Hello World

Localisation in the wild

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Appendix

Localisation in the wild

15 min read 9 sections

Films, games, adverts and apps have been localised for much longer than websites, and their decisions are easier to see. When a studio reanimates a scene or a drinks company reprints its bottles, someone had to decide what an audience somewhere else should see, hear or understand.

None of these are about code, but every one of them has a version that turns up in software. Each story links to the chapter that deals with it.

Keep reading

The rest of this chapter is for readers of the book

Get the book to read the rest of this chapter and every other one, the field guide and the glossary, and to download the whole book as a PDF.

Still to come in this chapter

  • When the picture changes, not the words
  • When the words and the picture disagree
  • Same language, different version
  • Names that don't travel
  • Keeping the idea, changing everything else
  • Software that did it well
  • When adapting goes too far
  • Stories that aren't true
  • Send me yours