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Writing Software for Worldwide Distribution Proves Difficult
lupa1420 writes "Insensitive computer programmers with little knowledge of geography have cost the giant Microsoft company hundreds of millions of dollars in lost business and led hapless company employees to be arrested by offended governments."
I don't get it.
The annual National Geographic Survey had thrown up the sad fact that only 23 out of 56 young Americans knew the whereabouts of the Pacific Ocean
Oh, cry me a river--like the Pacific Ocean is some big, important thing. I mean, you need to drive all the way to Sweden just to see it!
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
I've been to the States and seen some of the news and current affairs programs and seriously, it's like they're aimed at 12 year olds or something. This story doesn't suprise me at all!
"Marge, anyone could miss Canada. All tucked away down there."
Perhaps the best known...was a colour-coded world map showing time zones, which showed the disputed Jammu-Kashmir region as not being in India...The mistake led to the whole of the Windows 95 operating system being banned in the country, losing large sales. For its replacement, Microsoft, Office 97, Microsoft removed the colour coding and sold 100,000 copies in India.
Office 97 replaced Windows 95? Yikes.
Cheers,
Ian
...they're failure to keep up with global geopolitical madness.
Most of the examples listed were problems that cropped up due to political reasons, not due to a lack of geography knowledge. No matter how you draw a map, where you place Kashmir is going to offend someone. The West Bank and the Gaza Strip are going to be contenious no matter where you place them. Microsoft did the only reasonable thing, they drew the maps to the favor of the richer countries (the ones that buy their software). Sorry Pakistan, no disputed territories for you.
I read the internet for the articles.
From the article, it seems that Microsoft programmers have gotten in trouble because... wait for it... THEY READ A MAP. That's right, THEY READ A MAP. The results of their map reading have lead them into several political situations that there was little possibility of them being aware of. (Talk to the ***holes who make this stuff illegal and ARREST foreigners for READING A MAP.)
Americans may have a poor understanding of Geography, but I don't really see that being an issue in this case. All Microsoft could have done is more thoroughly research the area.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Pacific islanders objected to the label "Here be Dragons!".
Several Arab countries resented being called either "Oil" or "Just terrorists".
Several former Soviet Bloc and Warsaw Pact countries objected to the name of their countries being followed by "(or whatever they are calling themselves this week)."
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
As much as we'd all like to think that this is just a case of MS screwing up again, I'm pretty sure this isn't just an MS problem. Besides, the article talks not just about simple geography, but of mistakes made about highly disputed geographic regions. There are a few in there where microsoft could have gone either way and still offended someone. Granted, stuff like that should have been checked, but the mistakes really aren't as simple as the post makes them out to be.
...no two people are not on fire.
Insensitive computer programmers with little knowledge of geography
If you read the article, you'll see the computer programmer's problems have nothing to do with geography... and everything to do with understanding and respecting differences in the cultures that may purchase MSFT products. I think showing the programmers where the Pacific Ocean is isn't going to do very much to make the software more culturally acceptable.
It's not like MS specifically hires programmers who have no clue where the Pacific Ocean is.
I hope not. Especially since Seattle is essentially on the Pacific Ocean.!
Things to do today: See list of things to do yesterday
Although something rings true in this about many USA citizens not having a 'global' view (World Series Baseball, World Wide Wrestling....erm, I don't think these are worldwide sports actually!), many of the points in this article would not be known without some pretty thorough investigation of political/geographical interests.
I did partly RTFA, and unless I'm way off on my understanding, Microsoft is blaming their lost business on people who have little right to be blamed for what they are being blamed for. Do the programmers really need to know about the world affairs - I thought that would be the job of the marketing or PR people.
Anyone else have a problem with governments detaining software engineers for something as trivial as a mis-marked map?
hapless company employees
Talk about passing the buck. Some of the top problems in the article:
This isn't hapless employees. This is government oppression, and the bans on free speech necessary to pull them off.
