Cultural, Economic, Social and Political issues to Languages and Variants.

Language evolution and boundaries depend heavily on "sociohistoecono-politic" evolution and boundaries. Language sometimes helps to highlight national identities. A person using a particular language within a community that uses another language could be revealing much in terms of economic and cultural level; the same can be revealed by the peculiarities or accent in the usage by an individual of the national language.

French is from France, German is from Germany and Spanish is from Spain. If that is a pattern, English should come from England… but what about Great Britain, or the United Kingdom? Do North Americans speak British? Or is it English? Americanish? Also: is Dutch really different than the Flemish language spoken in Belgium? Should a company in Belgium install both French and Flemish (Dutch?) versions of any particular software piece in all their machines?

Impact of language variants in the localization arena.

Language flavors or variants (like Belgium/France French or UK/US English or American/European Spanish) reflect different "sociohistoeconopolitic" evo- lution from a common root. When it comes to localization into a language with variants, like Spanish, the question could arise on whether:

1. producing several variant-focused versions, or
2. one single version, with two options:
   1. a neutral one trying to cover all the variants
   2. a variant-focused one (being the chosen variant the most effective one in terms of economic issues like GNP or market distribution issues).

This article will try to provide some tips and clues to answer the above question for the Spanish language. The decision would always be based on software sales potential, so demographic and economic issues have to be considered. Also, the differences between variants should be understood, in order to take advantage of any scale-economy the language could offer.

The Spanish language today (I): demographic issues

Spanish is the official language in 20 countries with populations totaling some 300 million inhabitants. In other countries, Spanish plays a significant role: both as a second or third language (like in the Philippines), and as regards people who have Spanish as mother tongue (like in the USA, with more than 20 million people). In the localization arena, all this could mean that Spanish is a dream of a language; however, socio-political and economical issues have to be taken into account.

When it comes to software usage, a distinction has to be made between a given language (1) being the official in the country and (2) the language being the user's first or mother tongue. An employee in Madrid or Bogota would gladly accept (prefer) to use Spanish-localized applications… But, if a Spanish-speaker employee in the US requests to use such a version, the best he/she can get is a "no" from IT management. Also, there is the fact of Private versus Government investment in software (the later nearly always in official language versions). Thus, worldwide software investment would depend more on "officiality" of the language than on speaker base.

Still, with just demography figures at hand, Spanish ranks amongst the potential best- sellers. The following figures come from Voegelin's classification of languages, and show "mother tongue" vs. "officiality" in millions (classified by "mother tongue"): (1) Chinese: 1000/1000; (2) English: 350/1400; (3) Spanish: 250/280; (4) Hindi: 200/700; (5) Arab: 150/170; (6) Bengali: 150/150; (7) Russian: 150/270; (8) Portuguese: 135/160; (9) Japanese: 120/120; (10) German: 100/100; (11) French: 70/220; … ; (15) Italian: 60/60.

I just cut/pasted the above 12 x 2 figures into a spreadsheet, to see the E-FIGS-O distribution (English - French / Italian / German / Spanish - Others). This is what I got in regards to "mother tongue" percentages: 13 - 3 / 2 / 4 / 9 - 70… and in regards to "officiality": 30 - 5 / 1 / 2 / 6 - 56. That is to say: if a US publisher sells 100 USD in the USA (local E-market), it could sell 330 to 770 USD in the global E- FIGS-O market. Initial conclusion: we all should try hard to unify the "Others" category into one single language, develop in this OmniLanguage, and forget localization into E-FIGS!

Till somebody develops the potential of this initial conclusion, I reduced the data to just the E-FIGS arena, and this is what I got… mother tongue: 42 - 8 / ' / 12 / 30… officiality: 68 - 11 / 3 / 5 / 14. That is to say: if a US publisher sells 100 USD in the USA (local E-market), it could sell 147 to 238 USD in the E-FIGS market. Initial conclusion now tuned: the world should keep developing mostly in English and localize primarily into Spanish, to reach a 72 - 82% stake of the E-FIGS market.

Beyond the jokes, my "initial conclusion" is being approached today by some publishers for which localization into Vietnamese or Korean is a day-to-day (though challenging) issue. Also forgetting about the jokes, part (a) of my "tuned conclusion" tends to be a fact for quite a number of US publishers not covering the "other languages" arena: domestic vs. international sales can be anything in the 42 - 68% range (depending on "domestic accounting sales" vs. "English version sales" considerations).

