AsiaRain

Software Localization

Our Clients and Track Record

AsiaRain is a pioneer in Asian software localization and has localized our first software into Simplified and Traditional Chinese for Informix as early as 1993. At that time, we proposed a novel way of leveraging from Simplified Chinese to Traditional Chinese, which brought substantial cost savings to Informix and all our subsequent customers. Today, this approach is widely used in the industry. Jane, the founder, has been invited on many occasions to speak on Asian software localization and translation automation at the first and second Asian forums of the Localization Industry Standards Association and also the International Machine Translation summit.

Scope of Services

We cover all aspects of software localisation including user interface, online help, installation scripts, etc. and engineering. We have in-house a complete range of the various Asian language operating systems (windows 3.1/95/98/NT/2000, DOS, Macintosh) with knowledge of Asian and unicode code pages. We also have experience with AS/400 and OS/2 projects.

User Interface

Translation of User interface by translators experienced in software translation follow special considerations in Asian software translations. Translation reuse tools helps to ensure translation consistency across screens. Hot keys are appropriately assigned. Dialog editing tools are used to ensure translation is in context and screen controls are appropriately resized with no text truncation. Native translator's check that all lines wrap are at appropriate linguistic positions. QA tools and localization testing ensure that the screens compile correctly and ready for integration with the program code.

Online Help

For Help translation, translation reuse tools ensure that translations are consistently translated and future revisions are charged only for incremental updates. Quality assurance tools ensure that there are exactly the same number of topics and jump spots in the source and translated help document and the help compiles properly.

User Documentation

User guides and reference manuals that accompany the software need to be translated and published. We have technical translators specialized in IT translations. However, since software is often not about computers, we complement these translators with other translators with special domain knowledge. In particular, we have localized several accounting, ERP, copier and printer software.

Engineering

The amount of engineering that is required in Asian localisation of a software depends on the platform, the development environment, the level of internationalisation, or multi-byte support of the software. Our involvement in the engineering and testing is often based on an optimal division of labor between ourselves as the localisation vendor as the customer's in-house software development team. Often our work stops at the completion of localisation testing of the help, and software with the customer undertaking the final functional tests. Other times, we help to add multi-byte support to the English software.

Tools

We are familiar with the latest Microsoft tools and localization tools such as Robohelp, Passolo, TRADOS, Help QA, HTML Help, etc

Confidentiality

Thanks to better internationalization and multi-byte support of the windows development environment and sophisticated localization tools, most windows software localization today does not require clients to release program source codes. Even in cases where source code release is unavoidable, our staff respects the strictest confidentiality and clients are well-protected by signed non-disclosure agreements, fully enforceable under the laws of Singapore.

Web and Multimedia Localization

Our translator and web specialists also work hand-in-hand on web site and multi-media localizations for customers including Siemens, Technomatix, Pacific Internet into various Asian languages. For details, ask for our datasheet on Web Localization.

Asian Software Translation Considerations

Asian user interface string translations are out of context and present many traps for the translator inexperienced in software translation. Our Japanese software translator will rephrase "From:" to "Starting Position:" instead of doing a direct translation, which will become ungrammatical when the translated label is combined with the following field. Our Chinese translator will translate "File %s in directory %s not found" so that the two position holders "%s" follow the exact same order as the source instead of doing a natural Chinese translation which will swap the order of the position holders and cause a serious misinterpretation when the position holders are instantiated during execution. Many Asian languages such as Japanese, Thai and Tagalog tend to require more space for display when translated and requires skill to avoid text truncations. As there is no space between words in many Asian text such as Japanese and Chinese, automatic software line wraps may be at inappropriate linguistic positions and needs to be adjusted.