A month of I18n in 10 minutes

Translating websites has been A Thing(tm) since the earliest days of the web, so how does it take over a month to translate a website with less than a dozen pages? In this talk Chris walks us through the minefield of internationalisation and some of the common pitfalls of translating a website.

Video of the talk: https://skillsmatter.com/skillscasts/9119-a-month-of-i18n-in-10-minutes#video

Transcript

1. A month of I18n in 10 minutes
 (的I18n的⼗十分钟⼀一个⽉月)* *Translated by Google, probably not accurate
5. English English (US) Deutsch Español Français Nederlands Italiano
6. English English (US) Deutsch Español Français Nederlands Italiano 中⽂文
10. – Almost everyone “All out translations live on OneSky […]”
11. Translation live in • Translation System
12. – That one guy who built the integration 18 months ago, that no one has worked on since but still seems to work and the marketing people use all the time “There is some content in Contentful”
13. Translation live in • Translation System • Content Management System
14. – Our Chinese Agency “The country dropdown is in English”
16. Translation live in • Translation System • Content Management System • Mysterious Country List
17. Translation live in • Translation System • Content Management System • Mysterious Country List E-commerce Database
18. – Our Chinese Agency, again… “The dates are formatted incorrectly”
19. Translation live in • Translation System • Content Management System • E-commerce Database • Hardcoded into our delivery estimation system
20. Date formats “D M Y” == 10th October 2016
 “D M Y” == 10⽇日 ⼗十⽉月 2016年年
 

21. 10⽇日 ⼗十⽉月 2016年年
 

22. 10⽇日 ⼗十⽉月 2016年年
 
 2016年年10⽉月10⽇日
23. 2016年年10⽉月10⽇日 10th October 2016
24. Translation live in • Translation System • Content Management System • E-commerce Database • Hardcoded into our delivery estimation system
25. – Me, like 100x over “OK, surely that’s all the places…”
26. – Our Project Manager “Some of the error messages are in English”
27. Translation live in • Translation System • Content Management System • E-commerce Database • Hardcoded into our delivery estimation system • Authentication Library
28. – Me, like 100x over “OK, surely that’s all the places…”
29. Translation live in • Translation System • Content Management System • E-commerce Database • Hardcoded into our delivery estimation system • Authentication Library
30. Except… Every time we add more text to the website
31. And… 私の名前を失いました потерял мое имя
 mất tên của tôi Straciłem nazwę
32. Moral Translation are hard, they live in more places than you expect It’s hard to translate into a language you have no exposure to It’s unbelievably useful to work with people in-country
33. A month of I18n in 10 minutes
 (的I18n的⼗十分钟⼀一个⽉月)* @chrisradford lostmy.name