Localizing Display Texts

Today, almost every technical device has a display that shows various kinds of information. The complexity of the localization of these display texts represents a major challenge for the parties involved in the translation process. Under consideration of a number of factors such as the prescribed size of the display text elements and the font, font size, and font style used, the translations must not exceed the size of the display text elements. Moreover, proportional fonts are often used to render the display texts. Each of the letters of these proportional fonts has an individual width: For instance, the letter i is narrower than the letter b. This individual letter width must also be taken into account when localizing display text elements.

For the localization of display texts, Across provides an integrated Web-based solution that enables intuitive, comfortable localization of display texts and that takes all above-mentioned factors and dependencies into consideration.

The localization of the display texts takes place in the browser-based translation environment crossWeb.

Apart from the transformation of the files containing the display texts to the DTXML format, the localization of display texts with Across requires activation. For information on this subject and for further information on the functionality of the display text localization, please contact your partner at Across Systems GmbH or send an e-mail to info@across.net.

For the localization of display texts, Across supports both left-to-right and right-to-left (RTL) languages such as Hebrew and Arabic.

The texts of displays may extend over several lines with different line lengths. For example, this may be the case with display texts that fully or partially encompass a button or control.

Display Texts and Corporate Fonts

Corporate fonts are part of a company's corporate design and thus represent a valuable asset. Usually, the surrender of these corporate fonts is handled very restrictively. This is usually no problem in "normal" translations, as substitute fonts like Segoe UI can be used instead of the corporate fonts without causing any trouble during the translations of the respective documents.

However, the use of substitute fonts is problematic when localizing display texts, as the text lengths need to be calculated on the basis of the original corporate fonts in order to prevent excess text.

Thanks to the server-based text length check, the corporate fonts only need to be installed on the Across Server. Thus, the corporate fonts do not need to leave the company, and the company retains sovereignty over the corporate fonts.

Support of Placeholders

Across supports the use of placeholders when translating display texts. The placeholders can be used for various types of information: For example, they may stand for products or company names or other designations that must not be translated. However, the placeholders can also be used for variable information such as the time or temperature, which may have different lengths. For this purpose, it is possible to configure details such as the maximum length of the variable in the underlying display text format (DTXML).