Translations - a big issue that should be re-evaluated

Christian Czaia [Decadis AG]

Hi all,

this post won't be of any interest for you if you're using Atlassian products in it's native language - English, but maybe others might share my view on the Atlassian translation efforts.

Has anybody faced the problem of walking up to a customer showing them the great products Atlassian has to offer and having to apologize for the poor translation quality? I know where the products are coming from and I know that Atlassian has taken the "open, community-driven" translation approach on purpose but I'm not sure if this is the right way to go if you're talking about a mature enterprise product?! I'm talking about JIra mainly... I'm also aware of the new In Product Translation Plugin

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.atlassian.translations.jira.inproduct

but still, an enterprise customer buying the all-in solution (10.000+ licenses) has to pay 24.000 dollars to start translating the product he has just purchased? If the products were open source, no doubt the approach would be the right one, but every update is like a black box... you never know what you're getting.

Another fundamental example of the translation issues I'm facing (representing an enterprise customer as it is) is the current Greenhopper translation pack (downloaded from translations.atlassian.com)...

Since the original Greenhopper update (6.1.3.1) is being shipped entirely in English I downloaded the translation file (ON A TEST SERVER). What I'm seeing next is that almost EVReYTHING has been translated, no matter if it makes sense or not. For example:

Have you done some research before translation (or accepting a translation for) the word "Epic" or "Swimlane"? From my point of view the vast majority of software developers (in Germany, that's my case here) are used to the original scrum concepts and/or terms. WE're talking about Epics, Stories and Story points just as you guys...

Maybe some people use the German equivalents "Epos or Epen (pl.)" but in business many terms just don't have to be translated (people a fine with English here). While in general I would be happy to provide my customer with a products in his native language (apart from the bugs I've found so far e.g. ({0} instead of "issues")) I just can't, since the developers I've been talking to were kind of laughing at me when I told them to go create an "epos" and group it under a "Schwimmbahn"...

Maybe it would be sufficient (for starters) to cover the languages of your main customers by a professional translation service (or hire some guys...we'll be happy to help)...

Cheers,

Christian

unknown

I agree with you, that translations of product gearing to enterprise levels should not be anymore based on volunteer level. I cannot speak for German language (although I would consider myself fluent speaker), but slovak translation is not built on defined vocabulary, it is full of inaccurate and ambiguous terms and simple mistakes.

Therefore at least the vocabulary should be reasoned and established in front and simple mistakes should be revised by professionals. For example the fundamental term issue is in our translation randomly replaced with: task, problem, bug or record. By the way - there is a word in our language similar meaning, but it now - after 5 years of biased translation it would sound strange.

As a native Slovak speaker (rather small language with 5 milion speakers) I do not expect that it would be big deal for Atlassian to invest in the professional translation, but involving interested local experts in the vocabulary definition and the revision process would not cost so much.