Slashdot Mirror
How 8 Pixels Cost Microsoft Millions
NubKnacker writes "Economic Times, one of India's biggest business daily's is carrying a story about how a small colouring mistake forced Microsoft to recall 200,000 copies of Windows 95. This wouldn't be the first time that has happened to Microsoft. From the article, "Microsoft has also managed to upset women and entire countries. A Spanish-language version of Windows XP, destined for Latin American markets, asked users to select their gender between "not specified," "male" or "bitch," because of an unfortunate error in translation." Ouch!"
This isn't the first time a huge company has made an embarassing translation error. There is that old classic when Ford introduced the Pinto in Brazil. After watching sales go nowhere, the company learned that "Pinto" is Brazilian slang for "small penis." Ford pried the nameplates off all of the cars and substituted them with "Corcel" which means horse.
This is a dupe. Too bad the editors don't bother checking the dupe email box.
Come one, come all, for the greatest dupe on earth... It's not the exact same article, but it's the exact same source materiel...
If I was low on Karma, I'm sure I could Karma Whore and just copy high scoring posts from the previous article...
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5316664.html
Looks like everyone else is a week behind the times...
-- Dave
up 12 days, 22:30, 2 users, load averages: 993.20, 994.21, 994.56
*makes note to limit user processes...
So long as they have the male option called 'Asshole', it is sort of like when you are at a theme restaurant and they have dude/cowgirl, actor/actress or similiar on the doors of their bathrooms. I believe in some places by law they have to put a picture as well, by some older ordinances that were there to protect the dignity of the illiterate farmers who were coming into urban areas for the first time and seeing a public restroom. I could be wrong.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
NEW DELHI: Just when the antitrust case went in sleeping mode, Microsoft managed to get into yet another fiasco. This time the software giant is hit by information misrepresentation or shall we say goof up.
The lack of multicultural savvy attitude cost the software giant millions of dollars.
Microsoft products have been banned in some of the biggest markets, including India because of eight wrongly colored pixels, a bad choice of music and a bad English-to-Spanish dictionary.
Tom Edwards, head of Microsoft's geopolitical strategy team told a conference in Glasgow, how one of the biggest companies in the world managed to offend one of the biggest countries in the world with a software slip-up, CNet Asia reported.
When coloring in 800,000 pixels on a map of India, Microsoft colored eight of them a different shade of green to represent the disputed Kashmiri territory. The difference in greens meant Kashmir was shown as non-Indian, and the product was promptly banned in India. Microsoft was left to recall all 200,000 copies of the offending Windows 95 operating system software to try and heal the diplomatic wounds. "It cost millions," Edwards said. If this was not enough, Microsoft used chanting of the Koran used as a soundtrack for a computer game, which led to great offence to the Saudi Arabia government. The company later issued a new version of the game without the chanting, while keeping the previous editions in circulation because US staff thought the slip wouldn't be spotted, but the Saudi government banned the game and demanded an apology. The game was then withdrawn.
The software giant managed to further offend the Saudis by creating another game in which Muslim warriors turned churches into mosques. That game was also withdrawn.
Microsoft has also managed to upset women and entire countries. A Spanish-language version of Windows XP, destined for Latin American markets, asked users to select their gender between "not specified," "male" or "bitch," because of an unfortunate error in translation.
Microsoft has also seen its unfortunate style of diplomacy have an effect in Korea, Kurdistan, Uruguay and to China--where a cartographical dispute saw Chinese employees hauled in front of the government.
Edwards said that staff members are now sent on geography courses to try to avoid such mishaps. "Some of our employees, however bright they may be, have only a hazy idea about the rest of the world," he said.
Old News for Nerds. Stuff that use to matter...
"Some of our employees, however bright they may be, have only a hazy idea about the rest of the world," he said." ... and this is different from the rest of America how exactly?
- Bachelorhood is the father of necessity.
The first 10 or so comments aren't quite clear to me.
wasnt the "All Your Base" generation of cliche caused by a lousy japanese->english translation? anyone have the complete original script to that scene from the game?
"...destined for Latin American markets, asked users to select their gender between "not specified," "male" or "bitch," because of an unfortunate error in translation."
I only speak english... could someone explain the problem with that translation?
Is you sure you want to delete this file?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
After duplicating a post 8 times, Slashdot found that the majority of readers flamed the story before setting fire to their servers in protest.
And now for a naked dwarf chasing a chihuahua...
how a small colouring mistake forced Microsoft to recall 200,000 copies of Windows 95.
I seem to recall getting a lot of blue from Win95, and yet nobody at Microsoft returned by calls when I told them I wanted a refund for their faulty OS...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Didn't we just do a similar article less than a week ago?
1 42 203&tid=109&tid=185
/. is supposed to have a hardon for everything anti-Microsoft, but this is getting lame.
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/19/
Yup, looks like we did. I know
And no, I am not new here.
The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.
A Spanish-language version of Windows XP, destined for Latin American markets, asked users to select their gender between "not specified," "male" or "bitch"
:)
Pretty bad when even the Slashdot crew knows thats not too smooth...
please keep in mind the 'bitch' problem is from people in central america using the SPANISH (IE, DESTINED FOR SPAIN) version of the OS...
its not microsofts fault that people in central america, use an OS destined for ANOTHER COUNTRY, and their words overlap into profanity.
anything to bash MS, eh slashdot?
A Spanish-language version of Windows XP, destined for Latin American markets, asked users to select their gender between "not specified," "male" or "bitch," because of an unfortunate error in translation.
This would only seem to be detrimental to MS, therfore beneficial to competing products (Linux, Mac, etc.).
We should just post every story repeatedly in case someone missed it the first time, or the second time, or seventy fourth time.
Same source, same headline, different day.
It's Groundhog Day!
"Doesn't Move" in Spanish. May be apocryphal.
Best Slashdot Co
Slashdot wouldn't be the same without the dupes
Fourty-two!
Daddypants is the e-mail address subscribers are supposed to send e-mail to if we notice a duplicate (or otherwise problematic) article is about to be posted. If the editors aren't going to bother to read Slashdot to see what has already been posted recently, why won't they at least check this e-mail account to see if anyone actually reports problems?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
8 pixels is nothing to be mad about. Microsoft has flooded Poland in win2k/xp. Just check the map in time zone setting. They didn't get banned here though. Seems they predicted how global warming affects Europe in the future.
This is not only a duplicate, it's a poorly written rip-off of the other article. While the other article (in the Register, I believe), was obviously anti-Microsoft, this tabloidish piece doesn't even fully explain the stories.
between flashy products and grim utalitarian products.
OS/2 2.0 caught a lot of crap from people because the icons and graphics were basic, simple with muted colors. What people didn't know was that those icons had been vetted through legal review, special-needs review (i.e. all the various forms of color blindness), internationalization (like pointing with the index finger is OK here, but bad in europe, etc).
