Report by Gabriel Karandysovsky.
Events dedicated to localization, such as the 40th edition of Localization World held in Estoril, are a good way to take the pulse of our industry. While most of the discussions inevitably center around the usual suspects – machine translation or globalization, to name just a couple – every once in a full moon, a hidden, wholly unexpected gem makes an appearance on center stage.
Such was the case for Giulia Tarditi, Head of Localization at Monese, who took the spoils during the Process Innovation Challenge (PIC) at LocWorld. Giulia presented the different approach they took to localizing the Monese app, which does away with source text altogether. She aptly named it “Goodbye, Source Text!”
Giulia receiving the award for the PIC at LocWorld. Image courtesy of the official LocWorld Twitter feed.
You might rightfully wonder, what this is about. We did too and decided to follow up with Giulia. However, we ended up not only discussing the project itself and how it came about, but we also found ourselves interviewing one of the brightest minds in the language industry. Giulia, as it turns out, is a woman on a mission. The “Goodbye, source text!” innovation is really just its latest manifestation.
The “Goodbye, Source Text!” innovation contradicts the traditional way you imagine translation. Under regular circumstances, you would start with existing source content, which a linguist then translates into the desired target language. Giulia and her team ended up scrapping the whole idea of having source text to begin with.
Instead, the content design team at Monese creates a brief, which describes the functionality of a button or a screen within the app. From there, it is the linguists’ responsibility to imagine what the best translation would be. The critical point behind this idea is that the linguists’ imagination is not hindered by the original source text. Essentially, they are the end-users of the app.
The Bulgarian landing page of Monese. Illustrative image only.
In part 1 of our series on user experience (UX) we explored what UX is and why it is important. In this second part we will focus on how culture, language and design come together to deliver a great user experience.
26 July 2020
New disciplines are continually being created as the way we do business evolves. Trends pop up. Some only for a moment, others for the long-run. Entire market niches come into being seemingly out of thin air. Although it’s not always easy to know where these trends come from or where they are headed, the truth of the matter is that they burst forth in a flurry into our daily lives, and suddenly everyone is talking about them.
22 March 2020