"Geh so weit das Auge reicht. Und wenn du dort bist siehst du weiter."

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Hello

My name is Alexa Wolkeburg and I am in charge of the German department of our agency. My assistants and I provide all German-related services.

Some words about myself

I am a certified linguist (Major in German, minor in English), BA in Humanities. I have extensive experience of communication with native speakers (about 16 years) including multiple visits abroad. I have been working in Alconost since its very foundation. Before that, I had been working on software localizations as a freelancer.

Localization as it is

For developers promoting their products on a foreign market, "localization" is a familiar notion. Users prefer programs translated into their native languages to frantic flipping of dictionary pages in search of an unknown phrase or word.

Nowadays, software localizations are performed mostly by translation bureaus, very rarely by developers themselves. As most developers purchase these services from translation bureaus, people get a wrong impression (often among developers themselves) that localization never goes beyond pure translation and simple recoding of the original text using lexical units of the target language. Nonetheless, translation is just a part of the multi-level localization process. Which is more, trasnlation alone will not be localization at all.

Localization should be understood as translation and adaptation of interface elements, sites, descriptions, documentation and other supplementary files. In this case, adaptation is more important than translation. Therefore, localization implies:
- using national currency symbols.
- using proper date and time formats.
- using correct alphabetic sorting rules.
- using correct forms of address.
- using correct phrase structures (including ad phases).
- consideration of the cultural aspects of the target market.
- other aspects.

Speaking of localizations of program interfaces, I should mention the string length issue (for example, while translating from English into German, the string length usually increases by 30 or even 50%), writing rules (left to right for most Western languages, right to left for Arabic and Hebrew, vertical alignment in Japanese). The choice of the right character set is also extremely important for website localization.

Considering all these aspects, don't you think that entrusting this task to a localization professionals is a good idea?

Contact me

By sending an email to: , or using the contact form here.

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