Isn't this like that time some city legislation out in California decided to ban the words "Master and Slave" when refering to Hard Drive configurations because it was not "Sensitive" to African Americans?
--------========+++Dont Feed The Lab Techs+++========--------
...I'm going to rant. :P
Usually, I'm an american that makes every effort to be understanding of cultures different than my own, and to try to understand why it is that the US is frowned upon by other cultures. We have a foreign exchange intern here from Europe right now, and we've had long conversations about why and how americans take their relative wealth for granted (even our citizens on welfare tend to be wealthier than many in smaller european countries!)
But this...this isn't a lack of sensitivity on Microsoft's part. It's a lack of toleration on the part of other cultures. Knowing full-well that this software was written by programmers of another culture, there should be a degree of toleration and patience that goes along with the process. Make the developer aware of the issue and give them a chance to fix it.
Honestly, if someone in another culture (India perhaps?) that wasn't sufficiently versed in US geography made a map that, oh...I don't know, put St. Louis in Illinois rather than Missouri, or show the Arch crossing the Mississippi River or something equally stupid, I suppose some might be offended (I can think of other, more controversial examples...), but more than likely we'd give them the chance to fix it first.
Americans may be stuck up, take a WHOLE lot of freedoms for granted, have lots of money, and think too highly of themselves at times to bother learning about other cultures, but I'll give you one thing:
Even some of the most annoying pricks I know seem to be more tolerant than some other cultures are to the average Joe. How pathetic is that?
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
.
[/sarcasm]
Re: the grandparent post, that quote from the article got me too. I was wondering if they were showing an upside down map or something...
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
If you read the article you realize that most of the mistakes made had nothing to do with geography.
"Microsoft employees were questioned by police in China, where it is an offence to refer to Taiwan as country or as the Republic of China"How is this a geography issue? Taiwan recognizes itself as an independent country.
"A game called Age of Empires 2 offended the Saudi Arabian authorities because it showed victorious Muslim armies turning churches into mosques"Again, how is this a geography issue?
I think this article is just bait for the daily MS bashing on /.
-chrisI mean, really, how is a programmer in the states supposed to know that a valid spanish word, used in the spanish version of the program, is an insult in central america?
This sounds much more like a "lets point out all the funny fuckups from M$" article, and much less a diatribe on the difficulties of writing international software. Yes, they've made a few mistakes, and the occasional horrid judgement call (I mean, really, insulting all of Islam? Well, at least now we know better...). But some things, like the evil spanish word, referring to breakaway states as countries in their own right, or other such silliness, are just an "oops", where you wouldn't expect them to rightfully know better.
On that note though, what's up with the rabid nations emasculating anyone who dares suggest that Kashmir or Taiwan are separate countries? I generally find foreign media less crazy than US, but try reading an article from a chinese newspaper on taiwan sometime... it's almost frighteningly evangelical in it's belief.
And, finally... come on, AoE2? I thought the muslims replacing the churches was a cute touch, not insulting... I mean, it's a game, you have to change the game elements to fit the theme of whoever is winning... and you wouldn't expect westerners to know the details of how the muslims handled conquered peoples and their religion during the crusades...
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
Actually this needs yet another correction in a long successions of trying to shut down this myth.
the NoVa story isn't true, see Snopes for details http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp
A game called Age of Empires 2 offended the Saudi Arabian authorities because it showed victorious Muslim armies turning churches into mosques. The game was withdrawn from sale in the kingdom
*cough*hagia sophia*cough*
Here in Canada, we consider this color as "puke yellow", not "IT color". What a geographical mistake!
I will not stop until the color changes!
perception is reality
The article made it out to be very negative to Microsoft, when in fact most of the problems seemed to be government pissing matches. A few examples include refering to the "Republic of Tawain", which everyone but China recognizes, or making mention of the disputed Kashmir region, which 3 different countries seem to believe belongs to them.
