![]() ![]() Or in a series of tabs or buttons, or in narrow columns, the German may not wrap automatically, and may pose a challenge for your layout. Whereas the English text can easily be wrapped on two lines where there is restricted width available, such as alongside a form entry field, Compound nounsĪ number of languages, such as Finnish, German and Dutch, create single large 'words' to replace what is a sequence of smaller wordsįor example, the English "Input processing features" may become " Eingabeverarbeitungsfunktionen" in In addition to the unpredictability of the number of characters resulting from translation, there are other factors that complicate the ForĮxample, will you still be able to fit everything you wanted 'above the fold'? Will items still align the way you want if they grow downwards at When dealing with paragraphs of text, the relative expansion is likely to be less, but there may still be things you should consider. Also, smaller translations can beĪs problematic as bigger ones if they leave too much white space on the page. ![]() Language"), but much longer in Malay (" Bahasar pegantar untuk penelusuran"). Your original text is in Spanish, the term " Idioma de la interfaz" will be smaller in English ("Interface The problem tends to be that the smaller the English text, the more likely it is to be squeezed into a small space, such as alongside aįorm entry field, or inside a graphic, or a set of width restricted tabs, etc.īear in mind, also, that text expansion is not exclusively the problem of user interfaces with source text in English and Chinese. Translates "FAQ" as "FAQ" in German and French, but as " Perguntas freqüentes" in Portuguese, and " Preguntas frecuentes" in Spanish. Of course, this is not true for every string or message, but when it is you must have some way of dealing with it. The general message is that text will normally expand, but note carefully how the smaller the source message, the higher the likely The following are average expectedĮxpansion rates for text translated from English into European languages, as published by IBM in their Guidelines to design global solutions. The 300% expansion from English to Italian is not at all surprising for a small string such as this. The following table shows comparative lengths of the word Flickr used for 'views' as a ratio* to the originalīecause of the width of the glyphs involved, each Chinese and Korean character is counted as two English ![]() One of the more common messages when you are looking at your own photos tells you how many times the photo page Than the original – sometimes to an alarming degree.įor example, the Flickr user interface was recently English and Chinese are particularly problematicĮnglish and Chinese text is typically very compact, and text translated from these languages will typically be longer in the translation You should also bear these ideas in mind when designing database field widths inĬharacter lengths. can be easily adapted for translated text. Separate presentation and content, so that font Be especially careful about fitting text snugly into graphic designs. Allow text to reflow and avoid small fixed-width containers or In general, the more flexibly you can design your layout, the better. Specific implications for the design of Web pages and proposed solutions. ![]() This article provides background material that will briefly explore some of these systematic differences. Some ways in which these differences in length can be systematic. When text is translated from one language to another, the length of the source and translated text is likely to be different. ![]()
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