We have decided that we are going to localize only to Japanese for the time being; localizing to other languages proved to be too much work, unfortunately. If you are interested in doing Japanese localization, and you are still interested after reading this, please contact us! To other localizers, we must politely and sorrowfully decline.

Stick Software Localization

We at Stick Software would like to support the international Mac community by localizing our software to other languages. There's a problem, though: I only speak English. So we need the international Mac community to support us. (Nice how that came around in a circle, isn't it?)

Stick Software products are localized to different languages on a volunteer basis. You will get your name in the "about" box of the app you localized, you'll get a free registration of the app, and if you like, your name will be posted on our Localizer Hall of Fame. We make almost no money here ourselves, so we can't afford to pay you — sorry.

A little preparatory work may be required before an application can be properly localized, so you should contact us first if you'd like to localize one of our products. Another reason to contact us before doing any work localizing the currently distributed build of an app is that we may have a new version of it in the pipeline. We'll give a little more information here so you know what you're signing up for, though.

To do localization work for us, you need to know how to read English fairly well, and you should be completely fluent in the target language, including computer-specific jargon and usage — it's no help to anybody to end up with localizations that are gibberish. That's why this file does not itself need to be localized: if you're interested in doing localization work for us, this file had better make sense to you as is. :->

You also need to know how to use Interface Builder. There should be documentation for IB, as well as tutorials in using it, on your hard drive if you have installed the developer tools CD for OS X (which you will need to install if you haven't already done so). If you're a developer and have used GUI interface construction tools before, it's quite intuitive; if not, you'll probably need to do some studying. We can try to help you if you have problems with IB, but please, read the documentation and go through the examples first; they will teach you how to use IB better than we ever could. Some tips for how to do localization well can be found here.

Finally, you also need to thoroughly understand the product you're localizing. We're willing to try to help you with that if necessary, but please use every feature in the app and understand how the whole app works before attempting a translation. Otherwise, any misconceptions you may have about the app may end up in the text you write.

Localizations for major living languages are generally welcome. It takes a significant amount of effort to support multiple localizations on our end, though — every time we move a control by a pixel, we have to go move it in every localized nib. Communicating with localizers and integrating their work is also time-consuming. Finally, each localization added makes the application's size larger for all users. For these reasons, we are only interested in those localizations for which Apple ships OS X. We're following Apple's lead; if they've decided it's worthwhile to localize to a given language, we will take their word for it. For speakers of other languages, we apologize; but there are thousands of living languages in the world, and about 200 languages with more than a million native speakers. While we sympathize with the plight of those who are native speakers of less popular languages, we can't support them all.

Stick Software can not use inadequate, partial or sloppy work. If you know anything about Stick Software, you know we're perfectionists, and we run a tight ship here. We'd like every localization of our apps to look as good as the English ones do. If you're a perfectionist yearning to turn out a beautiful, polished translation free of misspellings and errors, we would love the help. If we get complaints about the quality of your translation, though, we will have to pull it and find someone else.

If you're still interested in doing localization work for us after all those warnings, caveats and disclaimers, contact us at our support email address. Thanks!

- Ben Haller