Notice that the fix for these problems wasn't to fix the map in windows, but to remove it entirely. That shows that it wasn't an "error in geography" on MS's part but that you can't get 2 governments to agree on geography and Microsoft was stuck in the middle.
in true slashdot bashing style. Haha!
i kinda wonder if linux offends accidentally or not tho.
Actually, the well-known Debian developer Herbert Xu resigned recently due to being offended by project members discussing (in the context of the new Debian installer) whether or not to refer to Taiwan as "Taiwan, Province of China" as it is officially designated in ISO 3166.
So this sort of problem is certainly not restricted to commercial or proprietary software.
- Kevin B. McCarty
I mean its hard enough, isn't it?
All those pointers and 0 based arithmetic. I swear if I ever have to write another link-list routine, I'll go postal.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Americans don't know geography, but British don't know simple editing. Ugh. Come on, now. Even Office 97, that great replacement of Windows 95 (???) has a spelling and grammar checker.
..." -- perhaps they mean bloopers?
..." -- don't you mean they may be?
From the article...
"The company has now launched geography classes for its staff to avoid further bloomers which have caused embarrassment
"It is therefore no surprise that some of our employees, however bright they may, have only a hazy idea
"Uruguay is a republic and proud if it but..." -- proud of it, right?
Typos and junk grammar really discredit any article.
The writer talks about how the average person has trouble with minor challenges in geography (true enough), but then goes on to talk about Microsoft programmers:
1, Not knowing where Jammu-Kashmir is, exactly, and not knowing that Indian law prohibits considering it part of anything but India. (Never mind that the law has its own counterpart in Pakistan; you can't avoid breaking the law on this one.)
2, In a similar vein, having to offend Kurds so as not to offend the Turks with regard to the depiction of Kurdistan.
3, Offending the Saudis by showing churches turned into mosques by invading Muslim armies...never mind that the exact opposite happens when a Christian army takes over a mosque in the game.
4, Didn't know that "woman" in one dialect of Spanish means "bitch" in another.
None of these things seem to me to be so hard to imagine. Do Nicaraguans know that the word "cracker" can be used as a racist term here? Do Indians know that the Argentines go completely apeshit when you refer to the Faulkand Islands as such, rather than by their preferred name for them? And his assertion that Microsoft leaves their employees facing arrest in other countries seems baseless; he didn't mention a single instance. The worst he came up with was "questioned," and that was for calling Taiwan by it's real name. It's not Microsoft's fault that China has a wild hair up their ass over that one, either.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
http://weblogs.asp.net/oldnewthing/archive/2003/08 /22/54679.aspx
The time zone map met a similar fate. The Indian government threatened to ban all Microsoft software from the country because we assigned a disputed region to Pakistan in the time zone map. (Any map that depicts an unfavorable border must bear a government stamp warning the end-user that the borders are incorrect. You can't stamp software.) We had to make a special version of Windows 95 for them.
Geopolitics is a very sensitive subject.
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
My favorite stat is that %25 of US citizens think New Mexico is not a state.
Just imagine if someone invaded New Mexico and 25% of America were upset that we were sending troops there.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
So many people have been quick to blame this phenomenon on the programmers (and particularly, American programmers) for not having sufficient knowledge of local laws and political and religious sensitive points. Many of these issues seem like problems that are really only obvious in retrospect--how many people, honestly, would think twice about their coloring or name of a little region on a map while they're doing it, the connotations of a word they choose in countries they haven't studied that speak the same language when they're translating, or the source of a chant they put in the background of a game? It seems to me that a lot of these issues, even, wouldn't even be noticed by or much less bother much of the population of the country that they purportedly offend. There are a lot of people eager to jump on your throat about issues so minor that you would never see them coming everywhere, and I doubt that any class given to programmers or management will be able to appreciably reduce the number of these situations. The only effective prevention I can see would be to either hire a lot of local testers in every region or to hire a lot of local programmers in every region. Even then, though, I wonder how many of the locals take it personally that a region disputed by their country goes by a different name or details about how members of their religion are portrayed in a game. In most cases, we're talking about one offended bureaucrat, not mobs of offended civilians.
