mpessas

It depends on how this was implemented. UPS (and other carriers) expose proper APIs for tracking (among other things). One needs to get permission from UPS before using those APIs. So, unless you do something wrong with that API or not implement any updated specifications, this is unlikely to happen.

> An interesting point about i18n that is quite independent from the tool selection is how you write your message identifiers. You can basically use labels (i.e, an ID for the string) or use the "original" string.

> Here's the tradeoff: if you use an ID, you must reference the application constantly to understand what the translation should say (and in any non trivial application, this is a huge burden for translators), and there is either no string reuse (because places with the same intended content have used different IDs), or the need for an anal curator to go around chastising developers ("the OK button should always be ACTION_BUTTON_LABEL_OK!! fix it!!"). On the other hand, if you use original strings in English you will find that you experience language collisions (two places where the original string in English is the same, but the translated one is not), so you end up resorting to introducing artificial differences to make them unique (i.e "Request (verb)" and "Request (substantive)" instead of just "Request").

The PO format uses the field "context" to differentiate among the various uses of a word/phrase. You should also add a comment for your translators in this case.

Also, using an ID messes with the PO format itself. E.g., fallbacks in case of a missing translation will not work.

But there are other formats that are ID-based, like .properties in Java.

> The format does have some pretty major drawbacks too, like the msgid can become "fuzzy" which leads to a differing set of issues related to the unique keying between translations.

I am not sure how much of an issue this is in practice. The main problem of the PO format AFAICT is that it is quite outdated. For instance, it has no support for genders and you cannot "mix" plural rules within a phrase.

> It is interesting you call out cultural issues, did you have any specific examples?

The wikipedia entry on l10n[1] has some examples.

The process of localization is not merely about translating some strings, but adapting them to a specific language and culture, which is the hardest part. For instance, your home page is one of the most important pages in your app and is geared to make as many people as possible sign up. Do you think a simple translation would have the same effect on British, French, Arabs, Japanese etc people?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalization_and_local...

Gettext has most of the features needed, when translating software, like plurals, comments by developers and translators and fuzzy strings. There are projects that even use it for documentation purposes, like fedora.

Another good format for i18n is the TS format used by QT (http://doc.qt.nokia.com/stable/linguist-ts-file-format.html).