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Showing posts with the label Austrian German

On my Twentieth Service Anniversary - a Retrospective

December 11th 2020, was my 20th anniversary since starting at IBM . I wasn't quite sure how to start this article: I just knew I wished to write something down.  Like many career IBMers, I've learned something - usually several things - every day, solved problems, made mistakes, helped others, been inspired, and sought out support from areas and people I didn't know existed in the matrixed yet siloed presence that is our employer. On balance I am grateful for much of my experiences, and especially for the people who I've gotten to know, respect, and care for. So, with apologies to non-IBMers who would be unfamiliar with the org structure (although I've otherwise tried to avoid internal jargon and initialisms) I dedicate this post to everyone I wish - and need - to thank. You all have been an important part of my life. The Facts: Life events My elopement in the autumn of 2000 to an Irish citizen, which led to my applying to multinationals based in Dublin, Ireland in

Another localization pitfall: slang

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I wonder how often product names are vetted by native speakers of languages when considering marketing something in that region. And if they are, how often slang and rhyming words of dubious character are taken into consideration.  Certainly, when my employer purchased an electric hatchback car earlier this year (as a corporate vehicle that can be reserved for client visits and such), I was bewildered by the wave of snickering that accompanied the announcement of its name, and the ever so slightly aggrieved way the speaker delivered the news. It turns out that the acronym by which it's called closely approximates an Austrian slang word for "stench". In looking at National German, I see there's also another (less similar sounding)  slang term , about which I was not told. Product namers, beware!

Having a "bad language day"

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Since childhood, I've found that if I devote a certain amount of concentrated effort thinking in one language, there is a transitory period where trying to speak another language is frustratingly difficult. The worst experience I had of this was a few years ago. After a few weeks of only working, reading and dreaming in English, I bumped into a Japanese faculty member at DCU. I sincerely hope she doesn't remember the incident, as it was painfully humiliating for me: practically no Japanese issued from me at the time, but stubborn pride kept me from switching to English. The fact it was a chance encounter definitely exacerbated the situation, but I was no stranger to this phenomenon. When I entered the Canadian school system, I'd had practically no prior exposure to English. This meant that for a few years initially, I'd answer questions posed to me at school in Japanese, and at home it would take about an hour before I'd revert to Japanese with my parents. Saturd

Localization does not equal straight translation

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That's right folks - localizing text, in particular marketing and promotional copy, is not simply a matter of finding a competent translator who has native fluency in both source and target languages. And I'm sure many of my readers already knew that. So why mention it here? Because I've entered the land of SEO, particularly in the context of a multinational company where most localization starts with a central (and usually English language) source which is then adopted by a subset of our countries. An organically search engine optimized English web page will not be automatically optimized in the localized version. In other words, having the most effective keywords determined for the source language cannot and will not absolve the page owner of the localized version of ensuring that someone performs keyword research for this content. To delve further into the best practices of text localization, I've found that it involves a profound knowledge of how one can reali