How do you guys handle translation for software localization?

Posted by JohnFx on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by JohnFx
Published on 2011-05-28T23:04:26Z Indexed on 2012/09/13 15:50 UTC
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localization

Most of the software I have written over my career has been built for English speaking customers, but recently I've been working on a project where localization of the UI for a wider range of languages is desired.

I am just curious how other programming shops obtain the translations. Do they use the notoriously flawed online translation engines?

I know there are for-hire translators out there, but am I going to have to track down and contract like a dozen of them to do a thorough job of localizing my interface? Are there services that specialize in doing this for a wide range of languages?

Perhaps using something like Amazon's Mechanical Turk would be an option, but I have no idea how diverse the available workforce is on that site. I'd imagine not very.

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