Translation from Italian of the email related to the modules in this archive.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Hi,

as promised I send you the prototypes of the modules I was translating when I was working for TI in 1982.

TI has done a lot of work for the localization of products in its catalog. I remember that there are different priorities for localization efforts. At the top there were educational modules, obviously. For such kind of programs, the localization was fundamental. For some other products there is no need at all to localize them to push sales, for example Parsec. Then, there were some products whose translation need a lot of effort. One was the Editor/Assembler package. There are approx. 500 pages of manual to translate in order to have a fully localized product.

I started working on this E/A translation at the end of 1982. I remember that also a translation in German was started in the same period. The work needed to translate the module was very limited (we chosed to not translate commands in the menu, e.g. RUN, but mainly the messages) while the main effort was in the manual. We were working in 10/12 translation at the same time and E/A was a low priority one, so when in 1983 TI decided to suspend the production of the TI99 the project was stopped. We completed 5/6 chapters of the manual and we had a prototype of the module (completed at 80%).

There are different options to translate a module. Usually we received the program in English and the dump of all screens with the list of the English words/phrases and space to write the translation. Once completed, it was sent back in US to change the code and prepare a prototype for us to review. Another option was to receive directly the code to modify, but it was not so usual.
Finally, we modified directly the raw dump of the cartridge to produce a new one (using internal development tools, quite a sort of gram kracker). This was usually done to have a prototype of the work when there were delays in receiving stuff from US.

Another module I worked on and was never published was the Disk Manager 3. There were 2 different versions designed: one for English, French and German, another for Dutch, Italian and Spanish. We were supposed to receive the source code (we have to replace French version and there was the need to change the Yes/No routine from O/N to S/N), but we received the dump of screens and list of world to translate. After having completed the translation we sent it back in US. We then received a prototype of the module with our changes (still with English and German languages). After review we discovered some small mistakes, that the Yes/No routine wasn't changed and that the fcnt+aid option was not included (while present in English). So, the module was 90% completed for Italian, but then the work was stopped (we were at the end of 1983...).

I should have some other stuff for the TI never published in some boxes in my cellar. I will try to find them, hoping they are still working. Let me know if you are still interested.

Cheers,
xxxxxxxx

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Translation from Italian done by RoKKo.