By the time you get through all those reviews, most of "chimp attract" is gone.... so where along the continuium do you want your product to be?
--Rob
Qué género es usted? El Man, La Woman, o Los Unspecifieds?
More like debug-never-distribute-twice-or-more dept.
How could they possibly make such a simlpe mislake?
He'll double-punch your Starbucks coffee club card if you tip him well.
I managed to save a screenshot (well, actually HTML) of the pulled story, because everything (including my comment) disappeared. Check out my Journal entry about it. If you try replying to my comment in the Journal entry, you get a message like:
Submitted Comment
There was an unknown error in the submission
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
"...farmers who were coming into urban areas for the first time and seeing a public restroom."
You don't call taking a crap in the middle of 110 acres of knee-high DeKalb XL a public restroom?
You got some growing up to do sonny boy.
Its India, for having weird anti-free-speech laws that ban inadvertent mistakes or differing opinions. What kind of crap is that? In the US and probably most other free western countries I could publish software that says India is part of China and that the US owns Kashmir. Just nobody would use it. on the other hand, in the US, most folks wouldn't know the difference. and yes its a dupe.
So yeah... dupe!
I especially love the subtitle of this story: "from the debug-twice-distribute-once dept."
Perhaps it should have been from Slashdot's "post-twice-spellcheck-zero-times dept."
--------------------
this space left intentionally blank
Writing Software for a Worldwide Distribution Proves Difficult
Or see article
Daniel Jackson: Deja Vu?
Jack O'Neill: Deja Vu?
Daniel Jackson: Deja Vu?
Wouldnt 'tripe' be more descriptive? =)
Here.
At $5 a CD (a whopping $1 for printing and $4 for recall & distribution ,,the $4 is on the high side because distro costs in india are actually dirt cheap)
.. tax write off.
How could this have cost millions??
Oh I get it
I don't see how you can guarantee this kind of thing won't happen in a global company without spending even more millions and restricting creative freedom. Stuff like changing the contents of encyclopedias to accomodate local political doctrine is a nightmare (wikipedia ain't gonna erase disputed Kashmir borders, eliminate reference to Falun Gong or erase Israel from the maps for example), and typos happen in translation, it's just that most of them don't get as serious as woman = bitch, internationalization is already expensive to the point where often English is the default and translation is not done. Most computer games offend someone somewhere, heck in the USA some folks want to ban games for their content never mind Saudi Arabia, are you going to just not distribute or change the content to the lowest common denominator? We'd all be back to playing pong.
mitsubishi pajero (pajero == wanker in spanish, and renault megane (megane == eye glasses in japanese).
Why does the OS needs to know the gender of the user? let's quit calling windows an OS it's obviously more then that.
in other news:
How could they possibly make such a simlpe mislake?
> 4, Didn't know that "woman" in one dialect of Spanish means "bitch" in another.
My understanding is that the word that they used was "hembra", which is the word used to describe the female gender in animals, not in humans.
Although I personally waste no occasion to poke fun and humiliate the despicable MS, the truth is that when the Spanish first drafted their 1978 constitution, they did use that term - which was replaced by "mujer" on the authority of literature Nobel laureate Camilo José Cela.
Ford Pinto was introduced in the USA in 1970, while Ford Corcel was introduced in Brazil in 1968. The Corcel was actually a Renault design, made under license by Willys in Brazil. Ford in Brazil merged with Willys in 1968. They made a "Ford Jeep" for several years in Brazil.
Pinto means simply "dick". Of, course an "american pinto" clearly indicates a small one.
"Come alive with the pepsi generation" in chinese became "pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave"
"Got Milk?" in spanish became "Are you lactating?"
Pentium 4 chip became the korean "Chip of Death"
Purdue's "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken" in spanish became "It takes a hard man to make a chicken aroused"
Even if a mistake cost millions for Microsoft, Bill Gates probably has lost that much in his couch cushions.
Sure, it's fun to point out Microsoft's follies and they don't run the company the most ethical way possible, but from a competitive standpoint they are brutally efficient.
Sounds like more of a problem with India than with microsoft.
Kind of like blaming MS when palestine gets pissed of because they have a map of Isreal or China getting pissed off because they have the Tawianian flag in their software.
If this was not enough, Microsoft used chanting of the Koran used as a soundtrack for a computer game, which led to great offence to the Saudi Arabia government. The company later issued a new version of the game without the chanting, while keeping the previous editions in circulation because US staff thought the slip wouldn't be spotted, but the Saudi government banned the game and demanded an apology. The game was then withdrawn. The software giant managed to further offend the Saudis by creating another game in which Muslim warriors turned churches into mosques. That game was also withdrawn. Does anyone know the title of the two games the article mentions?
I guess if Microsoft didn't do anything this week to offend the local readership, I guess it's acceptable to just bring up something from eight years ago and get everyone motivated. Jeez, Microsoft has some done some pretty deplorable things in the business world but this was simply a mistake.
MOD PARENT DOWN.. this is a copy from the previous article.
I need to axe you a question. Is you sure yous wants to be delet'n dat file?
This has been on news.com for ages
I wouldn't mind if slashdot has gone back in time 3-4 days and showed this story
But its not exactly new..
"WebTV: bringing the Internet into the shallow end of the gene pool since 1995" - Martin Bishop
This post was copied from the previous article.
irb(main):001:0>
While the stories are funny and the point is well made, I am confused about this:
:)
Microsoft products have been banned in some of the biggest markets, including India because of eight wrongly colored pixels . . .
When coloring in 800,000 pixels on a map of India, Microsoft colored eight of them a different shade of green to represent the disputed Kashmiri territory. The difference in greens meant Kashmir was shown as non-Indian, and the product was promptly banned in India. Microsoft was left to recall all 200,000 copies of the offending Windows 95 operating system software to try and heal the diplomatic wounds. "It cost millions," Edwards said.
Er, if the region is disputed by both India and Pakistant, how is coloring them differently than undisputed India and Pakistan a wrong thing to do? One of those countries is going to be upset no matter which color is chosen, so the fair thing is to irritate them both by making the disputed region an entirely different color than both disputing countries.
Seems MS was at least nodding to India by making the disputed region a different shade of the same color used for India. So I'd think India would be pleased. Presumably Pakistan was a different color entirely, so I'd expect Pakistant to be complaining here instead of India.
Is it that Pakistan buys fewer copies of MS products so they don't matter?
AFAIK the area is still disputed. How is it "right" to have software take sides in any political dispute?
