BIAB has been released in an impressive number of languages recently. I'm curious, how much work is involved to do that? Does anyone here assist PG Music in this task?

Hi Matt

We did some work a few years ago with a multi-language interface for an application that was used globally.

The programming language that BiaB is developed in supports 'Resource Strings', and I believe this is the tool that they would use also.

In our application, we added resource strings directly, which added translated strings to a Translation Repository, or conversely retrieved strings from the Translation Repository.

However, we needed to have personnel who could translate 'special terminology' command actions into the languages we required, which included Chinese and Indonesian. Once the repository was established, we could build a system that included support for any of the available languages, and IIRC the end user could select which language they wished to use the system in.

I have to presume that much of the terminology used by BiaB would be somewhat specialized. I don't know if there has been manually solicited multi-language assistance from other users. Maybe Google Translate has been helpful ?

Hey, thanks Trevor. Interesting.

Yes, not only would some of the terminology in BIAB be specialized, but the Help would have to be indexed to match the terms chosen. I would think it would be quite a task.

I could be wrong, but my guess would be that some of the foreign language forum moderators probably assist in the translation as well. And of course, as we know, BIAB is used worldwide, so like beta testers, I bet they have a stable of translators willing to take on that part of the work.

That's a good point John. I rarely visit the international pages, but maybe plenty of work is going on from contributors from those pages.
Trevor

Yes, lots of hard work is involved in making the International (non-English) versions.

Machine translation (google translate) doesn't figure into it, because it needs to be done by native speakers who are also musicians.

Changes to the program need to be made, to accomodate different images, or different language features (German words are typicall longer, Japanese text has no spaces for word wrapping etc.)

Awhile back, we needed to make a "Canadian English" version, because we got a big order from a Canadian School Division, and they needed to have correct Canadian spelling. That was awhile back, instead of version 2006 we called that Canadian version 2006a - but in-house we referred to it as version 2006-Eh!

Thanks Peter for the explanation, it doesn't surprise me that an enormous effort is involved.

Best
Trevor

Now that's funny!

This subject brings up a point. When us regulars talk about wishlist items or question why don't they do this or that we're writing from the English speaking pov. Who knows what the rest of the world wants and what they talk about in the other forums.

Bob

Peter,

Love the language diversity. With that said, when can I expect to see a South Louisiana Version? :>

Later,

Ya'll can read?

Running and ducking for cover

Can BIAB play a diminished étouffée? How about a half diminished étouffée?

Mario & John,

We play in the key of GUMBO down here man!

LMAO!

Later,