Pick up languages, whose longer?
Hello!
We at Alconost are engaged in localizing software and games in 60+ languages and often see how developers face the same problem: different languages require different numbers of characters to convey the same information . As a result, in the user interface, some of the inscriptions “do not fit” and they have to be reduced or resized controls.
It is known that, for example, German is “longer” than English, and Chinese is “shorter”. However, it is unlikely that someone will immediately tell you exactly how much one language is more “sign-intensive” than another.
')
It became interesting to us, we collected statistics and received just such a tablet with coefficients for about twenty language pairs - under the cut.
The calculation is made on the basis of data from the Nitro live online translation service (this is like Google Translate, only the translation is done by live translators-native speakers). As the service works, so-called parallel texts accumulate there (the original in one language is a translation in another).
And here we took the last 1000 orders in Nitro for each of the translation directions, for each order we found the ratio of the number of characters in the translation text to the number of characters in the original text, sorted the resulting values and chose the middle value (median). So we got the most likely ratio.
It is noteworthy that when translated from English to Russian, the length of the text increases by 9.11%, and when translated in the opposite direction ... again grows, but only by 1.39%. This may indicate that translators use more words in order not to lose and convey the meaning of the text correctly to the detriment of brevity. We were sure that we would get symmetry less English text when translated from Russian - it turns out in real life it is not.
We were also sure for many years that the German text grows by 30% when translated from English (this figure wanders from presentation to presentation about the localization of software of various speakers and is also found in the documentation for Microsoft developers), but this is not so - growth only 16.67%.
The super-short (more than 2.5 times!) Chinese text makes you think carefully about how our apps will look like and pixel-lined games for iOS being translated into this language.
We hope this information is useful not only to satisfy curiosity “so which language is the most concise?”, But also to solve practical problems, for example, to determine the maximum size of fields and controls when preparing to localize an application, game or site .
We promise not to forget about this initiative and update, refine the statistics, add new translation directions to the delight of developers and localization managers.
about the author
Alconost is engaged in the localization of applications, games and websites in 60 languages. Language translators, linguistic testing, cloud platform with API, continuous localization, 24/7 project managers, any formats of string resources.
We also make advertising and training videos - for websites selling, image, advertising, training, teasers, expliners, trailers for Google Play and the App Store.
Read more: https://alconost.com
We at Alconost are engaged in localizing software and games in 60+ languages and often see how developers face the same problem: different languages require different numbers of characters to convey the same information . As a result, in the user interface, some of the inscriptions “do not fit” and they have to be reduced or resized controls.
It is known that, for example, German is “longer” than English, and Chinese is “shorter”. However, it is unlikely that someone will immediately tell you exactly how much one language is more “sign-intensive” than another.
')
It became interesting to us, we collected statistics and received just such a tablet with coefficients for about twenty language pairs - under the cut.
| Original language | Translation language | How much text in the target language is more (+) or less (-) of the original |
|---|---|---|
| English | French | 21.18% |
| English | Spanish | 19.52% |
| English | Italian | 17.91% |
| English | Deutsch | 16.67% |
| English | Dutch | 13.80% |
| English | Portuguese (Portugal) | 14.29% |
| English | Portuguese (Brazil) | 12.96% |
| English | Polish | 9.33% |
| English | Russian | 9.11% |
| English | Czech | 3.70% |
| English | Arab | -6.25% |
| English | Japanese | -39.68% |
| English | Korean | -44.04% |
| English | Chinese (Simplified) | -61.97% |
| English | Chinese (Traditional) | -63.80% |
| Russian | English | 1.39% |
| Russian | Italian | 12.48% |
| Russian | Spanish | 13.76% |
| Russian | Deutsch | 14.26% |
| Russian | French | 16.06% |
| Italian | Russian | 3.57% |
How was it counted?
The calculation is made on the basis of data from the Nitro live online translation service (this is like Google Translate, only the translation is done by live translators-native speakers). As the service works, so-called parallel texts accumulate there (the original in one language is a translation in another).
And here we took the last 1000 orders in Nitro for each of the translation directions, for each order we found the ratio of the number of characters in the translation text to the number of characters in the original text, sorted the resulting values and chose the middle value (median). So we got the most likely ratio.
findings
It is noteworthy that when translated from English to Russian, the length of the text increases by 9.11%, and when translated in the opposite direction ... again grows, but only by 1.39%. This may indicate that translators use more words in order not to lose and convey the meaning of the text correctly to the detriment of brevity. We were sure that we would get symmetry less English text when translated from Russian - it turns out in real life it is not.
We were also sure for many years that the German text grows by 30% when translated from English (this figure wanders from presentation to presentation about the localization of software of various speakers and is also found in the documentation for Microsoft developers), but this is not so - growth only 16.67%.
The super-short (more than 2.5 times!) Chinese text makes you think carefully about how our apps will look like and pixel-lined games for iOS being translated into this language.
We hope this information is useful not only to satisfy curiosity “so which language is the most concise?”, But also to solve practical problems, for example, to determine the maximum size of fields and controls when preparing to localize an application, game or site .
We promise not to forget about this initiative and update, refine the statistics, add new translation directions to the delight of developers and localization managers.
about the author
Alconost is engaged in the localization of applications, games and websites in 60 languages. Language translators, linguistic testing, cloud platform with API, continuous localization, 24/7 project managers, any formats of string resources.
We also make advertising and training videos - for websites selling, image, advertising, training, teasers, expliners, trailers for Google Play and the App Store.
Read more: https://alconost.com
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/197146/
All Articles