~Ben
"A game called Age of Empires 2 offended the Saudi Arabian authorities because it showed victorious Muslim armies turning churches into mosques. The game was withdrawn from sale in the kingdom."
Just as a minor, semi-offtopic comment: Um, wasn't that precisely what happened to the Hagia Sofia? You can still see the faint traces of the crosses that were removed when the whole thing was turned into a Mosque. So even if turning churches into mosques wasn't normal practice, it did happen. To quote from a website about the Hagia Sophia:
"On Tuesday, May 29, 1453, Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror entered the vanquished city late in the afternoon and rode to Hagia Sophia. He was amazed at its beauty and decided to convert the Cathedral into his imperial mosque."
(Disclaimer: No, I'm not trying to be inflammatory about religion, I'm just making a historical point.)
Think about this for a second.
You are comparing ignorance of regional districts *within* a country (states) to ignorance of major world countries as a whole.
Europeans not knowing where Florida is is a totally different thing to Americans not knowing where Sweeden is. One os a district, the other is a country.
If you think Europeans should know where Florida is, then that means that Americans should know where South Wales is in the UK. Good luck on *that*.
It is pretty much accepted knowledge worldwide that the vast majority of the US population has little concern with anything beyond its own borders. Just watch your average american 6'oclock newscast and count the international references. Compared to other countries' newscasts it should be embarassing.
A game called Age of Empires 2 offended the Saudi Arabian authorities because it showed victorious Muslim armies turning churches into mosques. The game was withdrawn from sale in the kingdom
I've been to some mosques that were converted from churches after wars. I even have pictures. This happened. I could understand how some Christians could get a little miffed. Could someone explain how it is offensive to Muslims?
Also, the geography "mistakes" in the article appear to be more policitical in nature than some developer not knowing where the Pacific Ocean is. Would I expect some developer in China to know about the controverial border between Michigan and Ohio that led to the Toldeo (Ohio) War?
Speak truth to power.
But understanding the differing scale of things is much harder for human brains wrap around. Yes, they can be described by measuring distance or travel time, but it's hard to really understand differences in scale until you've been there. E.G., I remember visiting in the UK, and some people described "far away" villages which were closer than my daily commute. This is just one of the many reasons that you need to visit a place to really understand it.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
I agree that it is a problem.
But, put yourself in their shoes and see how it looks. As trivial as a map may look, there are political implications behind it. For example, in this case, an area inhabited by a ethno-linguistic minority asserts its independance, although the de facto situation is that this is within the bounds of a soverign state. What is worse, is that they see this as a conspiracy from more powerful countries to assert the reverse of the status quo.
Some issues appear really trivial, but are really sensitive/contentious in other countries/cultures. Here are some examples:
Every culture has those "hot button" issues.
There are many other cases I am sure, but you get the idea ...
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It is not the programmer's responsibility to be aware of these things. Public relations people should be there to supply them with information as well as check products before they are done. Programmers are paid to program, not be familiar with customs of other countries.
This is a good trick for you females. (There ARE some on /., dammit!)
A very attractive, accomplished, intelligent woman played a prank on me. As a party game, she had me close my eyes and trace the outline of "the ideal woman". I figured the game was to get the guy to lose track and laugh at the deformed outline. Something along the lines of "Her breasts are 2 feet above her neck!"
So I concentraited very hard.
"Ok, show where her eyes are."
"Show where her nose is."
"Show where her hair comes down to."
"Show where her breasts are and their approximate size"
"Show where her navel is."
"Show where her waist is."
"Show where her hips are."
I was focussing really hard as the bits got closer together, sure I was creating a monster.
"Show where her vagina is."
I put my finger out and felt a warm, moist cavity.
I fell over laughing - she'd knelt and put her mouth on my finger. I was pretty surprised. And a bit embarrassed.