Then again, this is an indiatimes.com article. I see some potential for bias on this issue
everything in moderation
HEY! It's a dupe comment, in the dupe article, that's great. I bet this comment is going to get modded up to +5 (again)
+1 sarcastic
Here's hoping Christmas Island's Bob Goatse wins the wrestling medal.
We all know Microsoft's engineering is mediocre. They are known for their marketing strength and muscle. With all this marketing you would think they can take care to map disputed territories with some sensitivity. You would think they could understand the language nuances from country to country. They certainly have the money to afford to do this!
Religion is the main cause of atheism.
This all reminds me of the hubbub about the Taiwanese flag in an old version of RedHat. I think their solution was to simply stop using flags, period.
I always get the shakes before a drop.
So now Microsoft is taking the fall for America's lacklustre level of cultural awareness. Companies do this all the time, and I'm only surprised that Microsoft havent done this a lot more, when you think of the amount of products and services it provides across the globe.
I like the way the article neglets to inform us which part of Windows 95 was to blame, or which game(s) were causing offence. Perhaps things would suddenly become understandable and cause the article to lose some of it's bashing impact had these details been presented.
The only map I can think of in '95 was the for setting the timezone, and as I remember all of that map was the same shade of green. It does sound a bit bitchy to make kashmir a special exception, so I'd like to know what part of Win95 this map was actually in, and whether other parts of the world had special shades of green too.
To see how Microsoft really feels, read this excerpt from http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,128 5890,00.html
For example when employees were arrested in Turkey because Kurdistan had been shown as a separate entity on maps of the country, a decision was taken to remove Kurdistan from all maps.
"Of course we offended Kurds by doing this but we had offended the Turks more and they were a much more important market for our products. It was a hard commercial decision, not political."
Sigs are for lusers. Hey! wait a second...
In the 1960's, what we now know as Exxon was called Enco. When they started expanding globally, they had a big misstep in Japan: the Japanese translation of "enco" is "broken-down car."
bp
Come on editors, this is getting really silly: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/19/142 203&tid=109&tid=185 is there any effort made at all to make sure that dupes (especially those within a week) are not posted?
Yes, Most people call them Anonymous Cowards.
I don't see the logic of giving the example of an error with WinXP to demonstrate that "This wouldn't be the first time that has happened.." after talking about an error with Win95.
That NubKnacker fellow must have some different perception of the concept of time than i do. =o
Kinda goes with the territory on this one then, doesn't it? Dupe story with dupe comments. That's funny on so many levels.
Pong is offensive as it encourges violence by depicting two large rectangles beating up a small square.
>
s/t
Then some marketing exec with no knowledge of american slang would try to sell us a small car called the Choad.
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
How about Comodore having to rename the VIC-20 in Germany...
News for Old Nerds. Stuff from yesterday we forgot about already.
Beware of the source. I came across another article from their site earlier this morning and I'm perplexed as to how they can be considered a credible news source. Check out their article on programmers outsourcing their own jobs if you need a good laugh. They took a comment that was posted on Slashdot awhile back from some guy who was joking about how he had outsourced his own job to India and not only did they treat this guy's post as a reliable news source, but they also extrapolated it into claims of this practice being the hot new trend. It's quite bizarre. I wish I could find the original comment because I remember reading it and laughing at the time, but Google isn't turning it up for some reason.
a little thing called Windows ME.
HAND.
Nope, "bitch" in Portuguese is "cadela" (brazilians tend to use "cachorra", but in both cases it means bitch, never girl or woman). The issue is a slightly different one. In Portugal, we use several words for "girl": "menina", "moça", "rapariga", "miúda", etc.
;-)
;-)
One of the most common ones is "rapariga" (feminin of "rapaz", which means "lad"). In Brazil, "rapariga" is usually used to describe a prostitute (although technically it means the same - a young woman).
A more interesting word is "puto". In standard Portuguese, it means "kid" (boy). In brazilian Portuguese it means "male prostitute". So, as you can imagine, when a portuguese writer (Altino Tojal) published a book called "Os putos" ("The kids"), in the 1970s, the brazilians thought Portugal (then a religious dictatorship!) was a really open society...
The feminin ("puta") does mean the same in both dialects.
Another interesting word is "Durex". In Brazil, it means sticky tape. In Portugal everyone knows it as a condom brand (although Control is more popular, and if you've used both, you know why). A couple of years ago, a (female) brazilian friend of mine came to Portugal, and needed some tape. She went to an office supply store and asked for "some Durex". The woman behind the counter looked at her as if she was some sort of nut and told her "well, if you want Durex, go to the chemist's!". She found this rather odd, but did as she was told. She walked into a pharmacy and asked for Durex. The chemist said "what type?", and she said "well, any type will do, I really need it quickly". The chamist said "well, what amount do you want?". Se held her hands about 70 cm apart and said "well, a piece about this big".
True story.
RMN
~~~
Olds For Nerds
Can we have a forumcode that says "just go back and read my comments from the last 2 times this story was posted"?
Or, for slashdot editors:
Can we have a forumcode that says "just go back and read my comments from the last 2 times this story was posted"?
Can we have a forumcode that says "just go back and read my comments from the last 2 times this story was posted"?
Can we have a forumcode that says "just go back and read my comments from the last 2 times this story was posted"?
Can we have a forumcode that says "just go back and read my comments from the last 2 times this story was posted"?
-Styopa
This is the 3rd time this story has been on /. .
The second dupe happend on the same day;
a few hours after the original story was posted.
It's not clear to me how "bitch" can mean "female". Someone I used to work with called his guy friends "bitches".
If they're working on the localised versions, I should bloody well expect that they know the language and culture of the country they're trying to sell to.
At least this time, Microsoft only offended a country (India), instead of offending every single Jewish person on the planet!
8 242.shtml to see exactly how Microsoft managed that one..
See http://www.usethesource.com/articles/04/02/11/125
from the debug-twice-distribute-once dept.
When they started selling the Nissan Pajero in Spain they found out that Pajero in Spanish means Wanker.
Or the Mistcurler - in German mist means manure. Not something I'd wish to stick in my hair.
-- Put crudely, the world is an extremely large problem instance. (Russel/Norvig Artificial Intelligence)
The "bitch" translation error was due to the fact that the same word means "woman" in some regional dialects and "bitch" in others. This is clearly a forgiveable mistake.
I mean, what kind of culture actually uses the terms "woman" and "bitch" interchangeably?
Oh, wait...
Microsoft has flooded Poland in win2k/xp. Just check the map in time zone setting. They didn't get banned here though
Flooding isn't quite the same as saying that part of your land belongs to a different country.
I'm sure that there would have been quite an uproar if (for example) the map showed everything west of Warsaw as being part of Germany.
the story is covered in detail on http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/news/0,12597,1286 066,00.html/
I sumitted this story atleast 3 days back and as usual for me it was rejected ;-) Keep it up GODs ;-) - I will get you some day.
