Suggestion regarding product translation

Question

Hi all!

I didn't find a specific product feedback or suggestion board, so I am dropping this here.

I just noticed that in Confluence even specific functional terms like "space" are being translated. At least in german that is the case (This being translated to "Bereich").

This is not good practice and creates issues regarding user documentation and training for end users.
In ITIL and FitSM, as an example, it has always been standard to not translate functional terms like "Change" or "Incident". In german they are not translated to "Änderung" or "Ereignis".

This ensures that when searching for support online or giving training internally that all users, regardless of language setting (a lot of german users, especially younger ones, use english language setting nowadays for easier and more online search and support), use identical terms for identical things.

It is VERY disruptive, if some use "Bereich" and others (including the internet) use "space".

My suggestion is that even when translating (at least pertaining to german) Atlassian-specific functional termins like "space" are not translated when switching languages.

Cheers

Colin

Kris Klima _K15t_ · Answer

Hi @Colin Schäfer and welcome to the Community.

As someone who has software localization experience, I can relate. I'm a native Slovak speaker and every time someone asks me to troubleshoot their hardware/software in Slovak / Czech, I struggle not because I don't know how to solve the problem but because I don't see familiar UI items (and some make no sense whatsoever being translated by a person who didn't have the right context).

I've always used my devices in the English locale - as a way of learning English, among other things, but also because English resources are just more available and there's more of them.

So it IS a problem in internationally dispersed workforce - training, troubleshooting, support, etc. becomes an issue if a lingua franca is not enforced in the company's global presence.

Now, I don't know how Atlassian are doing their localizations (or how they cope localizing recent nomencalture changes in Jira, Jira spaces, for example).

From experience, sometimes companies do get stuck with the original translation decisions (even the bad ones...) in a specific language once a critical threshold of users and available resources is reached.

Works both ways, Finder in Mac OS is Finder in the Czech version (to my best knowledge) although a lot of people pronunces the 'i' as in Fish.

Certainly a topic that should trigger a ncie debate.

Peter_DevSamurai · Answer

I totally agree, for specific ones like "Spaces", "work item" should not be translated. And when I'm doing work with i18n files, I notice when changing few languages, there are a few words in Jira workspace are not yet to be translated.

marc -Collabello--Phase Locked- · Answer

Indeed, this is very unfortunate.