The Spanish language today (II): economic issues.

Some languages need more localization investment than others, but if you check the data and lists above, and you are a software publisher, Spanish could still be your best-ever dream: no double byte encoding, no right to left (or vertical) writing, and quite a nice base of skilled, handy and well-communicated vendors. However, there is obviously more to sales quotas than mere demography/linguistic figures.

Circa 1990, the Gross Product per capita in the official Spanish-speaking countries ranged from 11K+ USD (Spain) to 0.6K USD (Honduras) compared to the circa 20K USD of FR/GR/US or circa 16K USD of UK/Italy.

So I downloaded some economic statistics from the web and I did some cross- referencing, pivot-tabling and cross- tabulations… (my yet-to-be-born kids obviously staring astonished at their father through all this computing wizardry or gymnastics). I restricted these to FIGS, but considered the number of French/English speakers in Canada, or French/German ones in Switzerland, etc. The idea was to obtain some kind of (gross) estimate on acquisition potential (AP) based on accepted language version for a given community.

The AP distribution I got with 1990/91 data is (FIGS): 29,1 / 16,8 / 36,4 / 17,7. So we can see that, for example, the German market for localized versions doubles the Spanish one (36/17) even with a third of German speakers versus Spanish speakers (100/280).

There are other economic issues: Italian figures are smaller than Spanish ones, but to approach the Italian market you only need to approach one country, while to approach the Spanish market you have to approach 20 countries, which could be a real nightmare.

The Spanish language today (III): potential for growth

We can see that Spanish is not a minor player in the localized software market. However, Germany announced an economic growth for this year of 1%; Spain should be growing 2.5%; countries in South America are now starting to do pretty well in terms of growth (some figures go up to 15% growth). So the global Spanish market could become a very major player in the localized software market.

Inflation rates are lowering day by day in Spanish-speaking countries. Economic treaties like NAFTA (Mexico, USA, Canada) are being deployed. Communications are also improving day by day. Thus, the above mentioned acquisition potentials are changing quicker for Spanish speaking countries than for the others. Also, software sales in these countries are not the lower-cost updates, but mainly the higher-priced new released product boxes. Finally, places like Miami are developing even more their position as a very convenient hub or gateway entrance to the Latin American market, while Spain retains good distribution channels and a pretty solid economy.

The dream (economic potential) versus the nightmare (language variants)

Should several different Spanish versions of a product be needed to address these 20 countries, software publishers would lose the advantages of this 300-million- speakers market (even with growth considerations in mind).

The fact is that the Spanish language is "diverse within a solid uniformity". But depending on the translator's usage of the language, some texts could become nearly un-intelligible for some countries. The translation of the very common verb "to take" as "coger" is OK in Spain and Mexico, but it is very rude in Argentina. Thus, the variant used should be carefully chosen to maximize the yield ratio (market-addressed/localization-cost)

Naming conventions

Sometimes we've heard about two variants of Spanish: (1) Latin American, South American, Atlantic, etc. and (2) Castillian, Iberian, Peninsular, European Spanish. This is not true at all: there are several variants within the American area, and so there are in Spain. Thus, some naming conventions are needed (at least for the purpose of this article).

The linguistic distance between Mexico and Spain equals that of Mexico to Argentina or to Colombia, etc. The fact is that there are more than two variants in Spanish. But we can use the terms "Latin American" or "American" Spanish to refer to the different variants spoken in Central+ South+ Caribbean+ North America… and we can use the term "Iberian" or "European" Spanish to refer to the variants used in Spain (peninsula + Canary and other islands). We would use "Mexican" or "Chilean", etc. when referring to a particular variant used in one country. In Spain there are three major variants, which I will call "Castillian", "Andalusian" and "Canarian".

The UNIFORMITY and DIVERSITY of the Iberian Spanish variants

We've seen that there are several variants each side of the Atlantic, and one of the reasons for diversity within the American area stems from the original, initial diversity within the Iberian Peninsula. This Iberian diversity is clearly cut: tourists thinking they have quite some fluency in Spanish will find themselves in trouble trying to understand somebody from the Canary Islands, or from Andalucia (Seville, Granada).

