Best way to get Ruby documentation translated into Japanese?

Question

We just finished a project that we need to share with a team of Ruby developers in Japan who, as it turns out, know absolutely no English. Has anyone used a service for translating code documentation into Japanese? I don't know if such a thing even exists. Maybe I just need to use a regular business translation service and hope that the translators don't think our documentation is geek nonsense. If so, could anyone recommend a good online or offline service specifically for translations?

Answer 1

On what basis did you determine that you must translate your documentation into Japanese? Did you show the documentation to these Japanese developers and then they said that they didn't understand it? I'm asking because all Japanese take at least 6 years of English, all through middle school and high school, and they're even starting earlier now. Despite this, it is true that most Japanese do not speak English very well. But, most Japanese developers can read technical documentation in English. You probably cannot have a conversation with them, and they might not even be able to ask you questions very well in English (even through email), but most Japanese developers that I've worked with (and I've worked with a lot) can read English documentation (if it's technical).

If you do find that you need to translate your documentation, be sure that you use a service that specializes in technical documentation. It requires a very different skill set from normal translation. You should have the vendor translate a small piece first, send that to your developers in Japan, and have them review the translation first before you get the whole thing translated.

There are lots of firms that can handle this work (LionBridge, WeLocalize), but depending on volume and cost, you might search for an independent contractor first using a search engine. I know a lot of good translators that prefer to work solo rather than work for one of the big localization firms.

One possible way to find an independent contractor is to use Guru.com or elance.com, and do a search for "japanese technical translation" (or whatever you want to search on). For a search on "japanese technical translation", many potential candidates showed up, with their skillsets listed, rank, scores, feedback etc all listed.

Answer 2

This will be a tricky thing to have done, I think it will be rather important to find someone that understands both Japanese and Ruby. The problem if you use a standard translation service (or even a technical one that doesn't specifically know Ruby), is that they may not recognize Ruby keywords that need to be left in roman characters.

For an (overly) simplistic example, in your documentation, you may at some point refer to Ruby's print function. A naive translator would change that to the Japanese characters プリント (which is just a Japanese-syllable-ized version of "print"), but it should have been left alone. Without understanding Ruby, it will be very difficult for someone to distinguish between what needs to be translated, and what needs to be left intact.

Answer 3

Given that most ruby development is conducted in Japanese, and there is a very active community of skilled ruby programmers who's first language is Japanese (many of whom speak excellent English) your best bet is probably to find someone on that end to help you.

This would be a good idea in any case, since it's generally far easier to read something someone translated into their native language.

A polite note to someone bilingual on the (Japanese) ruby users group list may be the best way to proceed (I'd advise against posting directly to the list in English).

Answer 4

Are you really sure that you need translating? Ruby used to be used seldom in 'western development' just because there was no good english documentation, just in japanese, as it's autor is from Japan.

Answer 5

If it's well written and short, and you project is open source I'll do it, for free too. If it's long or closed source I can do it for a comission, as long as it doesn't involve an NDA, if there is an NDA let me consult with my employer.