It's important to always remember that the culture of your target audience when you're considering localising your application.
During this talk at ScotRUG, I highlighted common pitfalls and tried to encourage the audience to think a little differently when it comes to approaching a new market with their product.
A blog post accompanies this on my website which will help make the slides make sense.
1. The culture of l10n
Ryan Stenhouse
@ryanstenhouse - http://ryanstenhouse.eu
http://www.freeagent.com
http://www.thehappygeek.co.uk
2. Originally I planed to
• Probably end up patronising everyone by a
really broad overview of Rails’
Internationalisation API..
• Give a really contrived example and try to
make a few points...
• Worry about pitching the level of this talk
just right so folks would get something out
of it...
3. What I will do
• Just jump straight to my point, after a flying
introduction
• Have some funny pictures to share
• Hopefully start a discussion around the
topic of localisation generally
• Drink beer
6. Understand the
culture!
• Google, eBay,Yahoo and plenty of others all
failed in China because they missed out on
this one important thing
7. Translation isn’t enough
• Language is only one part of a Country’s
cultural identity and there are other
conventions, particularly around buying and
selling that you need to understand.
• How you present your information is
equally as important as the language - and
you can be sure you’re not doing that right.
8. A Question
How do you say “please” to someone form a foreign
culture to you which has no concept of politeness that
you can see?
9.
10.
11. Politeness is an agreed way of behaving between
individuals within a culture.
The answer is “find out how to be polite”.