May 5, 2008
03:08 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
ONCE UPON A TIME there was a pomegranate farmer who couldn't get anyone to buy his fruit, because it was so leathery-skinned and strange-looking, and so difficult to get the tiny seeds out. The farmer knew that pomegranates are even healthier than green tea or red wine, and delicious as well, but when he told his customers they just laughed, and still wouldn't buy the ugly fruit.
Then the farmer remembered the story of an old myth: When the goddess Persephone was kidnapped by Hades and taken to the Underworld as his wife, her mother Demeter, the goddess of the harvest, demanded that she be returned or no green thing would grow on the earth again. But the rule of the Fates decreed that anyone who ate or drank anything while in the Underworld must stay there forever. Persephone ate and drank nothing for a long time, but just before he released her, Hades gave her a single pomegranate, the last one on Earth, he said. Persephone succumbed to temptation, and though she ate only six seeds from the pomegranate, that was enough to condemn her to return to the Underworld for six months of every year.
So the farmer put up a sign at his fruit stand: POMEGRANATE: FOOD OF THE GODS, and he told everyone how the fruit was so tempting that a goddess was willing to spend six months in hell just to eat a few seeds. The farmer sold all his fruit that day, and as the story spread, people started coming from miles around to buy pomegranates. The farmer had to hire three assistants to help run the fruit stand and his new online fruit store, and he grew rich and eventually retired a happy man.
05:21 pm | 0 recommendations | 2 comments
Many
of the projects I produce at Learning Worlds are not only created with
multimedia technology tools, but they are about technology, and some
include very technical or industry specific terms. In addition there
is often quite a lot of interactive or navigational text to keep track
of during production. In short there are three pesky word sets that it
helps to keep track of during the localization (or L10n) process:
Navigational Phrases, Loan Words & Technical Terms.
Navigational
Phrases are things like Submit, Play and Exit that occur frequently in
web-based media. In some countries and languages those words remain
the same, while in others they need to be translated. I can speak from
experience in saying that in complex localization projects sometimes
these phrases slip through the cracks. They generally don't occur in
scripts or wireframes, because they are not "written" in the way that
other content is. It's important to really look at a project in its
native languages and confirm that every piece of text that the user
encounters is documented and sent to translation. Also it's good to
check with your clients about expectations regarding translations of
Navigational Phrases.
Loan Words are words that are borrowed from another language and are not meant to be translated, like déjà vu (French) or graffiti (Italian).
The use of Loan Words is quite common when communicating about
technology, even when there is a term in that language. For example in
Italy, the word "computer" may be used instead of the Italian phrase elaboratore elettronico.
In my own experience, the more specific the technical term the more
likely it is to get loaned. Talking to a native speaker from the
client community early to gain an understanding of the use loan words,
and the degree of translation expected regarding technical phrases, can
significantly help your project.
Technical
Terms, as well as industry specific phrases, encompass the terms used
by your client community that may be simply impossible for your
translators to know. This is especially common in projects with
emerging products or with information that has, at some point, been
protected by NDA. Ask for Brand Guidelines in the native languages,
approach a native speaker from your client's team, or simply highlight
the words that you feel may be either too technical or too brand
specific to be translated like normal text.
- Identify all text that needs to be translated, not just the writer's output for the original language version.
- Identify words that should not be translated and find a method to communicate this at every step of production.
- Identify terms that will need to be translated or verified by your client.
04:26 pm | 0 recommendations | 2 comments
Earlier this year, prankster group Improv Everywhere staged
an event called "Frozen Grand Central," in which the participants
synchronized their watches, and at a prearranged moment they all froze in place
in the middle of Grand Central's Main Concourse, mystifying observers. Exactly
five minutes later, everyone resumed normal motion. In an April 30 sweeps-week episode,
the television show Law & Order: SVU made Robin Williams the leader of a
similar public action group, and restaged the event for use in their own murder
story. This convergence of on-the-edge viral action and popular TV crime fiction
provokes some thoughts on how natural it is for humans to construct a narrative.
Stories are how we understand the world -- even if we don't
really know what's going on, we'll make something up. The original event
presented a mystery to its audience – "Why are so many people frozen? Has
something dangerous happened? What will happen next?" And each frozen
individual acted as an invitation to travelers close by to construct a story
around them – "Who is this girl with a banana? If I poke her, will she
react? Where are those frozen people looking at the map trying to get to? Do
these three guys near the dropped papers know each other?" Even though the
event appeared to be nonsensical, the audience recognized a story, so much so
that when motion resumed, everyone applauded.
The SVU episode, on the other hand, presents a fully-formed
story to its audience, with characters and plot clearly laid out. There's a
mystery, but we find out all the answers by the time the show's over. However,
despite having its own story to tell, the episode duplicated several of the
individuals from Improv Everywhere's event: a woman eating yogurt, a guy tying
his shoe, a man holding a train schedule. These tiny random moments had enough narrative
resonance that the show's writers thought it worthwhile to keep them in.
The purposes behind the presentations of these two groups are widely divergent. Improv Everywhere says its only mission is "the goal of spreading chaos and joy throughout the world," though they do carry advertising on their website. SVU exists primarily to make money for its network by drawing attention to its advertisers, though I'm sure many of those working on the show care about creating a quality dramatic product. But both groups use the same tool to accomplish their goals: telling a good story. The stories they construct attract a loyal following who look for the next event or episode, which in turn makes it worthwhile to continue producing stories. Most interesting of all, the original event inspired a TV writer or producer to recreate it in the television show, and now people who will probably never find themselves walking across Grand Central Station are familiar with the frozen girl eating yogurt. Narrative itself is viral, whatever the medium.
04:24 pm | 0 recommendations | 2 comments
While many of the projects I work on at Learning Worlds are about communicating ideas using visual narratives, it's the localization (or L10n) part that I think about the most. Unlike the act of translating text in a document, the localization processes I've had to use, create and replicate multimedia projects involve things like recording voice overs in Dutch, understanding regional business terms, managing hundreds of screenshots in other languages, and maintaining consistancy across languages and versions. I'm in the midst of a series of disucssions around the topic of multimedia localization and I'll be posting some of the things I uncover along the way.
When asked about my experiences, the thing I always start with is: when you create anything for anyone, ask them first, "Will this need to be localized at some point in the future, even if you don't plan on doing it yourself, or more importantly paying for it yourself?" Communicating the possibility of future localization to everyone from Project Managers to Developers to Designers to even additional Client Stakeholders can help drive decisions that mean someday a project can be provided in additional languages that is cheaper, better and more quickly produced.
