Commercially Minor Languages and Localization (2024)

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.

## introduction in localization, a major language is considered a language with high global distribution and commercial use, and a minor one -the opposite. in this context, not only all minority languages become minor, but also the understanding of "minority" in the globalized context should be reexamined. as early as 20 years ago, cronin makes one crucial claim that is denotative for linguistic inequality in an era of technology and globalization, by declaring that "the hegemony of english in the fastest-growing areas of technological development means that all other 1 'not just a language, but usually a particular variety of a language, plus local conventions regarding currency, date and hour settings, presentation of numbers, right through to such things as symbolic color coding' @xcite . languages become in this context, minority languages. @xcite . speaking about this extended idea of "minority", cronin lists several negative consequences of "the absence of a critical self-reflective activity in the translation enterprise": the vulnerability of minority languages to interference in majority-to-minority translation, the alteration of minority languages in translation, and the predominant focus on majority languages in translation @xcite . this paper applies cronin's logic by extension to bulgarian, a globally and commercially minor language, and, considering the all-pervasiveness of digital content in modern everyday life, explores the potential issues such a lesser status can lead to in the context of digital product localization. ## localizing digital content in bulgarian in the globalized present, every digital-market player strives to bring their product to as many users as possible -a crucial step in this process is localization, the adaptation of said product to the target market's locale 1 . when international enterprises enter the small bulgarian market, they are first faced with one dilemma -to localize or not to localize. the inevitability of this question lies in "the quantitative prism of return on investment", through which business executives perceive localization @xcite . one can easily imagine that with fewer than 5 million users who access the internet on a monthly basis (miniwatts marketing group, 2023) bulgaria is not such an enticing venture. nevertheless, out of 22 identified english-source websites in the 100 most visited by bulgarian users in august 2021, 12 have been localized into bulgarian. what is more, out of the 7 originally english ones with over 1 million unique visits by bulgarian users in the same ## translation errors in digital products localized into bulgarian translation errors in localized websites, mobile applications, or even operation systems are certainly not uncommon and we often laugh about them in professional circles and even blame them on machine translation. mt, however, is rarely exclusively used in the localization context. in order to analyze and systematize the types of errors found in products localized form english into bulgarian, i collected 150 mistakes found in 42 such products by browsing and using my mobile devices in bulgarian for a little over a year, excluding mistakes from products that were highly likely to have used non-post-edited mt exclusively or errors that cannot be linked to factors specific to the context of localization. some of the errors i encountered could still be attributed to mt, especially when it comes to short ambiguous or polysemous user-interface text units. the ones included in the corpus, however, were found in products whose companies have shared information about their localization processes publicly, often showing how they approach and value quality assurance -among those are various microsoft and google products (including android), revolut, glovo, airbnb, and others. regardless of whether and to what extent mt was used in the processes that led to these mistakes, their existence and nature bring up concerns about the average level of quality in localization from english into bulgarian and the potential consequences thereof. the errors encountered range from problems related to text types or communicative situations typical of the digital product genres (37 %) to problems linked to the technological macrostructure behind the texts showing in digital products (41 %) and problems resulting from various levels of ambiguity of the succinct source texts (22 %) (appendix a). due to volume constraints, for the purposes of this paper, i will focus on the former type -genre-related errors, and more specifically, those related to gender neutrality and register (appendix b), while some examples of the other categories can be found in appendix c. the mistakes associated with those two aspects occur mainly due to the asymmetry between english and bulgarian in the categories of gender and number, and more particularly in lexemes referring to the user in the second person. judging by the mistakes encountered, there does not seem to be a universal approach in translating digital product text types with such lexemes, which leads to inconsistency (image 1) and grammatically incorrect solutions which hundreds of thousands of users witness on a daily basis. considering the minor status of bulgarian in localization, motivation to tackle these issues would unlikely come from the top (product owners) and postolea's statement that translators become "creators of language" rings all the more true. image 1: register inconsistency in glovo and philips home what happens though when there does not seem to be a consensus among stakeholders? regardless of how common such translation inconsistencies and mistakes can be in localized products, it is unlikely they would lead to any drastic linguistic changes on their own. in some of the linguistics aspects they are associated with, however, faltering of the norms (or uncertainty where one lacks) is observed on a greater scale. the difficulties of adopting gender-neutral language in bulgarian, for instance, often spark debates in professional translators' groups. it might seem that we are far from codifying a solution, but translators have to find one on a regular basis -be it when localizing a product addressing an unknown individual user or a book or movie with non-binary characters. in localization, the lack of established strategies