Microsoft Terminology Blog

Windows 7 terminology published on Microsoft Language Portal

Palle Petersen — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 02:18:00 GMT

Following the worldwide release of Windows 7, we have now included the terminology and software translations for 35 languages on the Microsoft Language Portal . UI strings for Windows 7 (and many other products) are also available for download in CSV...(read more)

Downloading UI translations for offline use

Palle Petersen — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:48:00 GMT

Microsoft Language Portal features an online search that displays results from our terminology databases that contain terms, their definitions, and their translations. In addition to the terminology database, the portal also contains UI translations from...(read more)

Dutch Style Guide Updated

Dalene Feucht — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 02:49:00 GMT

The Dutch Style Guide has been updated and is available for download from the Language Portal Style Guide Download Center . Here is an overview of the changes made in this update: - Guidelines for translation of key names have been changed. - A new section...(read more)

How are we doing?

Dalene Feucht — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 22:03:00 GMT

The Language Portal ( http://www.microsoft.com/language ) has been available for over a year, now and we would like to hear what you think so far! Is the site helping you in your daily work? What areas do you use most often? What is particularly useful...(read more)

Spelling Reform Topic Updated in Portuguese (Brazil) Style Guide

Dalene Feucht — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 02:53:00 GMT

The 5 th edition of Vocabulário Ortográfico da Língua Portuguesa (VOLP) was published on March 19, 2009, clarifying the points that were obscure in the official text of the Spelling Agreement. In Portuguese (Brazil) Style Guide available on the Language...(read more)

Danish and Ukrainian Style Guides Recently Updated

Dalene Feucht — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:30:00 GMT

The Danish and Ukrainian Style Guides available from the Microsoft Language Portal were updated recently. In the Danish Style Guide, section 4.1.1.7. Mood has been updated. In Danish some verbs in the imperative form can be mistaken for a noun and therefore...(read more)

Portuguese spelling reform in Brazil

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 16:19:00 GMT

On January 1 st , 2009, Brazil started adopting the new spelling rules, defined in the Spelling Agreement signed in 1990 by seven Portuguese-speaking countries. Grammarians estimate that the spelling reform affects 0.5% of the Portuguese (Brazil) lexicon....(read more)

Context-sensitive speller

Anonymous — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:36:00 GMT

Today’s post in the Office Natural Language Team Blog reminds us that a great addition to Office 2007, a context-sensitive spelling checker , is also available for Spanish (as well as English and German). It is a very useful feature for languages with...(read more)

Windows 7 Beta in Arabic, German, Hindi and Japanese available on Jan 9

Language Excellence — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 13:25:00 GMT

Windows 7 Beta is now ready and in addition to English, it'll also be available in German, Japanese, Arabic, and Hindi on January 9. Each language will be available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions (except Hindi which will only be available in 32-bit). Read...(read more)

Free downloads of 26 new Style Guides now available

Palle Petersen — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 16:00:00 GMT

We have added another 26 Localization/Translation Style Guides that you can download for free from the Microsoft Language Portal. We already provide around 60 downloadable Style Guides and have now added the following languages from the Unlimited Potential...(read more)

Localized Visual Studio 2008 in 9 new languages

Palle Petersen — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 20:40:00 GMT

Visual Studio 2008 has been localized into Arabic, Czech, Hebrew, Hindi, Polish, Tamil, Turkish, Malayalam and Oriya as a free "CLIP" download package . "CLIP" stand for " Captions Language Interface Pack ". It's basically an add-on with localized user...(read more)

Cultural awareness and product development/localization

Anonymous — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 16:34:00 GMT

Sarah Dillon in There's something about translation has a very interesting post on multilingualism and cultural identity and their implications for language professionals. It made me reflect on cultural awareness and the role it plays in the development...(read more)

Czech Terminology: changing “klepnout” to “kliknout”

Palle Petersen — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 18:20:00 GMT

Based on strong feedback from our users, we are changing our Czech translations for click and double-click (verb and noun) to kliknout/kliknutí and dvakrát kliknout/dvojité kliknutí , respectively. With this change, we are hoping to align these terms...(read more)

Windows Live terminology - what users told us

Palle Petersen — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 17:33:00 GMT

For a couple of months earlier this year, we ran a terminology feedback program to solicit comments and alternative suggestions from our users. This program was specifically aimed at the existing terminology in the Windows Live suite of services (Messenger,...(read more)

Puget Sound STC meeting on terminology at Microsoft

Language Excellence — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 23:11:00 GMT

The Puget Sound chapter of the Society for Technical Communication ( STC ) invited me and a panel of Microsoft writers, editors, managers, and terminologists to present our view of terminology management best practices at their November meeting in Bellevue,...(read more)