How to do a quick QA of your translated web site

July 2006

HOW TO DO A QUICK QA OF YOUR TRANSLATED WEB SITE

By Felicia Bratu Even if you don’t speak the languages in which your website has been translated, you still can do a quick screen check of all the pages to see if everything looks OK. • Check if all the pages have been translated and the final files are delivered in the same format like the source files provided. • Check for missing translation: If your site is relatively small, you could even check if all the paragraphs have been translated and there isn’t any missing text. This sounds like a process that can’t be done without knowing the target language, but you could visually appreciate if there is something missing: check the punctuation, look after numbers, and spaces between paragraphs; if one paragraph in the English version has 5 sentences, then your German version should also have 5 sentences. For some languages like Hindi or Burmese it will be a little more challenging to delimitate the sentences, but not impossible (check this article - Punctuation by languages - for more info about sentences separators). • Text displays properly: make sure that the translator used the right character encoding. To check on this, you can open the html file in Notepad (don’t use Word, you won’t be able to see the tags) or open the html page in Internet Explorer and got to View/Source. The preferred encoding now is UTF-8; it can represent characters of the widest range of languages. GB2312 is the registered internet name for a key official character set of the People's Republic of China, used for simplified Chinese characters. Big-5 or Big5 is a character encoding method used in Taiwan (Republic of China) and Hong Kong for Traditional Chinese characters. To be sure that your page has the right encoding, check the text between metatags. Or go to View/Encoding <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> • Make sure that Arabic languages are displayed from right to left. <html dir="rtl" lang="ar"> • Check if the company name, trademarks, others things that suppose to stay in source language are preserved through the entire website; have a glossary of terms that should stay in English. In Canada, Quebec, the trademark sign TM could be replaced with MC (marque de commerce). Eg: Yellowpages.ca English version: All Rights Reserved. Yellow Pages™, Fingers & Design™ (Walking Fingers logo), YellowPages.ca™, MontrealPlus.ca™, QuebecPlus.ca™, CalgaryPlus.ca™ and EdmontonPlus.ca™ are registered trademarks and CanadaTollFree.ca, CanadaPlus.ca, OttawaPlus.ca, TorontoPlus.ca, and VancouverPlus.ca are trademarks of Yellow Pages Group Co. in Canada. Canada411 is a trademark of Stentor Resource Centre Inc. used under license. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Copyright © 2006 Yellow Pages Group Co. French version: © Groupe Pages Jaunes Cie, 2006. Tous droits résérvés. Pages JaunesMC, Fingers & Design^MC (logo des doigts qui marchent), PagesJaunes.ca^MC, MontrealPlus.ca^MC, QuebecPlus.ca^MC, CalgaryPlus.ca^MC et EdmontonPlus.ca^MC sont des marques de commerce déposées et, CanadaSansFrais.ca, CanadaPlus.ca, OttawaPlus.ca, TorontoPlus.ca, et VancouverPlus.ca sont des marques de commerce de Groupe Pages Jaunes Cie au Canada. Canada411 est une marque de commerce de Stentor Resource Centre Inc., utilisée sous licence. Les autres marques de commerce appartiennent à leurs propriétaires respectifs. • Check if all the graphics have been translated and look good: for some languages, the text will be longer after translation, so the graphic might be larger; check with the translator for a short word, or check if the web designer if there is a way to change the graphic size. • Check if units of measurement have been localized and are same for all languages. Most of the countries are using the International System of Units, so in your translation you should have meters for length, kilograms for mass, Celsius for temperature, etc. If the website is translated in more than one language, check on consistency. Some of the translators can approximate some measurements different. eg: 12’ x 16’ can rounded to 3.65 m x 4.87 or 4 m x 5 m, or 3,5 m x 4,5 m… • Date and time conversion: In most European countries, a.m. and p.m. are not used, and a good number of people might not know what this is supposed to mean as they use the 24-hour system to indicate exact times. When using two digits each to represent year, month, and day, for some languages, the actual date might not be very clear. A single date in the format “01/02/06” could be interpreted as three different dates W3C suggesting: Use unambiguous dates on your web pages: Always use a four-digit number for the year (this clearly distinguishes the year from the day of the month) Always use words (abbreviated if necessary) for the months There were some proposals to add a <date> and/or <time> element to HTML, so that browsers could localize display, but they never materialized. Eg: Yahoo Canadian portal English version uses this form to represent the time and date 8:57pm, Mon Jul 3. However, the French version is very different: lun 3 juil, 20h52 (day, date, hour). • Functionality: Check if all the links are working; this process also can be done automate with some special software. • Check if your web pages display properly on Internet Explorer and also on Nescape Navigator; verify how your website works on different platforms • PDF files for download:check if the links work and the file can be downloaded or visualized without problems – check the size of the file (the PDF should be a screen resolution file, not high resolution). • Validate your page: W3C HTML Validation Service It checks HTML documents for conformance to W3C HTML and XHTML recommendations and other HTML standards.

Translation of: 404 FILE NOT FOUND

Opa! The page you are looking for is no longer here, or it has been moved! Ah cain't find th' page yer lookin' fer. -- Southern American It's not there, eh? -- Canadian Ho'okahua 'a'ole ke apuapu. -- poor Hawaiian translation La page que vous avez demandée n'existe pas ou n'existe plus. -- French Pagina quam tu quaeris abest. -- Latin 546865207061676520796F7520617265206C6F6F6B696E6720666F722063616E6E6F7420626520666F756E642E00 -- Hexadecimal 00110100001100000011010000100000010001100100100101001100010001010010000001001110010011 1101010100001000000100011001001111010101010100111001000100 . -- Binary Source: http://www.wikinerds.org/404.html


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