Luckily Mitsubishi was smart enough to not sell Mitsubishi Pajero under that name in spanish speaking countries.
1 Earth is warming, 2 It's us, 3 it's royally bad, 4 we need to take action NOW
IMHO, one reason why there are so many duplicate stories in Slashdot is that the search engine is pretty bad. Or is is just me ? I could hardly ever find what I was looking for with the /. search form. I am not bitching (no pun intended), I just wonder if this could be improved ...
Or for those of you who don't speak Stephen King,
Same Shit, Different Day
Feloneous
I'm sure someone else said this someplace else...
IANAL, but I've seen actors play them on TV
Not as bad as Honda Fitta...
He says your new sense of humor is ready.
Maybe that's because they outsourced it to India.. Oh, wait...
how long until
When I was 8, we moved from England to Canada. When starting school, I went to a stationary store, and asked the clerk for a rubber.
(In England, a rubber is an eraser. In North America, a rubber is a condom.)
Starting NOW! :)
Hmmm.
"Some of our employees, however bright they may be, have only a hazy idea about the rest of the world," he said.
Sounds like average Americans to me...
I wish to call on the slashdot people to change the icon for microsoft. I find that portraying one of it's founders and current top executives as a Borg insulting to the maturity of people here. Simply use the actual microsoft logo or something that just says "microsoft" if there are legal problems with their trademark.
I'm not trying to make this a serious conservative website about tech news and opinions, but a lot of us are open source advocates and the community is represented somewhat on this website. This site has a responsibility to the OSS community and while this Borg icon may have seemed funny years ago, I think the joke is on us now.
And while people may say how microsoft bashes linux and opensource openly, that doesn't mean we should in turn bash them with an icon. All this anti-microsoft does is give credibility to their argument that open source projects are managed and supported by a bunch of geeks in their basements, and not hardworking, intelligent companies.
Reading over the list of offenses, looks like MS ran afoul of the same virulent nationist quasi religious extremism anybody else might have. OK, the "bitch" thing is a different kind of problem.
OT -- So far, I have not read many serious posts in this thread. I imagine people are afraid of sparking religio-political flame wars by speaking plainly. That in itself is interesting, don't you think?
=^..^= all your rodent are belong to us
Isn't it the truth though? Aren't we all microsoft's bitches? Microsoft, at this point could just just do a massive search and replace in their software, changing the word user to bitch all over the place.
WECLOME BITCH, TO WINDOWS XP SP3
Don't expect much, don't get much, but send us all your money.
Try typing "NYC" in a couple of Microsoft fonts, wingdings and webdings.
I don't care how they try and dodge it. If you look at one of those two fonts, maybe, but not both of them. MS had themselves a practical joker.
The Mitsubishi Pajero problably didn't sell to well in Spain... pajero means wanker in Spanish
How 8 Slashdot Editors Don't Read Slashdot
Thinking about this as a tester, some project teams seem to welcome a little out of the box thinking as creative quality input, others could care less about anything other than obvious spec variance or crashes.
I wonder if some geography-aware tester might have spotted the Kashmir error and reported it, and what might have happened as a result. So did anyone notice this along the way, was it reported, was it rejected?
I suspect the odds of acceptance would probably near zero, would likely have been blown off as 'by design' or 'testing out of scope'.
Windows 95 was a product that was probably sold in India eight or nine years ago. It is not a big deal right now. Also, theeconomictimes has many times in the past carried computer-related articles that are published in other news websites a day or two before. They have a major indian presence and very less international presence. This was actually discussed on slashdot.org after which theeconomictimes picked it up a few days later. Someone picked it up from theeconomic times and posted it on ./
Is someone here trying to draw a circle ?
That's evidence that not everyone reads Snopes, or has ever heard of it. It's obvious that there are publishers, including _Red Herring_ and _Industry Week_, which use editors who don't read Snopes, including the GetCustoms.com reprinter of Industry Week, who's just repeating the same myth that you perpetuate yourself. Just like you're perpetuating the whitewash Hutton commission which smokescreened Blair's lying about Iraqi WMDs with the BBC.
The difference between the Snopes accounts, and these others, is that Snopes includes evidence countering wrong facts in the myths. Of course all media, including word of mouth, is suspect. But we can tell which are true, or at least more accurate, by attempting corroboration of independent sources. When corroboration fails, we can rely on the principle of factual consistency more than politically and economically dependent reports.
--
make install -not war
This is the *third* time this story has been posted :).
How about if Slashdot gave compensation to all us subscribers when their editors screw up again?
I read this story 3 days ago in "News Letter", a Northern Irish newsletter, when i was on holiday.
In Central American Spanish "male and female" can be translated to "macho y hembra" or "masculino y femenino". "Macho y hembra" refer mostly to animals, while "masculino y femenino" are used with humans, and are considered correct when used in, say, a fill out form. "Hembra", while not strictly a profanity sounds very rude when used on women.
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
Wrong, Bitch! "Anonymous Coward" is reserved for /. readers who don't wish to tarnish their respectable reputation...
Damn bitches, trying to make a funny...
"The software giant managed to further offend the Saudis by creating another game in which Muslim warriors turned churches into mosques."
The Muslims do turn churches into mosques. You can't blame MS for that.
EOM.
Well, maybe I should be positive and think that this means if I miss a news item one week, I can still catch it the next.......
For example, cojer means "to pick up", but in mexico it means "to have sexual relations with". You can swing by to cojer your friends in most countries, but your Mexican buddies will probably object. (Acutally, I don't don't know if this is true for Northern Mexico, not having been there). There are literally thousands of similar examples -- be very careful asking shop keepers if they have eggs!
Since the language is extremely variable over even short geographic distances, it would be VERY difficult to provide Spanish-Language versions of your software that didn't offend someone.
For the record, I believe the word in question here is "hembra" - which means "female" most places, but can be derogatory in others.
Welcome back, my friends, to the dupe that never ends...
Ask them what the word "borders" means, and some might get that wrong too.
Apparently.
The right story is Chevy Nova. "No va" meaning "does not go".
They speak Hispanic.
there is no right way to draw that particular line.
That is 'disputed territory'. Pakistan and India both claim it. If they had colored that space in to be part of India, this same article would have appeared, almost verbatim, in www.paknews.com/. So, maybe you have to choose...literally not being able to please both, who do you piss off?
or, you could piss off both, and use a 3rd color for that area.
I seem to recall that the webdings font was intentionally done that way because of the random faux pas with the wingdings font. What if it was TCP that did that or ASP, or MSF, or RFC, or any other TLAs out there. regardless of the actual lettering used there would be the conspiracy theorists out there who would see the use of any TLA to produce that character combination in wingdings as a conspiracy by MS. just like the Q33NY "message".
