Author Topic: [rant]why do english/chinese companies don't give a damn about other languages..  (Read 25362 times)

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Offline JPorticiTopic starter

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.. but offer translated versions of their website/documentation anyway?
why can't you pay a professional to translate your website instead of relying on google translate?

(I actually wanted to say that they don't give two shits but i think that maybe it's not title-appropriate)

for example, fluke 117 (apply to every page in the fluke website)
Display - Digital: 6,000 counts, updates 4 per second

in italian it was translated as "updates every 4 seconds". what the hell!!

i'm not asking for a perfect translation but at least avoid these  :palm:-grade errors
after all we give it a honest try

and don't get me started on manuals.  :scared:
 

Offline daqq

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why can't you pay a professional to translate your website instead of relying on google translate?
I agree that if there is a different language version available it should be done professionally, but I do understand when companies choose not to translate into other languages - if you are an engineer you just need to know English on some usable level. Also, I'm guessing that 0.079% of the revenue of these companies is generated by Slovakia (my country) and similar?

Professional translation of highly technical texts into different languages can get expensive.
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Offline StuUK

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Offline rollatorwieltje

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The company I work for only makes the English and Dutch manuals for our products, the rest is translated by a translation agency. There are obviously different quality levels available, if you want perfect "legal grade", be prepared to pull your wallet. I suspect most of our translations are done by international students as a side job.

Some countries require operator manuals in their native language, even though everybody uses the English one anyway.
 

Offline setq

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This is why:

 

Offline Delta

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Quote
why can't you pay a professional to translate your website instead of relying on google translate?
I agree that if there is a different language version available it should be done professionally, but I do understand when companies choose not to translate into other languages - if you are an engineer you just need to know English on some usable level. Also, I'm guessing that 0.079% of the revenue of these companies is generated by Slovakia (my country) and similar?

Professional translation of highly technical texts into different languages can get expensive.

That's about the size of it; it all comes down to money.  A cost / benefit analysis.

If it will cost X to translate this document into ######, will it gain us more than X in extra profit?  If the answer's no, then Google translate it is!
 

Offline Jeff_Birt

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My Mom used to work for a Vietnamese women here in the United States. She was raised in Vietnam, went to university in Japan (aerospace engineering), and immigrated to the USA. So she was an engineer who speaks at least three languages fluently. After working in the aerospace field for many years she was hired by Honda as a translator. They fly her around the world to serve as a translator between different engineering teams because she knows engineering terminology and can communicate that in multiple languages. This is just one example of the lengths and expense that companies go through to work/communicate effectively in just a few languages. Now multiply that by 200 or more languages and it becomes an enormous and expensive problem. When it is not done properly we wind up with things like Chinglish manuals ?

 
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Offline coppice

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This is why:


Its not just the Chinese who have this issue. Look at this from the UK:

This looks fine unless you can read Welsh, where the lower part apparently says "I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated."
 
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Offline Delta

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The amount of taxpayers' money wasted in Wales on dual language signs and paperwork etc is ridiculous.  Less than one in five of them can speak Welsh, and you won't find a single one who can't speak English.

There was a story a few years ago about a new hospital that opened in Wales, and the "Ward 1", "Ward 2" signs were only in English.  Of course the Taffia got on their high-horse about it, and Welsh signs were added next to them.  The Welsh word for "ward" is...................... "ward".  :palm:

And don't even get me started on BBC Alba....
 

Offline setq

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Hahaha I just ran it through Google Translator and that's exactly what it says.

Agree with Delta

This doesn't surprise me. The only reason people write/talk Welsh is to be bloody awkward.

As for BBC Alba, I have a toddler and I get shafted by "I want to watch that episode of Bing" on iPlayer. "You can't, it's in Welsh". Fffffuuuu.
 
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Offline all_repair

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It cost money, and not a small sum to those companies that are selling to the hobbyists.  And these manuals are normally written by the engineers, and they are extremely difficult to understand even for people who know Chinese.  It is almost written as their log books.
 

Offline JPorticiTopic starter

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers

Looks like you're 18th in line/queue  ;)
[still rant] then don't translate. :scared: should i tell fluke that the intern they put to manage the website wrote that their italian meters update every four seconds?
 

Offline Delta

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[still rant] then don't translate. :scared: should i tell fluke that the intern they put to manage the website wrote that their italian meters update every four seconds?

Yes.  Yes you certainly could.  Maybe even hint that your purchasing manager was going to place a bulk order for new DMMs but the engineering manager made him buy a different brand due to the poor update time...  >:D

You are right though: do a job properly or not at all.
 

