Product team meeting minutes example with Bash: Localization meeting
For this example we've taken a real product team meeting and turned it into meeting minutes with the dedicated template.
Meeting minutes example (Generated with Bash)
Attendees
Agenda Items
Discussing the localization of the ROC app
Identification of languages and grammatical gender challenges
Strategies for translation and gender usage in UI text
Comparison with other apps for best localization practices
User preferences for language settings
Summary
Discussion focused on the importance of localizing the ROC app for non-English-speaking users, particularly in India, Spanish-speaking countries, France, and Poland. The conversation touched upon avoiding right-to-left languages initially due to UX complications and potential grammatical gender issues in Slavic languages when translating activity updates. There was a debate on the feasibility and risks of asking users for grammatical gender information, with suggestions to observe how other apps overcome similar challenges. The dialogue concluded with the decision to prioritize user language preferences, consider grammar implications less critically for users fluent in English, and look into minimally invasive localization approaches.
Action items
David to finalize localization proposal and present a strategy, avoiding right-to-left languages initially.
Marta to investigate how other apps handle localization regarding grammatical gender issues, particularly in Polish and Spanish, and report findings for inspiration.
All participants to continue identifying languages for the app and consider UX implications of gendered grammar.
Technical team to explore localization implementation allowing users to select and retain their preferred language settings.
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Transcript of the product team meeting (Generated with Bash)
Correct. So the main purpose of this meeting is to talk a bit more about localization. David has spent some time looking into different ways to get localization done for ROC. So he has a proposal that he can walk everybody through. The goal is to get feedback and then figure out how we want to take on this project. From a user feedback perspective, a lot of users are asking for different languages. We still have a decent amount of users in English-speaking languages, but we also have a lot of users from India, from Spanish-speaking countries, from France, etc. So, from Poland, for sure. So localization is important. So it's one of the projects that David will take on. First question, what languages are we expecting to add in the first place? Those you mentioned? We still need to take a look at the actual languages and the countries that people are from. In general, I would stay away from right-to-left languages for now, because that requires, I think, also a lot of UX changes. But other than that, yeah, still DBD. One point I mentioned earlier is not a matter for, for example, Spanish, not sure about Indian, so we are missing data about grammatical gender of our users. And we kind of use it a lot if we switch from English to any language that uses grammatical gender in phrases like Marta has updated something. So we need to request this information from users. Otherwise, it would sound extremely strange. But then, so we would actually ask them for gender, so male, female, or? For grammatical gender. I mean, for example, in Slavic languages, Marta has updated something, it depends on the grammatical gender of Marta, which is male or female. Yeah, but I think that this is a risky thing to do. Yeah, I agree. I think we should... And how would you translate it in Polish? Zaktualizowal... Zaktualizowane przez Martę. Zaktualizowane przez Martę. Um... Okay, then you need to actually... In a passive voice. Yeah, zaktualizowane przez Martę. So you can't... How is it called? So you can't change the... Yeah, I know. The declination of the name would be wrong, but... It's easier to just get gender information and... change it instead of basically changing the name. Aren't you just translating the static text that are available in the app or website itself, and not the dynamic text? Like Marta did something that's not in the UI, right? You're only translating the UI text, right? So... Sorry, I missed the point and a half of what sounds like you were breaking. Okay, so we are only going to translate the actual UI, right? UI text, right? We are not going to translate the user content, right? So... Yes, yes, yes, of course. But depending on the language, sometimes in English something doesn't have to be gender-related. And in Polish, for example, it has a different grammar for different genders. So in Spanish, for example, if you add an adjective to a noun, the adjective has to follow the grammatical gender of the noun. And in Slavic languages, it's even worse. Like a verb in past voice has to follow the grammatical gender of a noun. So you can't translate Marta has updated a label without knowing whether Marta is grammatically male or grammatically female. Sorry, can I say something? I think that apps in Polish that I have seen would go around this by doing something like writing label updated space, updater Marta, something like that. Because otherwise it wouldn't make sense at all. You would need to make user type declination, for instance, which is in Polish and in Romance language as well. So five cases additionally. No, but we actually we are avoiding this by using the active voice that Marta is nominative case, updated something and not updated by Marta, which would cause this translation issues. How often we can do it by name? So can we try to understand the gender by name? It's extremely, let's say, so it might cause more issues than just asking the user. Because there are multiple names that are used in both genders, for example, in Slavic languages. And you better ask directly than making some assumptions and then like missing those assumptions. It's always possible to write something like Marta and go on with this. Just if you want to make it more native, then you should ask for this. Actually, that one sounds the most reasonable for me. What you just said, Gorilla. So, yeah, if you don't want to ask for grammatical gender anyhow, then we would go this way just probably. Yeah, so I think it's a bit like I'd rather not ask for like a grammatical gender because it just like complicates things and it can get messy. So what I would suggest we do here is, Marta, maybe you can look at like a couple of other apps. I think Polish is probably a good language to start with, like Spanish, like definitely has those issues or like those challenges as well. See how other apps localize this and see if there's anything we can use for inspiration there. Okay, so I have another question follow up to that. Because I just realized I don't have any one single app in Polish. I will, of course, to just test it, but I'm not doing that. So just to be sure, this localization, it will be not enforced. So I still can have the interface in English, right? Yeah, like it should be like a user preference. Okay. Can't tell you how this works in CyWord Thunderbird. Thunderbird is email client. It just ignores those things. It's only translated individual words and it doesn't care about grammar. And to be honest, I never noticed it before like today that it is so. That would suck big time when it comes, for example, to emails we generate. We put some complex sentences into it. So it has to be translated in whole, like this stuff. Also, as I mentioned once, Skype localization in Ukrainian uses the same verb for exit and log out. Like you have the same word as to menu items for different purposes. Again, it's probably something that should be considered a big anti-pattern in localization. So I believe they did. There is one anti-pattern with asking for gender these days. If you get hired by a company, say what Google, and you're on board, they ask you for a gender. And there is like 30 gender pronouns to choose from. And if we do just male, female, someone may get offended or something and start nagging us. It's really risky. Exactly. I mean, it's grammatical gender. It's not any other concept. We just should ask whether we should call you «зактуализовала» or «зактуализовал». And that's all. It's only for specific groups of languages. For example, for Polish. We even shouldn't ask it if your language is not supported this kind of, let's say, infection of words by nouns. Okay, but we can go on without this. As I suggested, we can just write something as two different endings. And this is what I understand still. One thing to add also. Sorry, please go on. No, I'm done. Okay, what's this feature is for? Actually, to answer this question first. In my opinion, it is for some limited number of users who can't really understand English UI because they don't know English even on A1 level. So, basically, does it matter that much to be top-notch Polish in terms of grammar, etc.? It gives us extra stars in the eyes of users that have some bones with their mother tongue. I would say if you are fluent in English and it doesn't matter to you which interface you're using, it won't matter whether the grammar is correct. But if you never learned basic English, probably you will be paying attention to whether we are referencing you in the right grammar.