Norcontrol IT has released the latest VTS Operator Workstation software application, which comes in any language. The process of language translation is something that Norcontrol IT has
been involved in since the 1990’s, when language support for both French and Spanish was provided for the VTS Operator Workstation. This kind of
language support is relatively straightforward though, when compared to
the process of translating English text to Chinese, a task that Norcontrol
IT has recently been involved in.
“There was no special magic to it, just a lot of hard work and international co-operation,” says Rune Langøy an engineer on the translation project. A simple translation was impossible as Maritime and IT vocabulary is very specific and technical, whilst Chinese characters
also differ from region to region, making the project even more complicated.
Integral to the successful completion of the translation project was the customer approach that signifies the attitude of Norcontrol IT. “Because Norcontrol IT is an international company, we already possessed the necessary resources in our Singapore office to meet the needs of our customer,” comments Langøy.
Once the customer was satisfied with the technicalities of the system and the language used, it was a simple case of providing them with files for the menus, text boxes and dialogs. From here the customer could decide on the best terms for the navigational language and adjust the basic layout so that the Chinese text would fit correctly.