Re: [l10n-web] Reminder: Brand names remain unchanged

On 27/8/19 17:06, Tim Murray wrote:

 > The guidance offered by the Brand and Legal teams derives from an 
audit of
 > how most global brands treat their native-English names other languages,
 > which showed that the great majority of brands do not localize their
 > trademarked names.

I am not sure that is still the case. Find below examples from the top 
seven brands, according to Forbes[1]. Please note that this is JUST 
about declensions (localization is too broad a term in this case and 
transliteration belongs to another category):

Google:
https://www.google.com/?hl=fi
Serch and mail page. In the search page check the text under the 
buttons: "Googlen versiot" or try to start gmail to see: "Siirry Gmailiin".

Microsoft:
https://www.microsoft.com/fi-fi/
Main page. See at the top, right: "Kaikki Microsoftin"

Facebook:
https://pl-pl.facebook.com/privacy/explanation
Official page about privacy: "w ustawieniach Facebooka"

Apple:
https://www.apple.com/no/privacy/
Official page about privacy: "Apples produkter" (the header)

Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com.tr/
Main page. Notice "Benim Amazon'um" at the top.

Coca-Cola:
https://www.cocacola.fi/fi/legal/privacy-policy/
Official page about privacy. The text "Coca-Colan" appears many times, 
also "Coca-Colalle".

Samsung:
https://www.samsung.com/fi/members/
Just a page inside their site. They seem to have been able to mostly 
avoid declensions for titles. Still, when they have to write sentences 
you can find in the page: "luettavaa Samsungin maailmasta." As a side 
note, they recommend "Mozilla Firefoxilla".

All those official pages use declensions, which is probably not a 
surprise for speakers of those languages, they need those suffixes just 
as English needs prepositions. That's how they work.

Brand owners can obviously not get rid of declensions. They can ask to 
have a separator, to keep the brand a bit more isolated, but you will 
still have things like Firefox-en or Firefox'en (but that's cosmetic, 
speakers will still say Firefoxen).

Some of those sites allow for community driven translations, but I only 
choose the official ones.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/powerful-brands/list/#tab:rank