At ProChain we are developing the capability for our software to be installed on operating systems using languages other than English. Naturally, I am called upon to test this capability. I chose to test in several languages: French, for the latin alphabet, Russian for Cyrillic, Hebrew for the right-to-left orientation, and Chinese for the massive character set. Unfortunately I am a monolingual guy, which poses some issues. For instance, I have no idea how to run a Hebrew language Windows XP installer.
Which does not daunt me, because I have confidence in my network. I contacted a tester with whom I’ve corresponded on a software testing Google group who works in Israel, and asked him to help. My teammate Anoop emailed him screen shots when it was time to click the next button and he responded with a note on which to click. It seems to have worked fine. Now I owe him a solid, and will gladly help him when he needs me.
I the same vein I have several cousins who are fluent Russian speakers, and a teammate is French. I will need a lead on someone to help with the Chinese setup, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get there. I count on my friends to be there for me when I need them, and just so you know, I’m here for y’all too.
Interesting problem you have there…languages are always fun. I like the logic behind your choosing of the languages.
Does the problem have to be this big though? We phased in different languages……starting with customer demand. French, German, Japanese was the rough order. It kind of sounds like you are trying to bite all of them at once.
Another way to test this. Create two virtual machines…..English OS on one and other language of desire on the other…let’s say Chinese
Open the installer on the English one…..open the installer on the Chinese one. Now you have something to compare.
Click next on English one…….Click next on the Chinese one.
There is actually an app that will mimic mouse clicks you make in one screen….and execute the same clicks on the other.
The above suggestion does nothing to tell you if the the text you see is translated properly…..but i should allow you to get the program installed and running quickly.
Geordie’s reply — Hey Adam, thanks for the thoughts. The side by side idea occurred to me but I have no faith that the screens are really the same between installers. And in the Hebrew installer everything is oriented right to left so I have no faith the the left buttons would mean the same thing. Also, the reason for doing all this work at once is that it really isn’t that much work. We are testing the proof of concept that the software works ON non-English operating systems, not that it works IN non-English languages. So once we set these systems up we just install and run through our features. Everything will be in English in terms of menus and error messages, so it should not be bad.