In Italy there is a dish called pasta putanesca (litterally "prostitute-style pasta"). I used to work at a cafeteria which served this dish and also had many foreign students.
The Italians knew the dish and enjoyed it. The students from Latin America, however, had a tendency of gathering together and laughing at our signs....
In PHB style, when I brought this to the attention of the management, they blamed me.....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
This sounds like a reasonable mistake, as it did the first few times it was posted. So what does Gnome/KDE do? Just assume male? :o)
"penne a la putanesca" prostitute-style penis"
Would they be wrong if they said The Bahamas?
If one wants to get really technical about it... Every country borders every other country because the embassy of a country is actual territory of that country inside another country's capital.
But I will concede that Americans are dumber than other people around the world who have the same lifestyle and level of income. Peasants are stupid and superstitious, wherever they live and regardless of whether they're driving SUVs and 4x4s. America just has more rich dumb peasants than any other country (" We's numba one! ").
Although having lived in the USA for a long time, I'm not convinced that the Americans are really as dumb as everyone else claims that they are. Many people who claim that they couldn't find the Pacific ocean on a map still have memorized thousands of sport statistics.
Ask most Americans a vague question and you will get a vague answer. We touch neither Russia nor Cuba, so whether we border those countries or not depends on your definition of "border". You have decided for everyone else that border means within a certain radius of a physical land mass belonging to the United States. I might subscribe to the definition of border as any country that touches one of our land borders. So, it's not really sad, as long as they can point out Mexico and Canada.
In what game was it that "Muslim warriors turned churches into mosques"? Without more evidence, I have a hard time believing Microsoft would create such a product.
What has *science* done?!? -- Dr. Weird (ATHF)
I wondered why, when selecting my location to adjust the time zone with Windows 95, I could click my country on the map; but with Windows 98 and latter, I have to pick my location with the selection box.
When did 70 miles off the coast beome a border? And the number I always hear is 90 miles to Cuba. If your going to be a holier-then-thou dick, at least get it right. And the reason most Americans don't know geography is because we don't give a shit. America is BIG, really big, and if your somewhere in the middle, wtf good does geography do you? For that matter, knowledge of geography is a lot less important when other people come to you, instead of the other way around.
I think you're being generous. When this story only had about 50 replies I recognised one of them from the previous time the same story was posted, so I went off to find the original. Searching for "Faulkland" in the original comments yielded no hits, so I tried searching for "bitch". Still no hits. There must have been at least 100 comments which should have been hits.
Long, long time ago I had to add French, German, & Spanish translations to an arcade game Midway produced called 280-Zzzap. (It was a "night-driving" game).
The program would rate the player's driving skills on a 1 to 5 scale. In French, the worst performance phrase was "reprendre la école", which means "go back to school". Since the game font did not have a circumflex in it, I put the phrase in as "reprendre la ecole".
The rough translation of this in French is "you're a cunt!".
We had to rev the ROMs and make sure we shipped the bad ones only to the US, England, Germany, and Spain!
Just like the Mitsubishi Pajero, which means something like wanker in spanish. but afaik it was sold under a different name in spanish-speaking regions.
Microsoft has also seen its unfortunate style of diplomacy have an effect in Korea, Kurdistan, Uruguay and to China--where a cartographical dispute saw Chinese employees hauled in front of the government.
What does my country in south america to make a diplomatic between korea, kurdistand and china, that in a way or another are somewhat close?
Seems to be closer the "WWIII: Microsoft style". A good example where with great power one don't give a shit about the great responsibility.
I hope this doesn't get modded down to "Flamebait".
Can someone help my understand why people in India and Pakistan are so
touchy about Kashmir? I really want to understand this. Sorry if the
mere asking of this question offends anyone. That is not my intent.
All I know is what I saw in the "Gandhi" movie. It seems very sad that
there is still conflict more than 50 years later...
Also a myth, however, as the Nova was never marketed in Latin America. Cheers!
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
It's true but Nova still has the same meaning as in English.
"I think this line is mostly filler"
...is KIA, dotmil jargon for "killed in action".
Actually Russia and Cuba are separated by International waters. You might as well say that we border the United Kingdom, Portugal, etc.
You're welcome.
I'd argue your point, but then I'd only be contributing to pointless political diatribe in a thread which doesn't have anything to do with it, or at least not the particular topic that you chose.
My Brazilian girlfriend says Pinto has no reference to the size of penis. It's just slang for penis.
Nowadays there's no way to be an expert on every subject that might affect your life. Farmers in the middle of the country know farm equipment and the crops they grow. They may not know much about the tech industry, but just like we leave the food growing to them, they leave that to us. Specialization is what allows us as a society to achieve truly great things. However... Certain tidbits of information such as, "Where your ass is with respect to the planet." are arguably good for everyone to know, diplomat, farmer, and engineer alike.
I haven't seen the Microsoft India map, so I can't tell what they should have done, but with multiple countries disputing the political status of various territories, is there any way you can draw a political map that doesn't offend anyone? Some maps specifically point out which territories are disputed, trying to take a "neutral" stance between the conflicting parties, but will they still stir up emotions for merely recognizing the conflict? Is the solution really to present different "facts" to different audiences?
Among the school books I have saved is a world atlas, printed around 1970. Long after I left school, I found a small note on the African map pointing out that South-West Africa (today Namibia) was "illegally occupied by South Africa" or something to that effect, and I was a bit surprised by the strong language. In the same atlas, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were depicted as just any other republic of the USSR. It turned out that the atlas was printed in Berlin, by an East German publisher (though entirely in Swedish). When I first studied American maps of Europe, I saw a similar note about the Soviet annexation of the Baltic republics not being recognized by the United States.
No matter how or where you turn, one man's fact will be somebody else's myth. Good thing governments don't get to define where the coastlines are, or physical maps would be politically biased too.
In Slashdot's haste to obsessively bash Microsoft, they reposted the mistranslation article when the other one was still on the front page. It was removed after about 10 minutes. Here we see it appear yet again in a new form. Why? To meet the daily quota of "laugh at Microsoft", I guess.
rhymes with 'Fozzie'. Those are voiced sibilants.
GENERAL PUBLIC SIGNATURE (GPS) Any replies (derivatives) of this post must also use the GPS
Looks like the origional can be found at
http://news.com.com/2100-1014_3-5316664.html
and there is no source citation in the Indian Times. Maybe I am wrong though.
Flamebait? Flamebaiting who exactly?
I thought India's policy to Pakistan was the old US-Soviet Mutually Assured Destruction writ small. So their official government position *requires* that they have:
1) Nukes
2) The willingness to use them
Geesh... Next thing you know referring to body temperature as 98.6 degrees will be flamebait because of those delicate European sensibilities that will be offended.