Spain (pop. ca. 38 million inh.) is located in one of the biggest European peninsulas: the Iberian Peninsula. Spain shares this vast territory with Portugal (pop. ca. 10 million inh.) and is located in an extremely convenient + inconvenient position South of Europe and North of Africa, to the right hand as you sail out of the Mediterranean sea into the Atlantic Ocean.

Today, the nice weather here attracts millions of tourists, but it also attracted the Celts thousands of years ago. Fenitians coming from the East Mediterranean area were attracted by the wealth in minerals. Quite some invasions or settlements took place in Iberia BC: man has always had a Jungian determination to seek the Finis- terrae, and for all the highly developed east-Mediterranean civilizations like the Egyptians or Greeks, the end of the world was Iberia.

Thus started the initial diversity of the original Iberian language. Then came the Romans, who 2000 years ago were also attracted by minerals and drained most of our huge resources in gold. Maybe it was a high price for the culturization they brought, but with this culturization the uniformity of the Spanish language started. But diversity was still kept, because the Romans had different degrees of success in taming (linguistically) the different areas: Celt-Iberian, Iberian-Fenitian, Iberian- Iberian (Basque?), etc.

When the Roman Empire declined, the Germans (Goths) decided it was their chance, and ca 500 they settled in Toledo the capital of their Visigoth Empire. This also influenced the Spanish language… but the language was pretty mature by then, so German could not influence it as much as it did with English [Old English (Anglo- Saxon) period starts ca. 449 A.D when some Germanic tribes came into England]. However, within an Iberian uniformity, even more diversity was then created: the diversity matrix from the romanization didn't "overlay" perfectly with the one from germanization, but created a "moiré" effect leading to even more subtleties. And then the Goths declined…

…and circa year 700 the North of Africa was too hot and dry for the Arabs, and Iberia seemed milder in temperature and full of fresh water and just some miles sailing, so they also took their chance and in just 3 years time, they took the whole surface of the peninsula. Arabs were not used to fight in the mountains, so they couldn't conquer a small area in the north of Spain (basically Asturias and the Basque country); also, the Pyrenees hindered their access to the rest of Europe. It took 800 hundred years to conquer back, North to South, what they conquered in 3 years of Saint War. War tactics but also mathematics can tell us that circa 1085 only the northern half of the country was again Christian, though circa 1450 only some Arabs remained in the very southern part of Spain. Kingdoms were created as patches through out the country (so Spain was not yet a united country). Castles were built through out the area to protect whatever land was conquered, and thus the name of the huge inner area of Spain (Castilla) and the "other" name of the Spanish language (Castillian). It is obvious that a war doesn't help to merge languages (as romanization or germanization did), but it is clear that 800 years is a long time and thus Arabic had a lot of influence in Spanish. Not in grammar but in terminology, a great distance was then set between Spanish and other romance languages like French or Italian.

Obviously, the northern kingdoms were then exposed during less time than the southern people, and thus even more diversity was created within the uniformity of the Spanish language and the other languages spoken in the Peninsula. The mysterious Basque language (not a variant of Spanish), spoken in a small area north of Spain and south of France, was preserved during Roman and Arab times and up to our days. The Catalan language (a romance one), spoken in Cataluïa (northeast of Spain), got more influence from the French Provence than from the Arabs, and linguistically it also is somewhere between Spanish and French. Formation and evolution of other languages had also much to do with the Arab influence and the political changes occurring during re-conquership.

The southern part of Spain (Andalucia) developed a peculiar pronunciation system (changing the L sound into R, or the S sound into the English "TH" sound in some areas, and more predominantly, changing the "TH" sound into "S"). There is one strong peculiarity about the Spanish spoken in Andalucia: addressing the second person. In Spanish, as in other languages, a distinction is made when addressing a person formally or in a peer- to-peer basis (French: tu/vous; German: du/Sie; Welsh: ti/chwi). Linguists refer to these forms as T/V (from Latin "tu" and "vos"). In old English there was the "my wooing is fit for thy understanding" versus "I shall catch the fly, your cousin…" (Henry the Fifth, Shakespeare). Besides the phonetic issues, the T/V issue is the biggest difference between Castillian and Andalusian Spanish. We will see that this T/V issue also has a big story to tell in American Spanish (the "voseo" issue).

