Korean Translation Tip (Follow-Up): There’s a Translation Error in the Korean Windows 7 Interface, Too!

Recently I posted a Korean translation error from the Google Android mobile interface [EXPIRED LINK REMOVED: https://uz9.25e.myftpupload.com/korean-translation-tip-theres-a-translation-error-in-the-korean-google-android-interface/]. This week I found a Korean translation error in the Windows 7 interface, and this one’s a little obnoxious… Windows 7 has been out for, um… a couple or three years already and they still haven’t noticed this? (Who’s doing language QA over at Microsoft anyway?)

8-27-2012 12-09-02 AM

The circled text says “source file”. 

That has no correllation whatsoever with the text that should be there. Here’s what the English interface shows for the exact same screen:

8-27-2012 12-54-14 AM

This message though is a translation minefield since they’ve combined the title line and first line below it into a single English sentence structure (i.e. “Deleting 20,155 items (22.3 GB) from Recycle Bin.”)

In this case, the most suitable translation in Korean is to split it into two sentences (which is actually what’s been done in the Korean), with the “from Recycle Bin” being reworded as “휴지통 비움” or something similar which means “emptying Recycle Bin“. Note that the bold text goes first in Korean, not second as in the English (a problem which is related to the Google one last time!)

Anyway, all kinds of things could have gone wrong here. Perhaps Microsoft sent an Excel file of thousands of interface messages off to some Korean translation team expecting that 10,000 words of raw computer messages should cost the same as a 10,000-word piece of prose. This meant that the Korean translators were rushing through the work. Or maybe Microsoft neglected to send screenshots for all those phrases (and budgeted adequately for those to be studied). Clearly, the in-software review at the end of the project didn’t catch it. These are all steps we recommend in a premium Korean translation [EXPIRED LINK REMOVED: https://uz9.25e.myftpupload.com/premium-korean-translation/] workflow.

Considering the challenges of getting everything right, is it any surprise a Korean translation error in Windows like this slipped through?

Best-Practice Tip Please budget adequately for Korean translation [EXPIRED LINK REMOVED: https://uz9.25e.myftpupload.com/] of software interfaces. This work can be time-consuming to do correctly. Be especially careful of split sentences like those appearing in the example above!

Steven Bammel

Steven S. Bammel is president and chief translator/consultant at Korean Consulting & Translation Service, Inc. A graduate of the University of Texas at Arlington (B.B.A. Economics) and Hanyang University (M.S. Management Strategy), Steven has worked for over twenty years in Korean business and translation. | more about Steven

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