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From: bl@infovax.UUCP (Bj|rn Larsson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: More Internationalization of Software
Message-ID: <302@infovax.UUCP>
Date: 21 Oct 89 23:34:57 GMT
References: <9995@cadnetix.COM>
Reply-To: bl@infovax.UUCP (Bj|rn Larsson)
Organization: Infovox AB, SOLNA, Sweden
Lines: 61

In article <9995@cadnetix.COM> terrell@cadnetix.COM () writes:
>
>II:	Software Documentation & Orthography
>
>Does US software/documentation usually get translated for countries that have
>relatively small user communities (e.g. Sweden)?  If the answer is "No",
>would translation of a product give it a great competitive advantage
>over a similar, but non-translated product?

Larger packages, like word some word processors, speard-sheets, integrated
packages etc get translated if the market justifies it. Programming lan-
guages, programmers editors and special utilities usually don't since pro-
fessional programmers know english well anyway, and the market is smaller
(by comparison). As for DOS itself, IBM translates all DOS documentation,
and all text strings in the programs themselves, to Swedish (and all other
national languages too). To me it's a nuisance, since I prefer english. It
looks so ridiculous in swedish many times, and sometimes the translations
aren't right either. So I always try to get the english language versions,
but it seems DOS 'in english' is getting hard to find on the swedish market.

In general, I think it's a definite competitive edge here to have docs and
prompts in the national language in question.

About the rest of Europe, I know that in France it is regulated *by law*
that in order to sell a computer product there, documentation in french
*must* be available. I don't know how the law is obeyd - my company does
export to France (both hardware and software) with english docs...

As for population sizes for those who don't know, we're about 8 million
people here in Sweden, and there are about 55 million in France. Both
countries cover approximately the same land area.

>III:	Product Introduction
>
>After reading several overseas computer mags, I get the impression that
>(to be sarcastic) Europe is used as a beta-test site for US-developed 
>software.  I own SPRINT 1.0 which I believe is the most recent version
>available domestically, while users in Europe are using version 1.5.

But is Borland an American company? The original Turbo PASCAL was written
by a danish guy (who admittedly now lives in the US). And (I may be very
wrong about this but) isn't the company which owns Borland based in Sweden?
I think I've seen something like that somewhere (but I think development
- most of it  - is actually done in the US). Further I know that Swedish
Borland International has more or less forbidden US Borland to export to
swedish distributors, since SW Borland wants Borland products in Sweden
to have swedish docs. Therefore to get english docs, I had to buy my
Turbo C Professional package from abroad (actually from Logicsoft in
Holland). Isn't it weird?

But to answer your question, I don't think Europe gets earlier releases
than the US. Rather, the introduction of the same packages are probably
done at the same time, or maybe somewhat later here.

							-- Bjorn

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