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Status Not under consideration
Workspace App Connect
Created by Guest
Created on Nov 6, 2015

RELATED IDEAS

Translation of product's core objects leads to imprecise and inconsistent UI and documentation

This affects all IBM products: while the complete localization of products might be a great feature for non-technical products in order to lower entry barriers and reach more customers, it is a disaster for engineers and programmers.

Engineers and programmers need to be precise in their language, thus names of objects are very important. However IBM's translators seem to translate nearly everything - even the objects that have been "invented" by the product itself and don't exist in the real world / language.

Examples:
Node (en) - Knoten (de) ...although in common language "Knoten" and "Knotenpunkt" get mixed, only the latter has the abstract meaning of "node". A "Knoten" is just a knot and you don't want that in your message flow.

MessageFlow (en) - Nachrichtenfluss (de) ...actually this translation is not bad. But message flow files have the extension ".msgflow", even in the german UI, so you won't get rid of the english word. That's an inconsistency.

QueueManager (en) - Warteschlangenmanager (de) ...you might think of a guy in front of an Apple store yelling "go back into the line!!!" ...so the german translation is nonsense. For consistency you should also not translate "Queue" into "Warteschlange".

Breakpoint (en) - Unterbrechungspunkt (de) ...no german programmer has ever translated breakpoint.

Typetree structure (en) - Typenbaumstruktur (de) ...this one is from the WTX plugin for IIB. And nobody would ever unterstand what the german word could mean.

Deploy (en) - Implementieren (de) ...now that's even worse: "Implementieren" is a pretty common word for programmers in Germany, but its main meaning is not "to deploy", but "to implement". Since there's no precise translation for "deploy" in german we tend to say "deploy", too.

I don't want to start a discussion about better translations, because that might be related to personal taste. Instead I want to start (or join) the discussion about where to draw the line of translating objects at all.

Many people might be afraid that the result being "denglish", a mixture of languages, and that might be true - but it's precise. And that's what the main audience of the developer tools care about.

P.S.: At least for the UI there's an easy solution: install the english version by default and let the user opt-in for a localized UI. Currently it's the other way round. However the german documentation should contain more english names, too.

Idea priority High
RFE ID 79468
RFE URL
RFE Product IBM App Connect Enterprise (formerly IBM Integration Bus)
  • Admin
    Ben Thompson
    Reply
    |     Jul 29, 2021

    Idea / RFE Review. Hi Thorsten, unfortunately despite being open since November 2015, we have not managed to collect any further comments or votes on this topic, so having further reviewed this enhancement request on this occasion we intend to close it without taking any further direct action in the codebase. We continue to sympathise that in some cases our translations have become too literal and should you wish to raise a further enhancement request with particular suggestions where you would prefer us to not translate a word (such as the "node" example you quote perhaps?) we would be happy to consider this. Given that we allow a user of the development toolkit to decide whether or not to install a language pack, and of course switch their locale, on balance we feel that we have a decent set of options to satisfy developers who have no English language as well as those who have a mixture of language skills.

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Jul 15, 2016

    Hi Thorsten. Thank you for raising this RFE. We can absolutely use this RFE as a means of recording the kind of discussion you talk about when you say "I want to start (or join) the discussion about where to draw the line of translating objects at all.". I'm going to forward this RFE on to our translators to also get their views. Status of the RFE is updated to Uncommitted Candidate.

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