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Subject:Re: global numbers / letters -- best practice From:"D. Michael McIntyre" <michael -dot- mcintyre -at- rosegardenmusic -dot- com> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Tue, 6 Feb 2007 18:40:43 -0500
On Tuesday 06 February 2007 12:32 pm, Jerry Pope wrote:
> What is the best practice regarding globalization/translation issues in
> annotating illustrations?
This is a good question! I can tell you that the concern here is real. I've
seen this from both the author's and the translator's perspective. My
translator told me not to worry about it, but the German translation of my
book shipped with all of the illustrations in English anyway, which looks
really stupid.
> To accomplish that, one solution is to embed a collection of numbers (1,
> 2, 3, etc) in the artwork and then create a legend in the authoring tool
> If I use numbers (or letters from the English language alphabet), would
> they be nearly universally understood?
Numerals would be the most universal choice, and letters far less so, but not
entirely universal. I think my first choice would be to use symbols instead,
such as something one might find in a font like Wingdings. Little square for
1, little triangle for 2, etc. This sort of thing seems to be pretty common
on instruction sheets that are printed in multiple languages.
--
D. Michael McIntyre
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