From: John D. Burger (john@mitre.org)
Date: Fri Dec 22 2006 - 17:08:27 CST
Jony Rosenne wrote:
> It isn't enough to localize text, characters sets and directionality.
> Attached is part of the current Google home page in Hebrew. If one
> uses
> culturally loaded images, one should mind what they mean in various
> cultures.
> The image has no meaning to me and I suppose to most Hebrew speakers,
> although I can guess it has something to do with the American
> concept of
> Christmas.
Well, if you click on the image, you do get an explanation of sorts,
in a variety of languages (albeit not in Hebrew). I'd argue the
concept is "Winter Holiday", not "Christmas", and the former
especially is not limited to America, although it is not, of course,
global. Interestingly, they use the same image for their separate
Chinese site:
I'm having trouble reconciling "culturally loaded" and "has no
meaning to me". Is there indeed some loaded meaning in Israel for
this image? I can't tell if you're annoyed, or just taking the
opportunity to make an important point about localization.
For the curious, Google has been doing this sort of thing almost from
the beginning:
http://www.google.com/intl/en/holidaylogos.html
- John Burger
MITRE
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