Falsehoods programmers believe about languages (localization)

This is what we have to put up with in the software localisation industry. Sentences in all languages can be templated as easily as in English: {user} is in {location} etc. Words that are short in English are short in other languages too. For any text in any language, its translation into any other language is approximately as long as the original. For every lower-case character, there is exactly one (language-independent) upper-case character, and vice versa. The lower-case/upper-case distinction exists in all languages. All languages have words for exactly the same things as English. Every expression in English, however vague and out-of-context, always has exactly one translation in every other language. All languages follow the subject-verb-object word order. When words are to be converted into Title Case, it is always the first character of the word that needs to be capitalized, in all languages. Every language has words for yes and no. In each language, the words for ye ... Read full article.