Commercially Minor Languages and Localization

Maria Todorova


Abstract
This paper offers a perspective of languages with a less significant volume of digital usership as minor in the context of globalization and localization. With this premise, the risks this status poses to the quality of localized texts, the substantiality of genre conventions, the public image of professional translators, and the users’ linguistic competence in these languages is explored. Furthermore, the common lack of established or clear conventions in the localization of digital products into commercially minor languages (and in the digital product genres) is highlighted as one of the factors amplifying these risks. These perspectives are contextualized with the Bulgarian language with examples of errors encountered in Bulgarian digital content localized from English and more specifically – errors and problems related to gender neutrality and register.
Anthology ID:
2024.clib-1.31
Volume:
Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Computational Linguistics in Bulgaria (CLIB 2024)
Month:
September
Year:
2024
Address:
Sofia, Bulgaria
Venue:
CLIB
SIG:
Publisher:
Department of Computational Linguistics, Institute for Bulgarian Language, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Note:
Pages:
277–285
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.clib-1.31
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Maria Todorova. 2024. Commercially Minor Languages and Localization. In Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Computational Linguistics in Bulgaria (CLIB 2024), pages 277–285, Sofia, Bulgaria. Department of Computational Linguistics, Institute for Bulgarian Language, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
Cite (Informal):
Commercially Minor Languages and Localization (Todorova, CLIB 2024)
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PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.clib-1.31.pdf