> Companies entering Japan don't treat it with respect as a big market, but just as a "let's slap a bad translation on top and expect numbers as strong as in the USA", which is an issue I've seen first hand multiple times as well. For very similar cultures this might work, but for vastly different ones like USA vs Japan you'll need to do i18n besides just translation.
While I can’t speak for software going into Japan, I can absolutely believe it having seen this exact thing in reverse for a game coming out of Japan. You could give yourself a banner with a customisable name, but there was only room for one character on that banner. Great if your language has “狐”, not so much if 20% of your users pick “E” and another 10% pick “T”.
Even with much smaller cultural divides, I’ve faced “Knopf” being incorrect placed on a German naughty words filter because someone literally translated “knob” without asking a native speaker. (And you might be surprised how often IRL Germans ask me, in English, if I drove the train to work, though I do also appreciate that in reverse I probably sound like Crabtree: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilhJvFngWcY)
While I can’t speak for software going into Japan, I can absolutely believe it having seen this exact thing in reverse for a game coming out of Japan. You could give yourself a banner with a customisable name, but there was only room for one character on that banner. Great if your language has “狐”, not so much if 20% of your users pick “E” and another 10% pick “T”.
Even with much smaller cultural divides, I’ve faced “Knopf” being incorrect placed on a German naughty words filter because someone literally translated “knob” without asking a native speaker. (And you might be surprised how often IRL Germans ask me, in English, if I drove the train to work, though I do also appreciate that in reverse I probably sound like Crabtree: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilhJvFngWcY)