Translations
How do we manage the translations?

Overview

We take these steps in translating our software

  1. We translate as many strings as possible first using Bing.
  2. We then have humans, usually customers, go through and fix the mistakes.
  3. We then review and import them.
  4. Then we ship the upgrades so customers can have those languages.

To achieve the second step, we produce a spreadsheet that we can email to be reviewed and edited.

Why Bing? Why not google translate?

Bing this lets us cover 95% of the world's population, and Bing translate currently has a better reputation for higher quality translations than Google. Google also 'improves' itself by asking non-experts (people who are using the tool) for suggestions to improve the translations. This seems to cause Google to tend in the direction of 'amateur' translations that are sloppier. Whether this is really the reason or not, it is the effect that Google has. Bing has a reputation for less slang or slang like interpretations.

And last but not least, when we gave several expert translations the bing and google translations of our software, they almost always picked the bing ones as the better ones. So whether Bing is better all the time than Google is not the question here.

Why not only use Bing? Why use humans to double check?

For some customers, especially in so called minority languages, they tell us that having the Bing translation is 'good enough' since most software force them to work 100% in English. And they tell us the bulk of the 'bad' translations are where Bing simply inserts the English text (things like WO) into the translation.

Why Humans?

Microsoft freely admits that their translator only saves half the effort. They consider the other half, circa 2018, to require human translators.

Why doesn't MCC pay translators on an ongoing basis to do it rather than asking customers to participate? The answer really is simple: Cost, we don't charge enough to do that, and rather than charge every customer for every language, we rely on those that want a specific language to partner with us. The cost is then lower for them and us. Having said that: If any company wants us to for a specific language or set of languages, we are open to discussing the initial and ongoing SMA costs of doing that.

How does Microsoft choose which languages to translate?

I can't answer for the languages they pick other than to say: the claim they do every language they have enough data on. MS gives users the ability to add languages that Microsoft doesn't have enough data to meet their standard of quality.

OK, but why Klingon and yet missing many 'real' languages.

So if you have ever wondered why Bing has 'Klingon' (a language designed for a TV series) and yet is missing thousands of the world's 6500 languages spoken as a native language, the answer is simple: There is a community of people that care enough about it to have spent the effort to give Microsoft enough data that their translation engine can do a high quality translation. Also, as someone who has been studying languages for over 5 decades, I can say that it is actually easier to translate as accurate as possible into Klingon than other languages because it is a so called 'artificial' language.

How do we choose which languages to translate?

The first answer would be: Those that we have customers that use and are willing to assist us in getting good quality translations; English , (US, Canadian, Australian, UK), Spanish (Mexican, American), French (Canadian), Portuguese (Mozambique.)

The second answer is: Those that we have, on staff, native speakers, so we have languages like Bengali, Hindi and Gujarati.

The third is: All languages that Microsoft Bing supports – because we have found that the Bing translations are good enough to give a 'good start'.

Initially we also looked at translating languages using Google, but our customer feedback was that Google didn't do a good enough translation to even start with their translations (Circa 2016.)

Which languages have the highest quality translations in our system?

Very simply explained: Those that we have active native speakers that edit our translations

  • The various English translations. We start with US English, then translate into the other English languages.
  • Canadian French (and because these are mostly technical translations, most French are pretty good)
  • Spanish (Mexican and American, we are OK at Castellano, but some of our translations don't use the formal form.)
  • Portuguese (Mozambique, which is, we are told, pretty good for the majority Portuguese, Brazillian, but not perfect.)
  • Bengali
  • Hindi
  • Gujarati

We have people who speak <language x> - can we get that translation in the high quality list?

If you are willing to work with us, absolutely! Contact us and we'll get you going. Typically we have seen a 1 week turn-a-round – really!

Why did we include Klingon

First let me say: On your system, you can decide which language or languages you let your users have access to, so we expect most, if not all, customers will not allow their users to pick Klingon

Also let me say: The amount of space used up by a language we support is less that one large sized image from your Apple or Android phone. So the space 'wasted' by Klingon is insignificant.

We included it partly for fun.

We included it partly because those that are reviewing our software for possible inclusion will, some of them, be people who would enjoy doing some testing – to see the effect of our translations, in Klingon.

We included it partly because our tooling is being optimized to do all the languages that Bing supports, and it would be extra effort to exclude Klingon and perhaps other 'artificial' languages that Bing may support in the future.