Offline dannyf

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A simple cost and benefit analysis: between English and Chinese, you can cover 99 percent of your target market. Then why bother with the last 1 percent?

Figuratively speaking.

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Offline AntiProtonBoy

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I develop apps and I can attest that translating a million different things is a major pain in the arse. It's a maintenance nightmare and often foreign language versions of text gets out of date pretty quickly. Every time you make a minor edit to English text, that change must be reflected in other languages as well and go through all the channels that do the translation for you. dannyf has a point, huge chunk of your market already speaks English and it's not worth the effort and expense to offer translations.
 

Offline RGB255_0_0

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This is why:


Its not just the Chinese who have this issue. Look at this from the UK:

This looks fine unless you can read Welsh, where the lower part apparently says "I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated."
Gaelic also. Funny they used the out of office translation there though.



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Offline TheBay

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Hahaha I just ran it through Google Translator and that's exactly what it says.

Agree with Delta

This doesn't surprise me. The only reason people write/talk Welsh is to be bloody awkward.

As for BBC Alba, I have a toddler and I get shafted by "I want to watch that episode of Bing" on iPlayer. "You can't, it's in Welsh". Fffffuuuu.

True this, to be awkward or to be pretentious!
 

Offline JPorticiTopic starter

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A simple cost and benefit analysis: between English and Chinese, you can cover 99 percent of your target market. Then why bother with the last 1 percent?

Figuratively speaking.
well if you aim at getting more customers in some markets presenting yourself with materials in the customer's language should give you points (because you care enough to adapt to their customs), for some could also be a cultural thing.. that's how i see it.

for example, fluke with the common electrician (who could still have a low education.. and kids here are stubborn, they don't want to learn the language anyway, the idiots) so they must present themselves in italian. but the electrician will read "update every four seconds" and move on to another brand.

as i said in the OP and in every other post in this topic, you don't have to translate but if you do, damn you, do it right. i get livid when i download an app and i can't change the language to english.
 

Offline SeanB

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Come to South Africa, where we have 11 official languages, but pretty much every person is at least able to speak English to some degree. Can be fun to be in an office with a conversation going on in at least 2 languages, with all keeping up.
 

Offline ebclr

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The answer in Portuguese is

OOO
    B
    B
    B
    OOO

Something like small ooo obey Big's OOO

And actually the Big's o's ate USA and china, who cares about freench, portuguese , italian, tonganese and any othe "exotic" labguages, Read exotic as PIB
   
 

Offline daqq

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but the electrician will read "update every four seconds" and move on to another brand.
If his only choosing point is whether the translation is done correctly, well, then he's not very bright really.

Quote
well if you aim at getting more customers in some markets presenting yourself with materials in the customer's language should give you points (because you care enough to adapt to their customs), for some could also be a cultural thing.. that's how i see it.
Traditionally that is the local distributors role (or sales representative) - or at least requesting one in such a language.

I'm OK with manual translations being done crappily or not at all for stuff like multimeters sold here. Provided I have access to the original English one.

Let's be honest here, if you are serious about electronics than knowing English and/or Chinese is not optional.
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Offline JPorticiTopic starter

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Come to South Africa, where we have 11 official languages, but pretty much every person is at least able to speak English to some degree. Can be fun to be in an office with a conversation going on in at least 2 languages, with all keeping up.
our partner company is south african, constantly skype calling.. i know that very well :D

Let's be honest here, if you are serious about electronics than knowing English and/or Chinese is not optional.
go tell that to the kids  :palm:
« Last Edit: September 21, 2016, 05:52:18 pm by JPortici »
 

Online Neilm

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Where I work we translate our user guides into about 20 different languages. Even going to a professional translation house causes problems.  A professional translator almost certainly does not know about electronics or the specialist applications we deal with will select the wrong word.

Of course - there are some houses I think just go for Google translate given the quality of some of the translations
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Offline dannyf

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"presenting yourself with materials in the customer's language should give you points"

You probably want to appreciate the fact that companies aren't exactly in the business of earning points, unless those points lead to profits.

That's why analyzing benefits against costs is far more important than analysing benefits alone.
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Offline darrellg

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The amount of taxpayers' money wasted in Wales on dual language signs and paperwork etc is ridiculous.  Less than one in five of them can speak Welsh, and you won't find a single one who can't speak English.
I don't know about that. I was once on a conference call with a guy from England and another guy in Wales. The Welsh guy was supposedly speaking English, but I couldn't understand a damn thing he said. The English guy had to "translate" for me.
 


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