ScreenMatch: providing context to software translators by displaying screenshots

Geza Kovacs

Abstract: Translators often encounter ambiguous messages while translating software. To resolve ambiguity, the translator needs to understand the context in which the message appears. Currently, context is provided via textual descriptions, or not at all. This paper describes ScreenMatch, a system which provides translators with visual context for each translatable message. It does so by matching each message with a corresponding screenshot of the application. ScreenMatch consists of a tool to gather screenshots, an algorithm to match messages to screenshots, and an interface that presents translators with screenshots alongside messages. We evaluated the system by gathering screenshots for 3 applications, using the algorithm to match messages to screenshots, and comparing results to manual matches. We found that hard-to-reproduce error messages make it difficult to gather all the screenshots. The algorithm correctly matched messages to screenshots 80% of the time when a corresponding screenshot had been gathered.