Irish Rail have installed automated ticket machines throughout the network. The interface can be displayed in multiple languages.

One day, while sheltering from the rain at the station, I decided to look at the translated interface. Early in my career I worked in localisation and we checked the translated software displayed and worked correctly when translated.

I checked the German translation to see if all the words fit (because German words are frequently longer than English) and it looked good. French was fine too, but then I noticed something small – the Buy button was not translated! Ouch.

It is surprising that this was noticed (and fixed) during product development.