- Translation of the user interface,
- Translation of the on-line help,
- Translation of the user documentation.
In the first stage, the translation of the BPCS user interface was done, by means of the TTT translation tool. The translation was done by 5-6 translators and was finished in 3 months.
That being the first translation of BPCS, we estimate that the time necessary for the translation of its next versions will be shorter. The translation of the user interface assumes the handling of simple phrases, repeating frequently in the text and raising no special translation problems, from the syntactical and morphological point of view.
The TTT product is very suited, taking into consideration the facilities it offers, for the translation of such texts.
As for the BPCS product, it is designed as an international software, translated in more than 20 languages and allowing for the on-line changing of the language to be used. Most of the texts in BPCS are extracted from the display screens, reports, programs, etc., and put into a number of message files from which they are dynamically got at run-time. In this case, the translation is directly applied to the message files that, after their first translation, can be copied, as they are, on any computer on which BPCS is installed, in order to be used on-line.
On the same computer it is possible to keep several message files, corresponding to different language versions, the switching from one language to another being done by means of a simple BPCS command.
The direct translation of the message files increases the translation speed, reduces redundancies, but, as the texts are separated from their using context, it is necessary to perform a second stage of context translation checking.
The translation of the BPCS user interface resulted in a word-dictionary of approximately 4000 entries and a 30000-40000 phrases dictionary.
These dictionaries will be used for the translation of the next versions of the product and can offer, at the same time, a specific terminological database for the area of Enterprise Business Management Software.
It can be noticed that, using a relatively reduced word-dictionary and a not too large phrase dictionary, it has been possible to translate a high volume of texts handled in an extremely complex software product.
The main problems, in the case of the user interface translation, are: a terminological problem that refers to the finding of the best corresponding terms, practically used in Romania, for the English ones, and a second problem, concerning the translation of the terms which do not have a direct correspondent in Romanian.
The translation activity assumes therefore a very good knowledge of the specific area (in our case that of the Enterprise Business Management Systems) and, at the same time, a direct consultation of the users for validation.
Presently, the words and phrase dictionaries are in the stage of development, context validation and terminological improvement, while translating the new versions of the product.
A technical problem refers to
the fact that, in many cases, the Romanian translated phrases
or words are longer than their original English version. They
must be then shortened, in order to be fit into the corresponding
display or report fields.
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