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Re:A Localization Horror Story: It Could Happen to You by BjoernKW on Thursday January 15, 2015 @07:07AM (#8892083)
An amateur error perhaps but hardly limited to free software.

In a particularly expensive piece of enterprise software for the finance sector that was translated into German a form field was labelled 'Hauptstadt', which translates back into 'capital (city)' as in Washington, D.C.

Now, this kind of geographic information doesn't make sense at all in financial software but the well-paid developer (who had to double as the software's translator because hiring a proper translator would of course have been too expensive ...) simply couldn't be bothered to look up the different words 'capital' translates to in German, one of which also is the right choice in that case: 'Kapital' (meaning 'capital' as in 'asset).

Re:A Localization Horror Story: It Could Happen to You by anonymousDan on Thursday January 15, 2015 @07:22AM (#8892137)
Re:A Localization Horror Story: It Could Happen to You by blywi on Thursday January 15, 2015 @08:59AM (#8892472)
Re:A Localization Horror Story: It Could Happen to You by ufmace on Thursday January 15, 2015 @01:40PM (#8894435)
That's a head-smacker. Some guy somewhere must have actually painted that on the trailer - does that guy not think "Hey, this doesn't really make sense. Are you sure they didn't want somebody to translate this to Arabic?"

Or maybe he did and his boss told him to shut up and do as he's told. Or he thought - "Screw this, I wanna go home on time. I'm not gonna bother to find an Arabic translator now. I'll just paint exactly what it says, and they can't get me in much trouble for that."

Re:A Localization Horror Story: It Could Happen to You by Retra on Saturday January 17, 2015 @01:46AM (#8903705)
Maybe he had a stencil and didn't speak english?
Re:A Localization Horror Story: It Could Happen to You by HCIdivision17 on Thursday January 15, 2015 @09:47AM (#8892676)
There's a certain schadenfreude to be had where the failed translation is also typo'd - but only once. These sorts of things are especially embarassing, as it not only shows no effort was used proofing, but nothing tripped a sanity check at all.
Re:A Localization Horror Story: It Could Happen to You by paol on Thursday January 15, 2015 @08:28AM (#8892355)
See also: restaurant sign during the Chinese Olympic games http://craphound.com/images/translateservererror.jpg