4 ms·

Interesting, but I am wondering if it is really worth going through all this trouble, just to support a few edge cases. Personally, I usually don't even notice

Interesting, but I am wondering if it is really worth going through all this trouble, just to support a few edge cases. Personally, I usually don't even notice small mistakes like "1 directories" (or similar mistakes in my native language). Sometimes I will see the correct version somewhere and think "Oh, nice that they thought of that" but I definitely don't expect it. Are the possible returns of having a "perfect" translation really high enough to justify investing in a much more complex system? I am sure translators who can code functions instead of just putting values into an Excel table will come at quite a premium as well...

PinguTS 12y ago
You may not notice it. But there are other people who do. That is the difference between a very well designed product or a product, which just does the job. That is the reason why engineers should not design interfaces. That should be left to UI/UX experts. Just the other day, I as an engineer myself, complained to another that his product does the job nicely and looks OK. But it was missing this little twist of a finished product that I'd really like to use. Because the interface was designed how I would have done it myself, because lack of UI/UX knowledge.
- DangerousPie 12y ago
  Of course, I'm sure there are people who notice this. My question was whether something like this makes enough of a difference to justify the investment. As a developer you only have a limited amount of funds and time to spend on your product. Your goal is to invest these in a way that gives you the biggest returns. Of course it's great to not just have a translation that "does the job" and if you can do better you definitely should. But if that you takes a lot of work and only has a negligible effect on your sales, shouldn't you be prioritizing other things?
  - bloodorange 12y ago
    We have 100s of thousands to millions of pageviews per day in 10s of languages on the various pages of our site. The site grows from A/B testing and I have to say that many of these small things do add up over time (they add up to measurable conversion in the funnel). There is the odd one that surprisingly does nothing or does worse but generally, paying attention to language details did prove effective for us. I work on this stuff everyday in a small team where we know more than 30 languages between us and sometimes just two or three of these small changes more than pay for our annual wages in just a month.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    > Of course, I'm sure there are people who notice this. My question was whether something like this makes enough of a difference to justify the investment. Honestly - probably not. And that's exactly why we live in the world that is full of crappy stuff that works barely enough to get sold. I personally strongly appreciate when someone, however little economical sense that may have, goes the extra mile and makes their product polished. I'm willing to pay for it.

PinguTS 12y ago

You may not notice it. But there are other people who do. That is the difference between a very well designed product or a product, which just does the job. That is the reason why engineers should not design interfaces. That should be left to UI/UX experts. Just the other day, I as an engineer myself, complained to another that his product does the job nicely and looks OK. But it was missing this little twist of a finished product that I'd really like to use. Because the interface was designed how I would have done it myself, because lack of UI/UX knowledge.

DangerousPie 12y ago
Of course, I'm sure there are people who notice this. My question was whether something like this makes enough of a difference to justify the investment. As a developer you only have a limited amount of funds and time to spend on your product. Your goal is to invest these in a way that gives you the biggest returns. Of course it's great to not just have a translation that "does the job" and if you can do better you definitely should. But if that you takes a lot of work and only has a negligible effect on your sales, shouldn't you be prioritizing other things?
- bloodorange 12y ago
  We have 100s of thousands to millions of pageviews per day in 10s of languages on the various pages of our site. The site grows from A/B testing and I have to say that many of these small things do add up over time (they add up to measurable conversion in the funnel). There is the odd one that surprisingly does nothing or does worse but generally, paying attention to language details did prove effective for us. I work on this stuff everyday in a small team where we know more than 30 languages between us and sometimes just two or three of these small changes more than pay for our annual wages in just a month.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  > Of course, I'm sure there are people who notice this. My question was whether something like this makes enough of a difference to justify the investment. Honestly - probably not. And that's exactly why we live in the world that is full of crappy stuff that works barely enough to get sold. I personally strongly appreciate when someone, however little economical sense that may have, goes the extra mile and makes their product polished. I'm willing to pay for it.