Here’s another one that gave me pause. From what I read it’s not US-specific. But it’s incomprehensible to anyone who began studying English after the ripe old age of 4.
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聞 … that kanji always reminded me of Princess Leia’s hair buns. I had expected that to be the mnemonic.
Referencing an almost 50 year old American movie probably doesn’t help the situation.
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That’s when you whip out YouTube, put “Hot Buns Song” into the search bar and give it a listen to get a grasp of the mnemonic.
I don’t know about austrians, but there are two kinds of germans:
a) can speak English
b) can’t speak English and don’t want to consume even a single movie or video game that’s not dubbed in german.
a) can use WK just fine, b) have no interest to (and personally, I think it’d be somewhat insane for a european to study Japanese before learning English, especially given that a whole lot of valuable resources are Japanese - English, not just WK)
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Lol, can’t believe people are still replying 
Yeah, you’re right. It would still be a nice thing to add, but I understand that this isn’t possible right now 
This is an English-centric way of looking at things. You can be curious about Japanese culture even if you haven’t mastered English yet and even if you’re not that curious about American culture. I started studying languages as a teenager before my English was fluent enough to know such words as “rack”, “ladle” or “hoe”. Besides, both Japan and Germany are known (at least in my mind) for highschool student exchange programs, so I bet many German students would like to communicate with their Japanese friends.
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It’s a “the whole world speaks english”-centric way of looking at things.
German high school students speak english.
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Please read this really fast without taking a breath…
So I guess every language learning site located in any country has to learn every language of every other country so they can teach the language being learned so that there will be no complaints about not being able to understand because they are using language X and the learner is using their native language Y.
Ah! The Internet…
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For what it’s worth, I was previously at a software company where we did localize in multiple languages. I want to say there were around 10 that we officially supported and prioritized, with another dozen or so that were pretty bare-bones. So I thought I’d share my experience in case it helps contextualize things for anyone else as it does for me.
First, I’m really passionate about localization and accessibility in general, of which there’s a lot of overlap, both technically and philosophically. I wish that everyone had equal access to tools and knowledge, as a practical matter and intellectually. But of course, “If wishes were horses we’d all be eating steak”, or something. 
Anyway, I ended up coordinating localization for a while. It was very much a “best-effort” sort of thing as it was no one’s full time job, and I and everyone had various other responsibilities that took up most of our time, but even then it was a lot of work, and I learned a lot as a result.
Half-kidding, but I sort of ended up hating releases with new copy (especially marketing stuff: so dang wordy, in the fluffy, colloquial sort of way that is super time consuming and problematic to localize), because there was never really enough time so it was always a crunch. And I wasn’t even the one doing the localization in most cases, but rather making sure it all got done in a reasonable time frame: coordinating with localizers for each supported language, maintaining glossary for consistency, reviewing submissions, asking for revisions if needed, and then approving for it to be merged for inclusion in the update. For example, menu/command/button labels, descriptive text, etc.
Though I don’t have a sense of just how many strings it was anymore, it was a lot. But WaniKani appears to be an order of magnitude more text that would not only need to be translated into multiple languages, but also properly localized in ways that make sense to native speakers of the target languages and hopefully be memorable (funny, entertaining, clever stuff), along with the various relationships between items – additional challenges that either we didn’t face or only to a limited extent.
Anyway, even back when the company was much smaller I am pretty sure the staff outnumbered Tofugu, and even then it grew substantially over time to be many times larger now…and was still not enough for what was needed. So just imagining WaniKani localization fills me with both excitement and terror. 
I truly hope that it somehow happens someday though! It seems like it would be an epic undertaking that could open new possibilities for both Tofugu and WaniKani users. 
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Yes, there is a LOT more to it than just “slap the translations in”. Since moving to Japan all of the applications I have done active development on have had to be multi-lingual (Japanese and English) and it adds considerably to the development load and overhead, not just upfront, but all the way through the life cycle and all maintenance. For all the reason you mentioned.
One point that I think you did not mention is the impact on layout. The text in different languages can be quite different in length and UI design and layouts have to account for this. This point is particularly problematic when an application that was not designed to be in both languages is being localized after the fact. So many times I have had arguments with management regarding this point.
Me: “We know we will want or need to localize this for other regions in a year or 2 so we need to design that in now (i18n).”
Management: “If we strip out those considerations in the project plans we can cut X weeks off development and get this out the door sooner. We will worry about localizing in 2 years when we need it”.
Me: “It will end up costing us more in the long run and create a design nightmare at that time”.
Management; “Not buying that, it is just some translation, how hard can it be. We will just hire a student to do it. You developers always want to over-design everything”.
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@mgrice : 
Ah, so true!
The text in different languages can be quite different in length and UI design and layouts have to account for this.
I had forgotten that one! Mercifully, we were not very space-constrained and could use dynamic type to allow all of the text to fit, but…did occasionally get complaints from users — especially Germans: some of those words are just so long that the text ended up being shrunk down to accommodate, sometimes comically so. Fun problems to solve, though time was the enemy.
P.S: Poinko I love you! 🩵
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Or you get very creative with finding alternate ways to phrase it or coming up with your own abbreviations.
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Yeah, but I definitely can’t do that in German. And the translators complained, “But this is how you say it in German!” when asked to make it shorter. Chalk it up to cultural differences I guess.
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It is the same here. In fact, having worked in Germany some years ago with some big clients we had there, the business culture is actually quite similar in many respects. However, sometimes there is no choice.
Well there is always a choice and we do present it to the client.
Option A: Dig into your 20 year old, multi-million LOC code base and make design and implementation changes (not just the label on that form/screen, but all the validators/handlers, DB schema and triggers, test cases, test scripts, automated tests, etc…) with all the inherent ripple effect risks and with the overhead of following all compliance processes and procedures and regulations (CMMI/SixSigma/ISO-XXXX/ENYYYY/etc…) and required validation, testing and full regression testing.
Option B: Learn to like the less than perfect word/phrasing/abbreviation.
Option B we can proceed with now. Option A will require us to take a few days to update the project plans, schedule and quotation (all of which will get bigger).
So far, we have always had only Option B takers. Although there are scenarios that would mandate option A. I work mostly with legacy mission critical projects and there would be cases were very specific and completely unambiguous wording must be used. Things like a button for “Eject” or “Launch” (or “Self Destruct Sequence” - but we all know that one is usually “Computer, this is Captain James Kirk of the USS Enterprise. Begin 30 second countdown. Code zero-zero-zero-destruct-zero.” ).
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