I’m a Picasa fan. Great image organizer, snappy photo editing. Lately, I downloaded a new version and it got Thai interface. All the menus and buttons are in Thai instead of English.
Most of the time, a Thai language interface is very confusing and not very useful. I can start the list from Microsoft Windows XP’s down to Thai breeded softwares. (A lot of what’s in the TV’s and electronic appliances just look really bad.) Bad use of language and just pain in the ass to use. I can understand the limitations of most translators that they may not have much awareness in terms of usability. But this time in Picasa, Google took it to the next level.
In place of the buttons and everywhere “I’m Feeling Lucky,” they use Thai phrase “ดีใจจัง ค้นแล้วเจอเลย” which in English means “I’m so happy I search and got the results.” Well, the button is supposed to automatically enhance/edit the photo for me. Nothing to do with search here.
Despite the excessive “I’m so happy” part (I don’t think users look for happiness here.. they just want to search and got a result right away) this phrase “I’m so happy I search and got the results” does not represent the functionality of this button in Picasa at all. It’s OK if use in Google search (although, still quite awkward and sounds really stupid). But to use in Picasa for automatic photo enhancing, is just embarrassment for Google.
I wonder who Google hires for Thai language extension/ interface translation. Is he/she/it a human at all? Could it be the computer that does all this work for Google all along?
Thailicious 