Not gonna help, they'll go back to using unofficial translations. There were a lot of those back in the 90s when Western software companies ignored ex-Soviet markets because there wasn't any money to be made there.

I've used a lot of them personally, especially games. Some of those translations were pretty good, and some were so bad they were actually hilarious, and have become a meme (like "wasted → потрачено" in GTA San Andreas)

The goal of sanctions is generally not to make anything impossible, just to make it painful and/or expensive.

Well, I've seen hilarious translations in official versions too. RAM translated as "Male sheep" on android system info screen for example.

> using unofficial translations

I know one indie game whose Russian localization was done and distributed with the pirated version first, before being adopted by the dev and added to the official distribution. (of course since the guy is only doing gamedev as a hobby, his stance regarding piracy of his own games is quite relaxed)

A more likely outcome would be the development of Russian alternatives to that software. The pirate version would be patched binaries.

Decades ago I patched binary Commodore 64 applications to have messages in Spanish, getting as far as patching programming environments like Logo and BASIC to have not just error messages but also the keywords translated.

Even without source code it is somewhat doable, and modern applications often have localization mechanisms that remain in the compiled executable.

The development of alternative takes many years. Sure they can make some half-baked trashy version. But it will reduce users productivity a lot for years to come.

Better, introduce peace messages in the Russian translation, and reliable information about the war in Ukraine. This way the software will be banned in Russia, and everyone else speaking Russian can continue using the software without problems, which seems fairer ^^

This seems like an excellent idea. How easy would it be for, e.g. MS to implement. Are there any potential downsides?