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. A presentation from LRUG October 2016, hosted by Skills Matter. A video of the talk is available here: https://skillsmatter.com/skillscasts/9119-a-month-of-i18n-in-10-minutes#video

1. A month of I18n in 10 minutes
( I18n )*
*Translated by Google, probably not accurate

5. English
English (US)
Deutsch
Español
Français
Nederlands
Italiano

6. English
English (US)
Deutsch
Español
Français
Nederlands
Italiano

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 2016

21. 10 2016

22. 10 2016
2016 10 10

23. 2016 10 10
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…
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
( I18n )*
@chrisradford
lostmy.name