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Introducing a “certain je-ne-sais-quoi”

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A new year, a new blogger! Today’s post is all about me! I’m taking the plunge in the Mojo so let me introduce myself! I’m Eric Paquin, International Project Manager and totally new to the art of blogging (please be patient)! So, what can I bring to the Mojo? I’ll focus on the international perspective. Being a French Canadian (aka Québécois) living in Ireland (I’ll spare you the long story ;) ) it gives me an interesting viewpoint on all things international (well… most)!

Mac head since 1989 (but also a PC user)… I’ve been working in localization for over 10 years. I was a tester in Corel – they had their localization centre in Dublin then. And I have been in the Ireland branch of MacBU for the last 7 years, first in test and now as a project manager.

In the past, one thing I was never good at was using French products (on Mac or PC) as historically (many moons ago), it used to take near 6 months after the release of the English product - not only for Microsoft products - to have the privilege to install it in French in Canada… Then once I started to install French products, I was really confused being used to the English terminology.

Things have change and for the last 3 years, my primary Mac at work is fully French! Talk about putting my software where my mouth is ;) It helps me understanding issues that our international users might run into. It also made me realize that most software I use have issues when you run them in another language. Especially highlighted when you have a configuration like this (in System preferences/International):

  • French Canadian CSA keyboard
  • Ireland (French) international format
  • GMT / 24 hour clock

About localization in Dublin… (I won’t cover the whole process - Schwieb has already given a good overview). Who are we? We are a team responsible for 6 languages (namely French, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish and Dutch). For Office 2004, each of these languages contained an average of 100000 new and updated words (translation we could not recycle from previous versions) in the software. To add a new language like we did for Dutch and Italian, it means 300000 words and another 750000 for the help. We released the software in various flavours – Standard Edition, Student and Teacher, Volume Licensing, Word and Excel Standalone in some languages, Entourage standalone for Volume Licensing, Test Drive. Altogether, for Office 2004, we were responsible for signing off on 23 CDs for Office and 15 for VPC (Virtual PC). We also localize Messenger, RDC (Remote Desktop Client) and all the various software updates…

That’s a lot… We couldn’t do it without automation and working with vendors on the translation part and some of the testing… In a future post, I’ll give an overview of the problems this causes, how we work around these and a quick overview of some of the tools we use.

I have a few more ideas for future posts but I would also like to hear from you if there are any particular international topics you’d like me to get into a little more… These include:

  • Differences between European markets and the US – is it day and night or more like 13h and 1PM?
  • International Features I’d like to see (and hopefully you do to!)
  • Communications with our European customers
  • And, pourquoi pas, “Le Mojo” – an occasional post in French?

Until the next time…

Au revoir!

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 30, 2007
    Support for real English would be nice, as it is written and spoken across the Irish Sea from yourself! The main bug is that colour is spelled incorrectly :-)

  • Anonymous
    January 30, 2007
    Hi there Eric, I wondered whether the office 2004 and the next 2008 versions support right-to-left languages such as Hebrew and Arabic? thanks, yonatan.

  • Anonymous
    January 30, 2007
    The thing I'd be most intersted about would be to know if there is a chance we'll get Office 2008 as bundle-apps: packages containing all localizations as it already is the case for Messenger for instance. (actually I'd also love to know what you guys use to localize :-) ),

  • Anonymous
    January 30, 2007
    PingBack from http://cortig.free.fr/localisations/?p=46

  • Anonymous
    January 30, 2007
    Any chance that Office 2004 will be released in a single international version, with the localization being controlled by the "International" panel in system preferences (like it should)?

  • Anonymous
    January 30, 2007
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  • Anonymous
    January 30, 2007
    Salut, intéressant ton propos. Et l'Irlande, c'est comment ? Faudra nou raconter un jour... Au plaisir de te lire - in french ;-) Bob August

  • Anonymous
    January 30, 2007
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  • Anonymous
    January 30, 2007
    Say more about localization and mainy about rules what will be localized: how many pieces there must be sold or so on. We would like to see Czech version of Office :)

  • Anonymous
    January 30, 2007
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  • Anonymous
    January 30, 2007
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  • Anonymous
    January 30, 2007
    One additional point in addition to bundled-applications: please leave the resources editable. I read the post about the possibility of a Czech version for instance. Even if MS doesn't provide it, editable .lproj would give a chance for local volunteer localizers to localize the app in their own language themselves. I don't see any good reason why the resources should be locked actually…

  • Anonymous
    January 30, 2007
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  • Anonymous
    January 30, 2007
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  • Anonymous
    January 31, 2007
    ¿Do you have any idea about Office 07 for Mac being Universal or only intel? ¿Prospective launch date?

  • Anonymous
    January 31, 2007
    pacla - This prior post to our team blog will answer your questions: http://blogs.msdn.com/macmojo/archive/2007/01/09/microsoft-announcements-at-macworld-07.aspx But the short answer is: Office:Mac 2008 will be a Universal Binary (not Intel-only), and will be released in the second half of this year.  We'll be talking more about it in the upcoming months.

  • Anonymous
    January 31, 2007
    Serais-ce le même Éric Paquin avec qui j'ai travaillé chez Cedrom-Sni en même temps que moi? Je gagerais que oui. Dubin, Corel...

  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2007
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  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2007
    Thanks all for the comments! Watch this space for more on localization... I'll try to shed some light on this obscure world of international mystery ;) Yann, Jezpas: For the Messenger features, please see this previous post explaining why it is not yet supported: http://blogs.msdn.com/macmojo/archive/2006/09/27/774149.aspx Michel: Oui! N'hésites pas à me contacter! Ric: Do you mean Alt-92? ;) Yes, I know the pain... It is a known issue (section 4.11 in the RDC Read Me) - I thought of a workaround, a batch file that would force change the keyboard layout when you connect with RDC - haven't tried it yet so not sure if it would work... Anyone?

  • Anonymous
    February 02, 2007
    hey Eric, I'd be interested in hearing about differences between European markets and the US - and perhaps Canada Cheers L

  • Anonymous
    February 03, 2007
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  • Anonymous
    February 03, 2007
    will office 2008 support French orthographic rectifications? (because the windows version already support them since version 2003!)

  • Anonymous
    February 04, 2007
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  • Anonymous
    February 07, 2007
    Greetings from a European Mac user and a fellow PM.

  • Anonymous
    February 07, 2007
    Heya, that's a really interesting topic you've opened up here. I'm using the German version of Office 2004 for now for a few years and the translation/localisation is very good but not perfect. I use mostly Word, Excel and PowerPoint and ditched Entourage in favour of the Apple apps. The later one has the problem that the contact card defaults are more Anglo-American style then German. Furthermore it doesn't syncronise so easy with my phone (ok that's not a localisation issue). What I really like about the Mac version is the fact you kept the keyboard shortcuts from the English version, while the Office on Windows (German version) forces you to relearn some of them. I like that because I've been using the English version of other software for a while, so I'm pretty used to the shortcuts. On the other end it's not logical for German speaker to press apple+p to print ("drucken" in German..). Maybe you could offer a option to choose the shortcuts according to your language. Cheers

  • Anonymous
    February 10, 2007
    Des posts en français, ce serait bien, mais aussi qu'est-ce qui t'amené là!

  • Anonymous
    February 12, 2007
    Hi guys! I am still waiting to find a single post or article that says whether Mac Office 2008 will support right-to-left languages (Arabic and Hebrew). Wouldn't the new .doc format i.e. XML make it a reality?!!!

  • Anonymous
    March 12, 2007
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