he roots of UNIFORMITY within American Spanish variants

By 1492, the Spanish language was diverse (mainly in pronunciation) within a solid uniformity. Besides, Spanish is a language with a very simple vowel system (just 5 vowels). This is the language that traversed the Atlantic Ocean with Christopher Columbus. Thus, the "foundations" for all the American Spanish variants are incredible strong, though allowing for construction of distinct language-variants "buildings". And one of the building bricks is orthography, which is the same across all variants of the Spanish language. Though diverse in some edges, the Spanish language was a solid, uniform one by 1100 [when English was still in transition from "Old" to "Middle"]. The language has preserved itself incredible well: average cultivated Spanish people can read texts dating back 900 years! By the end of the 15th c. the first Spanish Grammar was published by Nebrija [while Robert Lowth's English Grammar was published in 1762].

But any regulatory or standardization efforts can't go against people's will. Thus, the roots of uniformity have to be seeked in other places than the Spanish Grammar or the Royal Academy of Spanish [which was founded in 1714 following the French and Italian models, so much latter than Columbus trips]. It has been said that a language preserves itself better when it has a simpler vowel system. English has a fuzzy vowel system with some 11 sounds [seat, sit, set, sat, cut, cart, cot, caught, curt, full, fool] and maybe this is the reason why in a short time orthographic differences (like colour/color) have appeared in UK/US English. Though being a romance language, Portuguese has a fuzzy and complex vowel system similar to English, and maybe this is the reason why Brazilian and European Portuguese now differ strongly in orthography (after 500 years of historic vicissitudes equivalent to the Spanish ones).

Maybe the solid foundations of Spanish that allow the language to preserve itself so well (over time and distances) reside in the clearly-cut, simple 5-sound vowel system [sat, set, sit, cot, full]. For one thing, orthography is the same in all variants of Spanish language [even if Spanish orthography is not as simple as the German one: it includes accents like the French ones, and some common letters have different phonetic values ("cero = the-roh" but "caro = kah-roh")].

The roots of DIVERSITY within American Spanish language

We'll see that there are several variants of American Spanish, and one of the reasons for diversity within the American area stems from the original, initial diversity within the Iberian Peninsula. The other main reason is the variety of native languages spoken in this vast area. So Iberian diversity and native language variety created a complex diversity matrix (at least in spoken use).

Remember that by 1085 (nearly 400 years after the Arab invasion) the northern half of Spain had been conquered back to the Arabs. Castles had been build and some Kingdoms were surging in the (again) Christian Iberian Peninsula. Court was set at Toledo, were Arabs and Jews and Christians cohabited peacefully under Christian rules. The first School of Translators in the world was established in Toledo to merge the three cultures and the Greek one: each language provided books with their unique culture to be translated into the others [for example, Arabs were great at geometry, medicine and astronomy… they discovered the number zero, and thus the Arabic system overruled the roman system].

By 1492 (nearly 800 years after the Arab invasion), King Ferdinand and Queen Elizabeth had married and thus reunited the Kingdoms that tiled the Iberian Peninsula surface, and thus armies were also reunited, and thus the final -- successful-- strike was launched against the last Arabs remaining then in Granada. The joy of these Catholic Kings was such that they decided to finance the expedition of mysterious Christopher Columbus, who had been lobbying and messing around Court for some years trying to get money for a crazy idea of his: reaching India not walking East through Europe and Asia, but by sailing West.

Some geographical issues are important to the kind of language that sailed with Columbus. For one thing, Seville (in Andalucia) was a very important city just before 1492. Though it is an inland city, you could then sail river Guadalquivir down to Huelva (also in Andalucia) and then into the Atlantic Ocean. Important docks and shipyards were sited both at Seville and Huelva. Then there is the Gulf stream issue: water/winds' clockwise movement in the Atlantic. So if you try to wind-sail from --say-- Lisbon to Florida, you'll have the Gulf stream against, but if you first follow Africa's coasts southwards till --say-- the Canary Islands and then turn right (westwards), you'll be literally propelled by the winds/stream till Venezuela, Cuba, etc.