--Rob
Macho / Hembra = male/female applied to animals. Masulino / Femenino = generic male/female So, I think what Microsoft got wrong in here was that they translated "female" to "hembra". And saying a woman is an "hembra" is just about the same than saying she's an animal. i.e. bitch. But honestly, we do need TRUE LOCALIZATION, not a stupid encarta-like dictionary. I've seen many mistranslations in american products. Like using "vosotros" (Iberic term for "you") instead of "ustedes" (latin american term for "you"). Hey what am I complaining about? It's Microsoft - they won't listen to suggestions anyway.
How much of international waters can you squeeze into the 2.5 mile strait that separates the Diomede Islands from each other? Ok, it's not a land boundary, but a maritime one, so maybe it doesn't count anyway. Now look for a weird case in Malaysia, two parts of the same country divided by international waters (somewhat like Hawaii and mainland USA), each sharing land boundaries with two other countries (not at all like Hawaii)...
the Pinto is an acronym... Practically Impossible Not To Oxplode
Anyone got screenshots of the 'bitch'
mishap ? Would make a good screensaver
or something.
Notice that there was no recall to lock-down the netbios features.... lol, evil bastards.
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
Those Morons probably read an earlier post and did not realise that it was a sarcastic rant. This Times of India (the largest Indian Newspaper) has become a blemish on Indian journalism. Not all Indian papers are this bad. This is just another instance of the TOI web edition http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ trying to create sensational news and attract viewers. They usually resort to more straight forward means such as putting up photos of fine looking women ;-)
this story had me falling on the floor with laughter. Thanks for the good laugh.
Looks like Billy Gates and the XP team watch their fair share of Dave Chappelle.
Haven't we already seen this story on slashdot just a few days ago.
Come on now. I guess it must go like this.
EDITOR: muhahahahaw! We will Get them!
INTERN: How so grand master pumba?!?!
EDITOR: We will post a dup and make them all beg for more!!!! MUHAHAHAHAW!
INTERN: Yes sir. by Jolly I belive you have it there. the secret to CmdrTaco's Success!
j/k
A previous version of MS IE (was it 5.x?) that had the spinning globe throbber alternating with the 'e' only showed the Americas and Europe. It never showed Asia nor Australasia. As an australian this really pissed me off. Thankfully it's been changed.
I write here to inform you of the really quite shocking actions being
perpetuated by the UK cinema chain Odeon against a disabled Scottish
boy Matthew Somerville.
9 year old Matthew suffers from the rare, medically unknown condition
of "Shatner's Palsy" which corrodes un-oxygenated body tissue. Doctors
work hard on a cure, but admit to the possibility of a fatal remission
within 70 years. Despite this, Matthew continues to brighten the lives
of everyone he meets.
Incredibly, despite having weak arms, he is still able to operate a
computer using a deviously constructed input device, consisting of a
covered spherical ball and a pair of single-pole-single-throw latches.
Resting his scrawny hand on the tool, any small movements are converted
to gigabyte digital input signals.
The disabled boy constructed a special film portal for the disabled.
It was very popular, receiving over 20 "hits" a month. Webmaster
experts based at Durham University examined his JavaScript code using
remote debugging techniques and proclaimed it "fully polymorphic,
slightly recursive and 100% XML ready".
Despite this, Odeon cinemas have ordered him to "cease and desist"
using the recently enacted European Millennium Copyright Act (EMCA) to
copyright the notion of "film discussion" by a person and/or persons
"without full limb mobility". They have demanded his website is put in
the Windows XP recycle bin, and insisted "it should then be emptied".
This cannot be allowed to happen. The disabled should have almost as
many rights as normal people, at least with regard to discussing films.
Luckily for us, people power works, and that's where you come in.
How can you help disabled boy Matthew Somerville?
a) Email Odeon customer support (info@odeonuk.com) and tell them you are
boycotting their chain (Rocky 6 excepted) while they continue
their legal actions against disabled boys.
b) Email Odeon UK chairman Luke Vetere (lvetere@odeonuk.com) and insist
that the website be retrieved from the recycle bin, wiped clean, and
uploaded back onto the UK internet web system using FTP packet protocols.
c) Email and post this message to everybody you know (several times), and
on every "blog" site you can find.
In addition, why not join Matthew in his separate quest to enter the
"Guinness Book of Records" with the record of "largest collection of
used cinema ticket stubs". Matthew is aiming for over a thousand.
Send them, perhaps with a letter of encouragement to
Matthew Somerville
Guinness Record Attempt
109 Eastern Drive
Edinburgh
EH7 1DA
Remember, only by working together can we can beat an evil law, and
brighten the failing heart of a young disabled angel.
PPl actually read this. Okee. bye /.
-- forget
We write here to inform you of the really quite shocking actions being
perpetuated by the UK cinema chain Odeon against a disabled Scottish
boy Matthew Somerville.
9 year old Matthew suffers from the rare, medically unknown condition
of "Shatner's Palsy" which corrodes un-oxygenated body tissue. Doctors
work hard on a cure, but admit to the possibility of a fatal remission
within 70 years. Despite this, Matthew continues to brighten the lives
of everyone he meets.
Incredibly, despite having weak arms, he is still able to operate a
computer using a deviously constructed input device, consisting of a
covered spherical ball and a pair of single-pole-single-throw latches.
Resting his scrawny hand on the tool, any small movements are converted
to gigabyte digital input signals.
The disabled boy constructed a special film portal for the disabled.
It was very popular, receiving over 20 "hits" a month. Webmaster
experts based at Durham University examined his JavaScript code using
remote debugging techniques and proclaimed it "fully polymorphic,
slightly recursive and 100% XML ready".
Despite this, Odeon cinemas have ordered him to "cease and desist"
using the recently enacted European Millennium Copyright Act (EMCA) to
copyright the notion of "film discussion" by a person and/or persons
"without full limb mobility". They have demanded his website is put in
the Windows XP recycle bin, and insisted "it should then be emptied".
This cannot be allowed to happen. The disabled should have almost as
many rights as normal people, at least with regard to discussing films.
Luckily for us, people power works, and that's where you come in.
How can you help disabled boy Matthew Somerville?
a) Email Odeon customer support (info@odeonuk.com) and tell them you are
boycotting their chain (Rocky 6 excepted) while they continue
their legal actions against disabled boys.
b) Email Odeon UK chairman Luke Vetere (lvetere@odeonuk.com) and insist
that the website be retrieved from the recycle bin, wiped clean, and
uploaded back onto the UK internet web system using FTP packet protocols.
c) Email and post this message to everybody you know (several times), and
on every "blog" site you can find.
In addition, why not join Matthew in his separate quest to enter the
"Guinness Book of Records" with the record of "largest collection of
used cinema ticket stubs". Matthew is aiming for over a thousand.
