Website translation - Which language needs the most characters for menu items Thread poster: sreischer (X)
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sreischer (X)
United States
Local time: 23:41
German to English
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I am charged with translating a website, but have only a limited number of characters (15) for menu items. I want to test how some of the languages show up in the menu translation.
Which languages needs the most characters? Chinese, Russian, German, French, etc.
[Edited at 2011-12-06 21:24 GMT]
| | | | Nikita Kobrin 
Lithuania
Local time: 07:41
Member (2010)
English to Russian
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| It's obvious, I suppose... | Dec 6, 2011 |
sgruggett wrote:
Which language is the most difficult
The one in which you can't express your idea clear enough...
[Edited at 2011-12-06 21:23 GMT]
| | | | | Depends on the range of languages you use | Dec 6, 2011 |
If you take the whole set of European languages, Finnish will be one of the longest (for short menu items, though not necessarily for coherent text). Russian isn't very short, either.
| | | | Phil Hand
China
Local time: 12:41
Chinese to English
| Chinese can be short | Dec 7, 2011 |
Most menu items on Chinese websites are 2-4 Chinese characters (though sometimes you lose clarity doing that, and you need a good translator - dictionary translations don't work. You can look at the Proz site in Chinese for an example of some poor Chinese menus - some items long, some sort, inappropriate dictionary translations. Lenovo's Chinese website is better - most items kept the same length, and reasonably comprehensible Chinese.
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I worked as a software consultant for a very large multi-national and, when designing the visual elements, we always started with German. In general, if the German layout fitted, all of the others would too.
Of course, you can always run into problems with any one specific element but this simple rule of thumb always worked pretty well for us.
| | | | Robert Tucker (X)
United Kingdom
Local time: 05:41
German to English
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| Agglomerative | Dec 7, 2011 |
When I first read this I immediately thought of Malay, but guess it might easily be one of the agglomerative languages (Finnish, Hungarian, Turkish) or, of course, one I know nothing or next to nothing about.
Anyway this link may be of interest:
http://www.w3.org/International/articles/article-text-size
| | | | | Japanese if katakana is used | Dec 8, 2011 |
sgruggett wrote:
Which languages needs the most characters? Chinese, Russian, German, French, etc.
If Japanese is a requirement, given the Japanese' special love for foreign words and the space katakana characters take up (the sillabary used to transliterate such words), you will be surprised.
| | | | sreischer (X)
United States
Local time: 23:41
German to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | Thank you everyone for your help - it is greatly appreciated | Dec 8, 2011 |
Thank you for all of the responses - this helped a great deal.
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