So the sea officers, priests, scientists, etc. in the ships were pretty cultivated, and brought Castillian Spanish (speech/write) into America. But sea-men and sailors to America at the end of 15th c. were basically Andalusian, and they exported their pronunciation. While the ships got all the supplies before the long trip westwards, both Castillian and Andalusian variants were blended in the Canary Islands (remember: one of the major variants in Iberian Spanish).

The arriving point was more or less the now Republica Dominicana. From there, ships sailed south to Argentina, or west to Mexico, or north to Florida. During the first half of the 16th c., the expeditions included people from through out Spain. For example, the Basque people were vital in explorations to Florida but also south Chile, through the Magallanian Strait into the Pacific and to the Philippines (named in honor of King Philip the 2nd)… This is why "Jai Alai" (the Basque word for a ball game) is so popular in these places, and the famous Florida's Cape Biscayne toponiminc derives from the Basque area Vizcaya.

These varied people from Spain settled in different places in America, maybe preferring climates similar to their respective homelands. So colonies used different variants of Iberian Spanish and with different degrees of education. But also, the native people in America had different languages: and borrowings and lending and merging and fusions occurred, and the Spanish language evolved in very different ways within the American area and also in relation to the Iberian homeland.

DIVERSITY and UNIFORMITY in modern evolution of Spanish

We can study Spanish language diversity/uniformity as "intra-American" (differences amongst LatAm variants) and "inter-Spanish" (differences between American variants and Iberian roots). On the other hand, "intra-Iberian" diversity is minimum (Spain shares a basically common country and thus culture).

Since events early in the 16th c., some issues have contributed to increase intra- American and inter-Spanish "diversity" (independence, European emigrants, mass media and trade) but also "uniformity" (written and court/administrative usage, Academies, exchange of literature and technical translations, media/trade).

Some 200 years ago, the American nations started to be independent. "Flavoring" the colonial languages [Spanish/English] then helped to highlight national identity and cultural singularity. When independence was achieved, European emigrants (including more Spaniards) sought better fortune in the Americas (this applying to Anglo-Saxons as well as Mediterraneans). These independence and emigration processes increased intra-American and inter-Spanish diversity [parallel to what occurred with English].

In our century, mass media and trade have once again increased intra-American and inter-Spanish diversity, mainly in technical and trade neologisms, but also in common- street language. Technology and finance stem nowadays mainly from English- speaking countries; the English mechanisms for creation of new words ("compounding", like highway or warehouse; "noun verbing" like format, to format) differ from the natural Spanish mechanisms, so each country can "translate" neologisms in different ways, and thus diversity is increased.

However, written Spanish language has been quite uniform since the first Grammar (1492). Written Spanish was then Castillian (core Iberian), and this was the language used for administrative and cultivated purposes. Thus, using this cultivated Castillian variant could give you some "standing"… This helped to reduce significantly the enormous dispersion which could eventually have sprouted.

Also, we saw that Spanish Royal Language Academy (RAE) was founded in 1714, it's purpose and success being "fija, pule y da esplendor" [settle, polish and make it splendent] (versus "invent, correct and enforce"); the RAE has contributed much to intra-Iberian uniformity. Besides, some Latin American countries started their own Academy of Spanish Language, and there are periodic meetings between all of them, so intra-American and inter-Spanish uniformity tends to be preserved.

Both sides of the Atlantic we read literature in Spanish and the authors can be Argentinian, Mexican, Peruvian or Spaniards. Translations of non-fiction and technical books can be done either side of the Atlantic, and used in any Spanish- speaking country. TV programs are exchanged; singers and music groups rank in the top lists based on acceptance of their music, not on country of origin. All this cultural two-way flow helps to preserve uniformity.

The linguistic side of DIVERSITY: impact in localization

For one thing, you can get as much as 40 different pronunciations between this and the other side of the Atlantic. But can you really tell the difference in written texts? This part of the article is a very narrow summary of the thousands of pages written on a double sided issue: differences between the different Latin American variants amongst themselves, and with the Iberian ones.

It is easy to describe the UNIFORMITY of the Spanish language: all variants are variants of the same language. The uniformity of Spanish variants nearly equals that of UK/US English. So a product localized into Spanish is in general valid for the 300 million speakers, like a US software can be used in the UK.