Send them, perhaps with a letter of encouragement to
Matthew Somerville
Guinness Record Attempt
109 Eastern Drive
Edinburgh
EH7 1DA
Remember, only by working together can we can beat an evil law, and
brighten the failing heart of a young disabled angel.
why are obvious non slashdot readers allowed to submit stories anyways? it seems the people to blame are those submitting the dupes. If they read slashdot they would know the damn thing was the third dupe
did you forget to take your meds?
But sometimes you can see an imported one... Laughs for kids
My first post got modded down, but seriously, how does Linux/KDE/Gnome handle this? Has Linux been banned anywhere because of similar issues? I've seen several usability articles posted, but what about cultural references?
And I can keep doing it...
That one was a real stretch, though, and bullshit. That was like, someone looking at the font and trying to come up with a string that would create the visual message.
Whatever about the subject of this story, having such a glaring error on the map (that's presumably gone unchanged from goodness knows when - win 3.1?) REALLY means Microsoft should hang their heads in shame. Man, if Ireland was missing for example, I'd be rightly %&*^ed off.
Wow, I really can't believe this. Someone confirm to me that it's a new map only around since 2K as suggested by the parent post!
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
It wasn't unreasonable to use "hembra" for female; the standard Spanish translation of the Bible itself uses "varon y hembra" in Genesis for "male and female". From what I understand, it was only in one country where "hembra" is used disparagingly.
But of course we shoul argue over colo[u]r!! Spelling is IMPORTANT!
;-\
The word is spelt colour: only a [blank] would spell it color. - Damn, I just did it myself.
TTFN.
people in the Caribbean (UFWI?). Then we can sue MS and their suffocatingly inaccurate MS Encarta trash... uh encyclopedia that has everyone thinking 90% of us speak Creole.
Creole = French creole. No they don't speak it in Jamaica and a bunch of other countries.
I am going to call it Dickens Cider after the Bob & Tom skit. Because women always love a big Dickens Cider!
It's true that the Spanish word "coger" can mean to pick up something or someone, or it can mean to have intercourse with someone, it all dependes on context. But the same can be said of the English word "screw." Fact is, all languages have words whose meanings depend on the way they're used.
It seems to me incredible that a company as big as Microsoft would not have on staff a native Spanish speaker to check their translations. It's not that hard to find a Spanish-speaking person in the US. I guess it's a reflection on how much they value their non-English speaking customers.
In the line of bad translation or cultural mistakes done by big company there's this one from here in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. When they released the movie "The Cell" featuring J.Lo in DVD and video, all you could see in the rental clubs were walls covered with J.Lo's face bearing the title "La Cellule".
Thing is, Cellule is the name we give dumb girl around here, all in the look none in the brain, damn they translated it alright!
Well obviously the problem was the size. In New Zealand there is a town proudly named "Urenui", which means "big penis", along with the school and shops etc.. I wonder if that will count against passing legislation to make street signs bilingual :-)
The guy was writing about Brazil. While it's true, "No Va" means "It doesn't go" in Spanish, this probably wouldn't mean jack to anyone in Brazil - because they speak Portuguese!
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
And "nova" in portuguese means "new", in the female form (novo being the male form). A nova can also be a star, just like in english.
NEW DELHI: Just when the antitrust case went in sleeping mode, Microsoft managed to get into yet another fiasco. This time the software giant is hit by information misrepresentation or shall we say goof up.
The lack of multicultural savvy attitude cost the software giant millions of dollars.
Microsoft products have been banned in some of the biggest markets, including India because of eight wrongly colored pixels, a bad choice of music and a bad English-to-Spanish dictionary.
Tom Edwards, head of Microsoft's geopolitical strategy team told a conference in Glasgow, how one of the biggest companies in the world managed to offend one of the biggest countries in the world with a software slip-up, CNet Asia reported.
When coloring in 800,000 pixels on a map of India, Microsoft colored eight of them a different shade of green to represent the disputed Kashmiri territory. The difference in greens meant Kashmir was shown as non-Indian, and the product was promptly banned in India. Microsoft was left to recall all 200,000 copies of the offending Windows 95 operating system software to try and heal the diplomatic wounds. "It cost millions," Edwards said.
If this was not enough, Microsoft used chanting of the Koran used as a soundtrack for a computer game, which led to great offence to the Saudi Arabia government. The company later issued a new version of the game without the chanting, while keeping the previous editions in circulation because US staff thought the slip wouldn't be spotted, but the Saudi government banned the game and demanded an apology. The game was then withdrawn.
The software giant managed to further offend the Saudis by creating another game in which Muslim warriors turned churches into mosques. That game was also withdrawn.
Microsoft has also managed to upset women and entire countries. A Spanish-language version of Windows XP, destined for Latin American markets, asked users to select their gender between "not specified," "male" or "bitch," because of an unfortunate error in translation.
Microsoft has also seen its unfortunate style of diplomacy have an effect in Korea, Kurdistan, Uruguay and to China--where a cartographical dispute saw Chinese employees hauled in front of the government.
Edwards said that staff members are now sent on geography courses to try to avoid such mishaps. "Some of our employees, however bright they may be, have only a hazy idea about the rest of the world," he said.
You have lived in spain for 14 years?
If you in think spanish, you automatically relate 'Nova' to 'No va'. Especially if it's a car. Or a computer, or something the like.
It means 'Doesnt work', btw, not 'No go'.
Hey, my buddy is a mechanician, y si dice que el coche no va, pues no va y punto.
Nevertheless, I very much doubt that anyone would not buy a car called 'Doesntwork', as a lot of people here drive 'Wankers' (Pajero, Mitsubushi). Friggin wanker's car! Haha! That is way funnier man..
-Steels
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That should have been modded as insightful.
It almost seems obvious that Microsoft is lacking a QA department. Unless their QA department is employed by a bunch of monkeys...Oh wait, the monkeys would have caught the problem.
"Happily lived Mankind in the peaceful Valley of Ignorance." -- Hendrik Willem Van Loon
My Brazilian girlfriend
Well, you're an anonymous coward, so I believe you. Only the losers here who have accounts can't seem to talk to women.
I guess freedom of speech is only for westerners...
I have this story about Tide (washing detergent).
The Ad had 3 photos -
Dirty Clothes ==> Wash in Tide ==> Clean Clothes.
(This was in the 3 horizontal panels).
Unfortunately, in Arabic countries they read right
to left.
Probably an Urban Legend.
How a country deals with this kind of thing says a lot about how sophisticated they are. When JFK called himself a jelly doughnut, Berliners cheered. When Carter declared that Americans "lust" the Polish people, there was scandal. Say a lot about the people and the size of their world.
I'm Rick James, bitch!
