In the past, we have just handed off our code to a translation agency. Whats wrong with that?
Often, companies develop a first version of a program or system to just deal with English. When it comes time to produce a first international version, a common tactic is to just go through all the lines of code, and translate the literal strings. While this may work once, it is not a pattern that you want to follow. Not all literal strings get translated, so this process requires human judgment, and is time-consuming. Each new version is expensive, since people have to go through the same process of identifying the strings that need to be changed. In addition, since there are multiple versions of the source code, maintenance and support becomes expensive. Moreover, there a high risk that a translator may introduce bugs by mistakenly modifying code.