The issue is whether some special care should be taken with language during the localization process, so as to avoid any non-usability in a particular country or to increase cross-country usability.

To get an idea of DIVERSITY, several levels have to be studied. I've tried to reflect all the differences with English parallelisms.

1. Phonetic level. In Spain you can distinguish clearly up to 10 accents, and more than 30 in the Latin American area. Some of them are very annoying for language students (like the "seseo": converting written "c" in pronounced "s", like "thief" > "sief"). Others are more subtle (like "yeismo": pronunciation of "y" and "ll", like "young" > "shoung"). This obviously has no impact in the localization of software applications and their user education materials. (However, special care has to be taken in certain multimedia products that include narrations, and a good localization vendor will always be ready to give some advise in choosing the voices and the sites of recording studios.)
2. Morphological level. In general, Spanish uses "tu" to address equal people (you/tu/du in English/French/German) versus "Usted" for formal addressing (you/vous/Sie). But some variants of Spanish use "vos" instead of "tu" ("vos" is the archaic formal addressing) while retaining the "Usted" for formal addressing. This is called "voseo", and though this is a very distinctive feature amongst variants, it has little impact in localization of software applications because the user is addressed in the formal way (both on-screen and on-book), and the formal way is common to each and all Spanish variants. (However, and again for multimedia products, special care has to be taken: the users of some of these products are kids, so the localization process has to tackle with the "tu/vos" conflict.) The "voseo" divides American variants in two large groups: those that have voseo and those that haven't. In Spain there is no voseo (though in Andalucia there is a peculiar use of "usted" in plural person).

   There are other morphological diversities, but mainly in conversational use (and thus with no impact in localization). Besides, these issues are frequently a particular biasing of preferences (like in an invitation to tea you could find "do you want", "will you have", "do you care", etc. and then "some tea", "a tea", "a cup of tea", "a nice cup of tea", etc.) In regards to nouns, for example, diminutives abound more in American variants (for the English "little cat", Spanish can use either "gato pequeïo" or "gatito": the suffix "-ito" is a diminutive). In regards to verbs, the Spanish verb-tense system comprises [like in English] a modification mechanism [eat, ate] and a compounding mechanism [has eaten]. But the Spanish compounding mechanism is more complex than English, and some American variants tend to prefer simpler, modified forms instead of compound forms (efficient software localizers around the world also prefer these forms: they are shorter). In regards to adverbs, in some American variants there is a preference for "acÜ/allÜ" over "aquë/allë" (like "come here" or "come over here", and "go there" or "go over there").

3. Syntactic level. Very minor issues enter in this category, and they are mainly conversational, thus having little impact in localization.
4. Lexical level. By hearing a Spanish [English] speaker we can easily identify the country of origin: whether Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Spain, etc. [or Texas, Washington, Wales, Scotland, etc.]. But in written texts, only a careful study of terminology usage can provide the clue. As we saw before, diversity stems from the different "sociohistoeconopolitic" evolution in the different countries, and thus terminology differences are particularly obvious in topics related to human kind and our relation to the earth and society. Again, I'll try to use English examples.
   1. Social status, professions, offices: think of US/UK usage in "Hey, man!", "my lad", "babe", "child/baby", "Sorry, madam", "porter/gatekeeper", "sheriff"
   2. Habitat: again, think of UK/US meanings of "county" or "villa". Also, usage of "lift/elevator". Finally, one would normally use "room" better than "habitation" (which is a perfectly English word)
   3. Dressing: panty/panties, overall/coverall, etc.
   4. Addressing: James/Jim/Jimmy/Mr. Brown, Hi/Hello, etc.
   5. Nature: this is an obvious area for diversity, comprising plants (blueberry/bilberry), animals (jackrabbit/ hare), agriculture (maize/corn/wheat, and the 2000/2240-pound ton/long-ton), etc.
   6. Folklore: what's a "jack-o-lantern" in the UK? (7) Gastronomy: differences here are huge and start when we are kids (sweet/candy).

   The mere areas outlined above would have little impact in software localization. But there are two other areas related to contemporary human kind evolution:

   7. technology and
   8. trade.

   While UK English can just take the US term for nearly any concept, other languages have to translate English words. For example, "computer" is "ordenador" in European Spanish (influenced by the French "ordinateur"), but it is "computador" in the American area.

