (truncation)
        
        improperly mirrored interface (e.g. Hebrew, right-to-left)
Project preparation
- Quote (time and cost)
  - overview
  - estimated number of words
  - deliverables
  - deadlines
  - costs
- Create a localization kit to send out to translators
  - content to be translated
  - terminology
    - Glossary
    - contains the term that are commonly used in the project and that need to be consistent throughout
  - style guide
  - translation memory
  - reference material
Project execution
- Translate (translators
  - use translation tools
- Review by another LSP (reviewers)
  - verify quality
  - use "quality evaluation tools"
- Language managers
  - set overall language standards
  - facilitate between translation and review teams
Quality assessment (QA)
- Final check on the whole product
  - not limited to only the text
- Steps
  1. automated quality assurance
    - uses automated tools
  2. Linguistic quality testing + functional quality testing
    - requires collaboration with engineers, designers, testers, translators
- Test plan
  - created by product team engineers
  - communication channel with reviewers and engineers

Lesson 5: Tools

Project preparation stage
- Localization project management tools
  - Translation management tools
  - Terminology management tools
    - termbases
  - Translation memory management tools
Project execution stage
- Computer-aided translation (CAT) tool
  - used by translators
- Translation memories
  - "ICE" match: in-context match exact, 100% + context
  - Exact match: 100%
  - Fuzzy match: lower than 99%
- Machine translation platforms
  - Rule-based machine translation (RBMT)
  - Statistical machine translation (SMT)
  - Post-editing: when translators or reviewers edit machine translations
  - Predictive machine translation
- Google Translator Toolkit (GTT): Free CAT tool
  - Website: https://translate.google.com/toolkit
- Subtitling platforms
  - .srt files
  - can add subtitles on YouTube in the "Creator Studio" in "Video Manager"
Quality assurance tools
- Formatting, grammar, punctuation, untranslated words, spacing
- An automated report highlights issues

kenneth-lau/udacity-localization

Notes from "Localization Essentials"

Lesson 1: Key concepts

Language of localization (key terms used in localization)

Useful resource

Lesson 2: Content types

Lesson 3: Profiles and skills

Lesson 4: Processes

Lesson 5: Tools