Comment This is good for both China and Adobe. (Score 2, Interesting) 507
Adobe wins because, as mentioned before, they save on development costs and don't lose much in sales anyway.
China wins because if they do want to use Adobe products (pirated or otherwise) they have to use the English version, and anything that reinforces the de facto standard of English in the IT world is a good thing. You'll understand if you ever have to deal with a mixed-language environment of Simplified Chinese (PRC), Traditional Chinese (Taiwan/HK) and English versions of software, none of which really "play nice" with each other.
Plus, it's especially hard to port technical documents to Chinese, which isn't an alphabet- or syllable-based language. So, to translate something technical, they have to either use homophones (Chinese characters that sound like their English equivalents, but mean something completely different), or string together two or more characters to create a very loose, easily misinterpreted translation.
Hey, working in China, I hope more companies follow Adobe's example... =)
China wins because if they do want to use Adobe products (pirated or otherwise) they have to use the English version, and anything that reinforces the de facto standard of English in the IT world is a good thing. You'll understand if you ever have to deal with a mixed-language environment of Simplified Chinese (PRC), Traditional Chinese (Taiwan/HK) and English versions of software, none of which really "play nice" with each other.
Plus, it's especially hard to port technical documents to Chinese, which isn't an alphabet- or syllable-based language. So, to translate something technical, they have to either use homophones (Chinese characters that sound like their English equivalents, but mean something completely different), or string together two or more characters to create a very loose, easily misinterpreted translation.
Hey, working in China, I hope more companies follow Adobe's example... =)
