The European Union's Amsterdam Treaty, Article 128.4, asserts that the "Community shall take cultural aspects into account in its action under the provisions of this Treaty, in particular in order to respect and to promote the diversity of its cultures." One of Europe's strongest aspects is its diversity of culture and by far its diversity of language, but it is this strength that seems to be crippling the affairs of the Union.

The EU has a universal market, a universal currency (for the most part) and more or less universal policies. The EU has already faced this problem of Europe's multiculturalism and yet even the euro itself, a common currency to bridge this multiculturalism, is under threat. Countries such as Italy are considering returning to their own form of currency. Will there ever be a universal language? Can there ever be?

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The EU enlargement last year increased its official languages from 11 to 20. EU proceedings and documents must be translated into those languages at a cost that has reached $1bn (£568m) for the first time. A total of 1,600 people work for the directorate general for translation, making it the largest EU department.

The cost may seem enormous and may eventually create pressures for a reduction in the number of official tongues but Dr Briffa and many linguists, academics and cultural historians believe that the boost to minority languages should be celebrated. "Culturally, intellectually, academically and even psychologically, the more languages you have, the better," said Dr Briffa. "This cultural aspect is much more important [than saving money]. It would be a disaster to reduce the EU to just, say, three languages. If one language becomes dominant, there could be an expansion of nationalism."

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South Korea is a very attractive target for software and product developers because it is one of the most affluent countries in Asia. Successful Korean localization generally poses fewer linguistic and technical challenges than localization for China or Japan, but several issues exist that developers need to be aware of in order to facilitate their localization efforts and to ensure their quality. (This article focuses solely on South Korea because the North Korean economy is closed to most foreign activity, so little localization takes place for the country.)

South Korea has rapidly modernized since the end of Korean War and is now one of the most technically advanced countries in the world. Twenty years ago Korea was primarily known as an exporter of cheap manufactured goods, but now rivals Japan as a producer and exporter of high-quality electronics and consumer goods. With modernization, the Korean economy has boomed, and Korea has developed a strong market for luxury consumer goods.

Language and writing system
Koreans tend to be quite proud of their writing system (known as Hangeul), which was invented in 1444. The Hangeul writing system has twenty-four letters (jamo) that are combined to produce blocks that represent syllables. In addition, Korean makes use of Chinese characters known as hanja, although the number of hanja used varies from speaker to speaker, with some using considerable numbers of hanja and others using none at all. The use of hanja is a subject of some debate in Korea, but educated individuals can be expected to use some of these characters in their writing and to be able to read a basic set of them.

Software has to be properly localized for Korean-language display and input. Fortunately most major computer operating systems support Korean quite well, and properly internationalized software can rely on the operating system to provide this functionality. Proprietary systems can require considerably more engineering, however, because Korean letters are combined in blocks. Therefore, even though there are only twenty-four letters, there are thousands of characters in a Korean font.

Although Microsoft Word and some other word processors and DTP packages provide basic Korean support in their English-language versions, this support is insufficient for quality output, and localizers must work using localized versions of software (and possibly the operating system as well). Because South Korea is a prime market in Asia, most major DTP applications have been localized for Korean. The English versions of Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator (CS versions and higher) also provide Korean-language support that will be adequate for most purposes (although the default installation of Illustrator requires that Asian-language features be enabled via the application preferences).

Technical, political and social issues
South Korea has the highest penetration of broadband of any country in the world, and Korean users tend to be quite technically savvy and to demand high quality in localized products. A very “Korean” appearance in products can provide a significant sales advantage as many Koreans are very sensitive about the continued presence of American military forces in their country. In recent years there have been a number of boycott attempts against U.S. products and corporations in Korea; although their impact has been limited, there is distinct anti-American sentiment among many potential buyers, and American companies may benefit if their products avoid an obviously “American” look and feel. Therefore, in order to produce a Korean-style product, graphics, packaging and marketing materials should be localized with Korean images: images of blond northern Europeans will quickly mark a product as poorly localized.

Koreans, like Japanese and Chinese, generally prefer information-rich Web pages, and a quick examination of Korean sites versus North American or European sites will reveal a distinct difference in appearance and the amount of information presented, with American and European sites appearing very “spare” or “simple” in comparison. Korean Web localization can be quite complex and require substantial engineering effort not normally associated with Web site localization, since meeting local requirements may require modification of site functionality and appearance that goes beyond simply translating content.

In South Korea, for example, only South Korean citizens and those with permanent residency can make Internet purchases (such purchases require a citizenship ID number), and thus any e-commerce applications localized for Korea must support verification of this ID number if Internet sales are to be made.

Conclusion
South Korea represents a major market for localized goods. Although it lacks the long-term growth potential of China, it offers good short- to medium-term return on investment for companies willing to invest in appropriate localization. Proper localization for Korea requires technical, linguistic and cultural savvy. Localizers should make use of in-country staff or freelance translators who are aware of current market conditions and trends. They must also invest in quality assurance and control processes and implement them consistently.

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Question:

We have several freelance translators that we use on a continuous basis. When we send them files to translate via e-mail, it becomes a hassle to send them all of the relevant reference material (memories), as this often may encompass several hundred files. Is there a better way to handle this?

Answer:

Yes. A feature that is extremely underused in Fortis is the "Create Reference Extract" option. This option will allow you to include all relevant fuzzy matching material into a single file pair. To accomplish this, do the following:

1. When importing new files into Fortis, in the "Import/Export" window, choose the "Options" button.

2. Choose the "Pretranslation" tab. In this tab, check the "Create Reference Extract for Fuzzy Matches" box.

3. Continue with the import. Fortis will now create a new file pair entitled "assoref" with the extensions of your source and target language. This file pair will contain all relevant fuzzy matches for the translation. Sending this file pair to the translator eliminates the need to send any further reference material.

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Localization of Microsoft Word documents often requires extraction and editing of graphics. If this work is done on Macintosh computers, there is a bug that may prevent users from copying large graphics and pasting them in other applications (the graphics may be heavily garbled or may not paste at all). In other instances, copying graphics from Microsoft Word creates images with a different resolution than the originals. In such instances, the best solution is to request the original graphics files used in creating the Word document, but these files are often unavailable or no longer exist.

If graphics cause this sort of problem and you cannot obtain originals, the solution is to make a PDF of the Word document and then use a full version of Acrobat (not the free Reader application) to extract the graphics into Photoshop using the TouchUp Object Tool. To do this, control-click or right click on the graphic in the PDF with the TouchUp Object Tool and select Edit Image… from the contextual menu. This process will open the image into Photoshop where you can save it into the appropriate format.

If you do not have access to a full version of Acrobat, you can also open PDFs directly in Photoshop. You will need to select a resolution for the resulting Photoshop image, which means that you will most likely resample the image. In addition you will need to crop the image to the area you want to work with. If the Microsoft Word image is a combination of elements created in Word, this may be the only way to extract the entire image into another application.

Both of these approaches can be used to extract graphics from Microsoft Word that are otherwise inaccessible on the Macintosh.

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