When I test software I love to test for the quirky details stuff. I know, why bother, but I guess I’m just one of those people for whom the devil is in the detail.

And one of my favorite tests for multi-lingual applications is to test for consistency by changing the language to either Simplified Chinese or Japanese – languages I absolutely do not speak. The reason? Well for one it has a different character set, flushing out non-translated items right away (even if they sound the same the different characters will make it look different).

(‘share’ is clearly not being translated here)

But secondly it also means you are suddenly stuck in a piece of software with no textual hints, forcing you to rely on logic and common sense to find your way.
Now, you shouldn’t do this if you are absolutely new to the software. You need to have a basic familiarity with the functionalities first, otherwise you’ll just get lost. But when you do have that basic knowledge, turning yourself into a temporary illiterate by trying to navigate the application in Japanese is a great way of seeing whether the logic of the application still holds up. Doing this has often helped me find inconsistencies you would otherwise easily overlook. Issues for instance with changing button or menu orders, when on one screen the order of buttons is [Ok] – [Cancel] and on another [Cancel] – [ Ok].

Now why is that important? Surely most won’t bother about that?!? Well, yes. Most won’t, but then there is this thing called repetition… We are creatures of habit and when we use software we often start anticipating moves, almost clicking automatically without looking. Like flipping through a photo album where you always flip through the pages from left to right, expecting the chronological order to follow that. How annoying is it if half way through you find the chronological order has suddenly changed, forcing you to go the other way?

So try it. It’s a great way of finding things you would otherwise overlook and it can be kind of funny to see how good your own understanding of the application really is…