Inaccurate localization can make you bust out laughing

Remember when I posted (in the beginning of the year) Inaccurate localization can cause problems?

Well, we ran across a not quite as dangerous issue just the other day with the Brazilian Portguese localization of Vista (currently in progress, just as with other localizations). The question that came in to Kieran:

There's a keyboard layout named BR (does not exist) that's showing up in the localized version (PTB). Do you know anything about it?

Kieran forwarded it on to me if to ask if I had any thoughts.

I looked at it for a moment, confused. Then suddenly I realized what it was and had to laugh out loud.

Did you spot it to? If you need a hint then you can see what it looks like on an English system:

The localizer had accidentally translated US to BR! :-)

I talked to Kieran afterward and mentioned how much this seemed like a blog post waiting to happen, and she said that she was about to say the same thing. It is one of those great stories like the one in the comments of this post that are just funny to people involved in international....

Anyway, like I said, this is not as dangerous as the Welsh street sign, and obviously it will be fixed in the shipping version. But I have found that if you take the stuff that I laugh about that at least 40% of it will make my readers laugh, too. And I am betting that this one falls in that 40%....

:-)

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