Some jokes are probably not worth the effort...

[jducoeur]

Today's project is localizing the check fraud UI that I'm working on -- that is, making it work in various languages. For testing purposes, this really needs to be "programmer art". This is a valuable concept I learned at Looking Glass: when a programmer is doing any sort of design, it is vitally important that it be as ugly and useless as possible, to head off the chance of someone saying, "good enough -- ship it" before the real designer gets to make it right. Similarly, I don't want to come up with a quick-and-dirty French translation that someone might be tempted to show to a customer: everyone needs to be clear that the localizations must come from a real translator.

So obviously, the correct localization for me to use in testing is Klingon.

Unfortunately, having done about 20 minutes of research into Klingon, it's quickly apparent that doing anything more accurate than stringing together a lot of random plosives and glottal stops (or simply grabbing random words from the mailing list archives of the Klingon Language Institute) is going to be *way* too much effort, and the geek in me kind of wants to do a real (if pointless) translation. So I might just go for Esperanto instead, on the theory that I can probably fake it semi-accurately without as much effort...

ETA: Although I notice, to my amusement, that the number-one Klingon speaker in the world is apparently Rich Yampell, who I know slightly from many years back. It's halfway tempting to write to him about it...

Comments

[herooftheage.livejournal.com]

I've always suspected the tlhIngan Hol-is-a-real-language crowd are having an elaborate joke on the rest of us. It would be interesting to see if such a translation were really possible.

[tpau]

hee.

i do localization all the time, but form my end it is the translation and acculturation of stuff not jsut hte display of characters :)

[liamstliam.livejournal.com]

How about Elvish?

Oh, wait. He's dead.

[jducoeur]

Firefox doesn't support Elvish as a built-in language.

(Yes, it does support Klingon...)

[dlevey.livejournal.com]

I was going to recommend him (Rich). He was a roommate for a year, and had been developing Klingon for a while by then.

[ilaine-dcmrn.livejournal.com]

Latin has amusement value

[jducoeur]

Yeah, but I'm *painfully* aware of how bad my Latin is, so I'm certain I would find the end result embarrassing. (If, I agree, amusing enough that I have to take the idea seriously...)

Esperanto localisation

[kunar.livejournal.com]

If you decide to use Esperanto and need help, just drop me a line. As Esperanto was not made up for a science fiction or fantasy universe, it will be much easier to find decent translations. I am a native speaker and have some internationalisation experience.

The language uses a Latin alphabet, however, not ASCII or 8859-1, and it is possible to create long words. These are good qualities for a test language.

Esperanto as a menu language is reality. Although the LiveJournal translation has stopped (lack of helpers), the translation of Ipernity has been successful (I wasn't involved, so no self-marketing here). There is also a WordPress version in Esperanto which, as far as I can see, works.

Re: Esperanto localisation

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

How does one become a "native speaker" of an artificial language???
-- Dagonell

native speakers

[kunar.livejournal.com]

I grew up bilingually. My father spoke Esperanto to me during the first 12 years of my life. The Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Esperanto_speakers) gives some basic information. Unfortunately, other resources worth reading about that are in Esperanto. You might consider Jouko Lindstedt's "Native Esperanto as a Test Case for Natural Language" (PDF (http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/sky/julkaisut/SKY2006_1/1FK60.1.5.LINDSTEDT.pdf)).

I know that for many people, Esperanto is an "artificial" language. However, this distinction Esperanto and "natural" languages seems to me rather artificial (at least today).

Re: Esperanto localisation

[dlevey.livejournal.com]

Here's one way (which ties to the original post):
http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2009/11/dinkytown_dad_s.php

Re: Esperanto localisation

[jducoeur]

Neat -- I don't know if I'm going to go that way, but thanks for the offer...

[jjaynes.livejournal.com]

As a non-programmer, my experience of reading this went something like, "okay, don't entirely understand that, or that, maybe I'll skim ahead... Klingon is WHAT? Maybe I better do a closer read again from the beginning." Hehe.

The lazy way

[metageek.livejournal.com]

Then there's the standard cheat: localize it into XX, where each phrase is "xx"+englishPhrase+"xx".

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Fun side notes on localization, in case you hadn't hit them: the German translation tends to be way longer, and Chinese shorter. So you might want to test GUIs with, say, igpay atinlay, which at least comes out a bit longer (and for which you can find translators online).

Or Redneck. :)

[hudebnik.livejournal.com]

I was going to suggest Pig Latin, since I just wrote up a few programming exercises about it. It has the advantage that it's easy to check the correctness of a translation, but the disadvantage that it doesn't exercise different grammatical structures or word orders.

[jducoeur]

I actually take it as SOP to do German and Japanese translations as early as possible, to sanity-check the UI layout. Don't know when we'll get around to it, but the recommendation has already been made to management.

(That's another trick I learned when I was at Looking Glass...)

[baron-steffan.livejournal.com]

You might consider Tok Pisin, the official language of Papua New Guinea. It's actually a creolized Pidgin English, which has the advantages (especially for your purposes) of having an easily acquired vocabulary and a syntax that is substantially English, but substantially simplified. Just remember that p is f (or ph) and sound the words out loud, and it makes much more sense (e.g. "aggressive person" = "man bilong pait" = "man belong fight" = "man characterized by fighting".)