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Me, in Japanese

We've gotten a lot of feedback over the past year that our online content is really valuable but that it is a big problem that it is not translated for countries where English is not a commonly spoken/learned language.  Japan is, perhaps, one of the best examples.  We are trying some experments in this area and one of them is translating my blog into Japanese.  Among them is translating my blog to Japanese.

Here's a link if you speak Japanese: http://blogs.msdn.com/tfsjpn/default.aspx

We haven't quite figured out what we are going to do about comments yet - since I, unfortunately, do not speak Japanese.  We are also looking at the possibility of doing a version in Chinese.  We'll assess how these and other experiments go and see what works best.  Based on that we'll expand into other offerings.

As always, feedback is welcome.

Brian

Published Thursday, April 24, 2008 10:13 AM by bharry

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# re: Me, in Japanese

Friday, April 25, 2008 1:02 PM by pnjacket

As a non native English speaker, the plan seems very helpful for people who are not comfortable with English.

By looking at the translated pages, I found one thing that I want to make a comment on.

For example, in the article at http://blogs.msdn.com/tfsjpn/archive/2008/04/24/tfs-2008-power-tools.aspx , it lists features of Power Tool in "English". I do not know if these will cause any confusion.

My point is that it will not be enough if only the context of the article is translated. At times, the actual contents should also be changed because the translated version of actual softwares might have whole different sets of names, shortcut keys, and/or even UI.

# re: Me, in Japanese

Monday, April 28, 2008 4:25 PM by bharry

Thanks for the feedback.  I suspect in this case, the translator just didn't know what to translate them to.  That brings me to another issue with these.  The screenshots aren't going to be translated.  Trying to get localized screenshots would take a significant amount of time for each post.

I suspect we are going to learn with this as we go.  I really appreciate the feedback and would be grateful for you to help me figure out what must be translated and what we can love without.

Thanks,

Brian

# re: Me, in Japanese

Wednesday, April 30, 2008 9:43 AM by Lei Xu

As another non-English speaker, I don't think all content need to be translated; actually, most of time people will prefer to keep it as it is because it will help to reduce the *confusion*.

# re: Me, in Japanese

Wednesday, April 30, 2008 3:45 PM by William Wong

First of all, I am not Japanese.

Japan is one of the country which English is very popular but only a small percentage of Japanese can handle daily English very well.

AFAIK, software development in Japan is pretty strong, but not perceived by most of the world since we don't read/write/talk Japanese.

I see a strong value of providing Japanese version of this blog and let more people to know more about TFS (and you!). It is also important to let Japanese know they are not second-class citizen when reading your blog.

# re: Me, in Japanese

Tuesday, May 06, 2008 2:33 PM by pnjacket

I always see Microsoft releases their products in English, Germen, and Japanese ahead of other languages. Base on this assumtion, I think there is a Japanese version of TFS. In that case, I think all contents should be translated to the target language because it will reduce the confusion more to the target audiences(in here Japaneses).

* One more little comment about the site

I think it would be nice to have a link on each article to the original article. That will help some people who prefers English to understand the context more clearly in case the article is mis-translated.

# re: Me, in Japanese

Monday, May 19, 2008 4:57 AM by Bert Loedeman

About comments to your Japanese articles: why not use the Live translator (http://translator.live.com). I use it a lot, when I see Chinese / Japanese comments on blog postings (and most of the time, it turns out to be readable after translation :) ).

Sincerely, Bert

# re: Me, in Japanese

Tuesday, May 20, 2008 11:48 AM by bharry

That's a good idea.  I'll give it a try.  Thanks,

Brian

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