Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Dear Google, Spanish language =! Spain!!


PLEASE Google... stop. Please. I mean it.

Why don't you ... STOP. Just STOP OK?.

I mean... STOP ADDING SPANISH LINGO that is written in Spain's Spanish. Try to use a more "neutral" Spanish (ask the guys who do TV and movie translations, they do know what a "neutral" Spanish translation is... that is, one free from Iberic terms and South American words).

It all started when I suddenly found my Blogger interface "automagically" switched to Spanish. Suddently I read "no tenemos mas Beta" instead of "we're out of beta!".

That is a POOR LITERAL TRANSLATION that can be read as "we no longer stock beta". The correct translation would have been "ya no estamos en Beta" o "salimos de la etapa Beta", o "ya no es Beta".

And now, the dreadful "que mola mas que una caja de lapices de colores..." advert, trying to promote Blogger's new customization features. Well, guess what Google? "mola" doesn't mean anything for us down in South America. "Molar" as a verb does not, in fact, exist in our vocabulary.

I guess the original English language text was "what rules more than..." and you hired someone in Spain to do the translation, so it ended up as "que mola mas que.."?.

If you had used a NEUTRAL Spanish translation that could have been translated as "¿Qué es más bueno que...?" or "¿Qué es mejor que una caja de lápices?". And it would have been understood BOTH by people in Spain and people in South America.

PLEASE, P-L-E-A-S_E, Google, start taking these localization issues into account when you start translating things.

PLEASE, STOP. Por favor.

¡Gracias!

FC

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