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Re: Converting American English to British English
Subject:Re: Converting American English to British English From:David Neeley <dbneeley -at- oddpost -dot- com> To:Michael West <mbwest -at- bigpond -dot- com>, TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Sun, 22 Feb 2004 15:41:05 -0800 (PST)
Michael,
Since you "don't see why" perhaps I can elucidate.
Best practices for localization or translation should always include a person whose primary language and cultural experience is of native familiarity. No list of differences can be exhaustive, and as you know technical docs are often very specialized and beyond the ken of the lists such as you have alluded to.
Certainly the three areas you mentioned are thorny ones for those not from the target society. To have an editor try to do a credible job when that editor has no extensive experience with it is to unfairly hamper the end users in too many cases.
In most cases, companies who are producing localizations for the UK have offices or affiliates there who can serve admirably in this capacity. To fail to "run the docs by" some of these folks seems to me to be remiss.
As Donald Rumsfeld pointed out (rightly), we are most bedeviled by information which we don't know that we don't know. Localization can be like that, and to assume it is not may be to err.