...make me want to release a quad opteron motherboard, and call it "Lamer's Excuse".
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
The software giant managed to further offend the Saudis by creating another game in which Muslim warriors turned churches into mosques. That game was also withdrawn.
Except this actually did happen. The Hagia Sophia Church/Mosque , anyone? it's like american white folk getting pissed because a game has them killing the American Indians and burning down their villages. gimme a break.
My youngest sons response: "Suck shit you pack of idiots - but it was probably Bills grog money for the weekend that got wasted"
True story:
I was had a trouble with a game on the dreamcast and went on to ask on the Sega board about "the level where monsters jump out of a glowing pile."
Look at that phrase. Do you see anything obscene or insulting in it? Well, Sega's lame censorship filter did.
Let me narrow your choices down a bit. The offending part was: "of a glowing".
Still don't see anything offensive? How about this: "o F A G lowing".
Yep, the software was "smart" enough to figure out that if you chop and combine parts of _three_ different words, you end up with something offensive.
Geesh. I mean, not even Beavis and Butthead would have made that association. Thank God we have idiot programmers to make it for us, eh?
So, yes, I believe that the same vigilant(e) piece of software would have seen the "fart" in "of art".
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The Toyota MR2 was renamed the "Coupe MR" for the French market, because MR2 in French sounds a lot like "merdeux", French for "shitty", n'est ce pas?
.
They will never know the simple pleasure of a monkey knife fight
Why does india's law regarding the border of its country mean no-one is allowed to draw the de-facto border of it's time zone? they weren't saying "this is india's border", they were saying "within the highlighted region, people set their clocks like this." If India has a problem with that, they should send troops in to enforce clock settings in the disputed region.
maybe MS should just have written something to the effect of "time zones do not necessarily coincide with national borders"
We've secretly replaced Slashdot with new Folgers Crystals - let's see if it notices.
"hembra" and "mujer"....
Well yes I do, but that is because I am a native Spanish speaker (the difference is even more complicated than what the article implies, hembra is an accepted term in some countries like Cuba, it is completely unnaceptable in Mexico).
And that is exactly the point. I am not an expert in Spanish language by any means but would raise my eyebrows if being confornted with such lousy terms. If you are a global monopoly that is intending to saturate the world with your rubishware the least you can do is hire one Spanish language erudit (which normally earn paltry salaries) and ask him to check your user interfaces.
That is the bloody point, not is Joe Programmer or even Manager knows any differences. That is why there are experts and ther is no excuse for no using their services.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I went over my Bathead the moment in which Batslashdot became the torchbearer of the holly FLOSS movement after being one of the steamiest corners for gossiping about IT on the Internet.
I swear you not that this sudden change can be blamde on the Penguin. The bastard.
Translation: bullshit, get a grip.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Or an expert in Spanish language. Then they would have known that you can't create a blanket version of their software for Spanish speakign countries or would have made the appropriate localizations.
But of course they did not, and the fanboys are excusing their typical lack of profesionalism (specially for a company of their size)...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Check this out.
Eat at Joe's.
I'm sure there would be plenty of protest in the U.S. if someone released a picture editor called "Gay Paint"
But those who complained would be struck down with fury as bigots.
It would depend on who released it and how widely released it was, since rape simulators, sex games and extremely violent games get released regurlarly. If the game was racy, few would dare complain. If it was a regular paint program, it would be a funny news story.
"Gay" was a good example some years ago, when people in old England still used it to mean "happy"/"fun" while it meant "homosexual" in the USA.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
There is a lot of geographic ignorance. A Japanese person is called "Asian", while an Israeli is not (despite the fact that both are Asian nations). Nicaragua is too often called a South American nation, even though it is North American.
Don't be taken in by this idiot--he has accounts under the names bonch and Overly Critical Guy. He has a history of astroturfing for Microsoft, bashing anything Open Source, using lies and half-truths to get modded up, karma whoring, and the usual trolling (under his bonch account, he got a troll posted to the front page of Slashdot).
All you have to do to check the veracity of this is to look at the posting history of his two old personnae (linked above) and his current one to figure it out.
Please do not mod this jerk up--every time you do the Slashdot S/N ratio goes down while bonch/Overly Critical Guy/rd_syringe just laughs at you.
This has been a public service announcement
Don't be taken in by this idiot--he has accounts under the names bonch and Overly Critical Guy. He has a history of astroturfing for Microsoft, bashing anything Open Source, using lies and half-truths to get modded up, karma whoring, and the usual trolling (under his bonch account, he got a troll posted to the front page of Slashdot).
All you have to do to check the veracity of this is to look at the posting history of his two old personnae (linked above) and his current one to figure it out.
Please do not mod this jerk up--every time you do the Slashdot S/N ratio goes down while bonch/Overly Critical Guy/rd_syringe just laughs at you.
This has been a public service announcement
"Cuál es su sexo: no especificado, varón o zorra?".
Which is a bit less polite than the word "bitch" in english..
"Dupe" obviously enough comes from "duplicate". Making three of something is making it in "triplicate", so obviously a gaff of this sort should be called for what it is: TRIPE.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
As a professional translator, I hear you and your concerns. This is something I and others in my field spend significant time studying.
However, I think you come close to hitting the proverbial nail when you speak of "chimp attract," in that the problem you speak of has two sides to it. On the one hand, you have
and then on the other you have
From what you say, and from what little I can recall of OS/2's timing, it seems to me that OS/2 2.0 was developed when people were still struggling with these ideas, and had not yet hit upon the dichotomy. Basically, OS/2 sounds like a wonderfully internationalized product, but also one that was only marginally localized, if at all.
I18n is the end of things the initial programmers need to worry about -- coding cleanly, i.e. hard-coding as little culturally-specific material as possible. The properly internationalized product is a bit like an empty apartment -- something that handles all the right things an apartment should do, with a roof and walls and maybe even electricity if we're getting fancy. L10n, on the other hand, is where you can let your sales and/or UI teams have their fun, making sure of course that the project uses the right team for each target market. A properly localized product is that same apartment decorated (and possibly even furnished) to appeal to specific tastes.
Probably more than you wanted to know, but that's probably why OS/2 2.0 was so damn dull -- it was a useful apartment, but quite drab; nowhere you'd want to spend your time relaxing. This seems like more evidence against the "one size fits all" mentality, in that you can't really please everyone all the time with the same thing. Each to their own. This is some of where Linux shines with its immensely malleable UI, and note that Microsoft too took the hint and saw fit to implement UI themability in XP. Sure, it's only eye-candy, but then so are an awful lot of the things we crave in life: beautiful vistas outside our windows, lava lamps, wallpaper. The "chimp attract," if you will.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Nah. Indians aren't generally that fucking ignorant.
At the bottom of the