RE: Translations and addresses

["Boudreaux, Madelyn (GE Healthcare, consultant)" <MadelynBoudreaux -at- ge -dot- com>]

David Neeley held forth with a lot of useful stuff:
>Besides, what language is the documentation itself in? If English, then

>an English language address would seem a non-issue for the users.

It starts in English, but I'm asking about the translations, which are
in Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Czech,
Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian,
Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish,
Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovakian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish. 

Additionally, these are not localized. They go to many  more countries
than the 28 languages suggest -- some countries get 2 or 3 languages;
some get just 1. 

Leaving the addresses in English is certainly easiest on me, but not
necessarily the best for the user, for various types of users.... In
this case, I'm not particularly concerned about the person writing an
address on the envelope. That person is savvy and educated. The people
I'm concerned for are the superheroes, I mean postal workers, between
that person and us. If THEY have problems, it will hurt both the end
user and us, so I want to find the solution that makes sure they get the
info they need. 

>However, given the rather infamous sensitivity of many French toward
the "corruption" of the language 
>with English words, I would imagine that providing both forms of
addresses might be in order.

Oh, no. The French address is a different address, one in France, not
the English address translated to make the French happy! 

***

Thanks for all the info and the thoughtful responses from everyone. I
love the suggestion of having the address in both languages, and I may
ask about doing that. This HAD occurred to me, but I fear for the
addresses being hard to read. 

What do you all think about just offering the country name in both
English and the translated language? Would that cover a lot of
eventualities without being too complicated?

Sincerely,
Madelyn "More of a New Mutant" Boudreaux

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