In the fifth semester, I took a course about interaction systems. The subject was about user interfaces and about the interaction between humans and computers in general.

The course had one major project in place of a final test. There were several types of projects which are randomly assigned to the students; four systems-building project and one research project. I got the research project.

The research was to experiment on the translation of popular application software. A program was to be selected and the researches build a look-alike program but the user interface translated into Indonesia. When a user selects a command of the program, a question appeared asking the user what the command was supposed to do. The program are then tested to non-advanced computer users.

I chose to experiment on the Indonesian translation of a web browser. I selected Microsoft Internet Explorer 2.0. The reason was that Internet Explorer is currently the most popular browser. Version 2.0 is a simpler evolution of the software with minimal, but still usable browsing functions. This facilitates my efforts in cloning it.

This is a screen shot of Microsoft Internet Explorer 2.0

While this is the clone program I used in the exeriment, Penjelajah Internet

The result of the experiment is that simple translations should provide adequate. But a standard translation of terms would be advantageous. You can download the program here (1.38MB); the paper is also available here (PDF) .