5. Extra-linguistic levels. The last -- but not least -- issue to diversity is "culture". This issue has two impacts in localization. (a) The first is the "locales" issue: paper format used, zip codes, format of phone numbers or dates, etc. A French version of an application can be used in Belgium, Canada, France or Switzerland. But if the "locales" issue is relevant, then 4 versions would be needed. (b) The second impact of the "culture" issue in localization is the selection of examples to be used along the user education materials (names of people, names of products in stock, etc.) or the sample files to be included in the distribution kits (accounting practices, taxes, etc.) Remember there are twenty! Spanish speaking countries. Well designed software nowadays allows for parameterization and tuning of the "locales" issues, but the publisher should request from the localization vendor to take care about examples in the handbooks, or templates and samples included in the diskettes, etc.

The keys to success: localization vendor skills and International Spanish

The evolution in technology and trade is very fast, and different countries would "stomach" anglo-originated concepts in varied ways, and thus translate them with different terms. Sometimes it is not evolution, but revolution, that makes things difficult to stomach. For example, in one generation or so, British people will be used to the "metric" measurement system (versus the "Imperial" system)… the underlying concept of a "pound" (400+ grams) differs from a "kilogram" (=1000 grams), but terminology will help here (different terms for different concepts). However, terminology can also contribute to the mess: will the concept of a ton be 2000 pounds, or will it be 1000 kilos? (the amount/concept is different, the term is the same). Another example: one of the most frequent errors in translation from English is the word "billion" (depending on the country it can be a million or a thousand of millions).

From what has been said, we see that applications related to banking, insurance, stock-exchange, accounting, etc. (vertical markets) would nearly always require a variant-focused localized version. If the application is configurable and parameter- driven, the publisher could request from the vendor to blur the focus, thus gaining market breadth.

Multimedia software products require a very careful approach to increase the ratio market-breadth/localization-costs. The lexical-diversity categories 1 to 7 described above appear frequently in this kind of titles. Issues like addressing the user in on-screen materials ("voseo") have to be catered for, as well as the voices or narrations. Culture related examples also pose a great localization challenge. A good French localizer would translate the text "Egypt is somewhat bigger than Texas and smaller than Alaska" as "Egypt is nearly twice as big as France", and the German version could say "Egypt is nearly three times bigger than Germany"… but how would you localize that into Spanish ready for Argentina, Mexico or Spain?

General applications (horizontal software) require a different approach. If a publisher has a sound sales position in a particular Spanish speaking country, the easiest thing to do is to adopt that variant for the localized version. But the publisher could also take into account the growth potential of the Spanish market, and thus a better decision could be to require from the localization vendor a "neutral" or "international" Spanish version. This would be a version not perceived or felt as own/home/national by any country, but acceptable and usable in all of them (and not offensive to anyone).

For example, we saw the "ordenador/computador" issue. A good International Spanish translation would use "equipo" (=equipment) which is common to all variants. "File" can be translated as "archivo" or "fichero", but in some countries "fichero" can be rude, so "archivo" is more International Spanish. This "internationalization" of the Spanish language can be achieved for any particular product with two main approaches: (1) the localization vendor can propose up-front several translations for each term, and the country distributors or subsidiaries can discuss on that base or (2) the vendor can have a thorough knowledge of Spanish variants and a care for International Spanish, and can deploy this knowledge and care during the localization process.

A key to success in reaching this already broad, uniform Spanish market with its enormous potential for growth is the commitment from the software publisher and the recognition of its subtle but inherent diversity. The skills offered by the Spanish localization vendor chosen for the task will also be a key to this success. Whenever possible, an "International Spanish" should be used, without forgetting about the diversity issues that can't be tackled linguistically.

Author's disclaimer - Please excuse my English… I'm still learning Spanish

Currently, Javier Garcëa is CEO and Operations Director of Lexitrans. It is said that he seeks retirement, but that the excitement of new communication technologies (like the Web) and new linguistic challenges (like Universal Spanish) seem to tie him up to his desk.

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Javier Garcia Alvarez
Lexitrans S.A.
Paseo de la Castellana 129
28046 Madrid
Spain
Tel: +34 1 456 7171
Fax: +34 1 597 1905
JavierG@Lxnet.es