> why not just use words You may run out of room in the interface if the word is substantially longer in some language. This is a particular problem if the or

> why not just use words You may run out of room in the interface if the word is substantially longer in some language. This is a particular problem if the original work is in a language like Japanese, which has short words compared to, say, English. (Japanese Kanji [1] has thousands of characters available, compared to the measly twenty-six of the English alphabet, so it's not surprising that Japanese words are shorter on average.) Many HN readers are probably familiar with the example of video games that are English localizations of Japanese originals. Sometimes the UI or art simply doesn't have room to accomodate the longer English equivalents. (Particularly in earlier decades when localization wasn't as high a priority as it is today.) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji#Total_number_of_kanji http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji#Total_number_of_kanji