Posted in March 2008 …

Mar 15 2008
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WordPress Business Blog Standard Guidebook in Japan

WordPress Business Blog Standard Guidebook bookcover

My first book, WordPress Standard Guidebook, has been a success since it was published in September 2006. It’s maintaining steady sales even with current 4th edition.

So my editor contacted last summer offering me to write another book – this time, the subject was up to me, he said. Instead of going into the same direction as last time (instructional/tutorial), I wanted to write a practical guide on how to plan, build, and run blogs for businesses.

The new book is scheduled to be published at the end of this month in Japan.

  • Author: Naoko McCracken
  • Price: 3,150 yen (approx. $32)
  • ISBN94839927837
  • Publisher: Mainichi Communications
  • Release Date: March 29, 2008

I appreciate the whole WordPress community, WordPress Japan, fellow members of Japanese Localization Team, and people I had the pleasure to work with building WordPress blogs – especially those at my previous employer. Without learning from/with them I could never have written this book. Thank you.

Just as last time, I’m going to give credits to plugin/theme authors I have mentioned in the book:

Great job & thanks for sharing your hard work!

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Mar 14 2008
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Collaborative Translation: Future of Web App Translation?

Before I wrote my last post on collaborative translation, TechCrunch had covered Facebook translation.

As described in these articles, Facebook and MySpace have taken different ways to tackle localization of theirs social networking sites. Facebook are having the users translate the whole site using online tool. They have only three languages available besides English now, but that can quickly change after they open up invitation-only translation tool to more users. MySpace has been placing local offices in several countries – 23 of them so far.

I’m not just counting numbers here. It’s still early to decide which one of these method proves to be more effective since Facebook just got stared on their effort to add more languages to their site.

I want to point out though, you can’t compare these two services simply by the number of languages available. Because there’s more to localizing an application besides simply adding languages. Some of those additional tweaks include:

  • The site/service needs to integrate with more popular services in that language group (for example, more Japanese users use Hatena bookmark than del.icio.us or digg).
  • Support needs to be provided in each language.
  • FAQ and instruction pages may need rewriting or reorganization (different cultures = different way of thinking & doing things).
  • Some icons and colors have different meanings.
  • UI may need to be updated, for the same reason for #3 + the length of word or phrase can vary.
  • Best text treatment (this means CSS styles in many cases) for each language’s default font are different.

So, is collaborative translation the best possible way for all projects? Maybe not. It has advantages (cost, speed, having actual users’ input, etc.) but there’s a good chance users are not aware of these fine points. I believe this situation can be improved by bringing in a few experts to manage & control the localization process. I also think web application developers should start thinking about standardizing UI labels and messages for easier translation. For example, if one app says “post” where another says “send” meaning the same thing and so on, translators can’t make the best use of available translation memory (TM).

Using a set of UI language convention as a base for translation project will cut down required effort by volunteer/paid translators. Do you want more flexibility in labels and messages so it can be “fun” and “targeted toward XX or YY”? Well, you can easily have that as a “translated version” of the original standardized language.

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