to apply in such cases mainly leads to ungrammatical solutions and inconsistency. if one solution were to prevail, however, it can slowly become an "unspoken rule" in localization practice and in digital product genres, if not in more universal use. in such context, as owners of the target language, translators involved in localization projects become decision-makers with the two most obvious choices of either disregarding the original neutrality or adapting the respective paradigm in bulgarian to match it. as a result of this reality, the target texts in the minor language often end up as either too conservative and sometimes outright incorrect (appendix b: lines 21-24) or the target language simply gives way to the paradigm of the english source, using plural forms when referring to an individual user (appendix b: lines 10-20). undoubtedly, these are not the only solutions when a variety of translation shifts can be adopted to bypass the asymmetry -e.g. instead of "ще бъдете пренасочени" [you will be redirected(pl.)], a structural shift can be adopted to avoid the use of participle which will have to be marked for gender in the singular: "ще ви пренасочим" [we will redirect you(sg.)]. such strategies, however, might not be universally applicable and often introduce additional limitations in the localization context that already implies numerous constraints on its own as seen in the second error category in appendix a. nevertheless, they can be applied in most of the context of the observed errors but have not, which lends the industry and academia at least one actionable solution -to include such strategies in translator training for the purposes of localization. while the matter of linguistic gender-neutrality is yet to be solved in bulgarian, the polite form of address has already been codified. despite the various adjustments over the years, we now have clear rules in regard to the use of capitalized pronouns and plural forms. and even though the past faltering of this form has weakened its use in present day and might have led to some of the related errors found in localized products, there are consistent patterns found that are likely due to something more than a disregard of the rules. in fact, bulgarian localizers often oscillate between the informal singular and formal addresses, with the majority of products resorting to a "hybrid" non-codified form, characterized by the use of lowercase pronouns and plural adjectives and past participles when referring to an individual user. (todorova, 2023: 122-123) what is more, judging by google and microsoft's localized texts, this hybrid version is consistent with the conglomerates' style guides and requirements. unfortunately, google does not provide open access to its documentation, while microsoft only mentions the matter in passing, not singling it out, perhaps due to its lack of official codification (todorova, 2023: 124). ## user reception the reception of such translation errors would depend on the linguistic competence of the user. if they are a proficient speaker, such errors could only erode the image of professional translators. on the one hand, if the user is aware that a human is indeed behind such an error, it raises the question of how well professional translators are trained and how much these services are valued by investors in the face of digital product owners. on the other hand, if the user assumes the mistake results from the use of mt, the notion that professional translation services are not valued and sought after is reinforced. and in the cases where the user's linguistic competence is already compromised, encountering such mistakes in the everyday use of their phone, for instance, could only deepen their lack of understanding or solidify previously adapted incorrect paradigms. additionally, if users commonly encounter such unfortunate localization instances, the question stands of how many people would actually choose to navigate digital content in their native tongue instead of in english when this is possible. in a country such as bulgaria with a digitally minor language and an above-average rate of english proficiency (education first, 2023: 4), proficient english speakers would likely prefer to use digital products in english. as a result, even though they might have a better than average command of bulgarian as well, their digital experience will be shaped by english modalities. what is more, in a study on digital users' reception, taanonen concludes that "the [user] group with competent english skills is relatively more critical towards translated content and its quality than the group with weaker englishlanguage skills." (2014: 94) losing even a part of this proficient and critical towards translation quality group, decreases the chance of motivation for improvement coming from the users. additionally, by turning to english, users of higher proficiency decrease the market value of bulgarian further and, respectively, the incentive for product owners to invest in improving the quality of localization. ## final remarks in the economic enterprise which localization essentially is, the quality of target texts in a language of a commercially minor status such as bulgarian is often of lesser investment concern. this leaves translators at the vulnerable position of decision-makers within a low-resourced specialized context. changes to this reality in the localization process, however, can mainly be expected to stem form the stakeholders considered owners of the minor language -the translators and translator trainers. a step in this direction could be the forming of a better understanding of translation problems in localization from english into bulgarian, which would lead to the establishing of practical solutions and their integration in translation training. on a grander scale, with the rise of ai-powered mt, which outperforms any human linguist in terms of speed and cost-efficiency, all the more focus should be put on finding ways to educate users and ensure their linguistic skills are strong enough to sift digital content through and identify quality localized content. additionally, efficient processes should be found to guarantee that stakeholders in bulgarian localization, such as translators and translation agencies, receive proper training, are equipped with sufficient resources, and enjoy professional prestige that would motivate higher responsibility and performance.