> If devs follow certain simple rules while writing UI text, it would make a tremendous difference for translation quality

As a UI Developer that has accidentally focused my whole career in building (complex) forms, I can tell you there is a night and day difference from when I worked alongside User Assistance professionals vs when UX designers had to come up with the texts. These “User Assistance professionals” were usually English/Language-majored that would exclusively take care of how to properly write the texts on the screen for the users. From help texts to button labels, to release notes and RCA, and especially taking care of how to write texts in English so the app would be easily translatable, they would own all. The apps that had that sort of handholding with the devs were extremely easier to use and input data to, even when the UX itself was subpar.

I used to think it was standard to have English-focused professionals helping UI teams to deliver easy to understand products, only to find out that that company was kinda odd in that regard, and having UX or even product people coming up with labels is quite common. I do miss being able to fire an email when I need a quick text reviewed to be sure that a button is well labeled for the user and translation.

I was thinking about this exact kind of issue yesterday, while watching an interview with Jeremy Corbyn, a British politician who has formed a new party that is, provisionally, called "Your Party". The back-and-forth with the interviewer just highlighted how bad an idea this is, with one of them referring to "your party" and the other one also referring to "your party". In some contexts, it's absolutely fine. In others, it's a complete mockery.

The Simpsons always has at least one reference suitable to be shoehorned into a topic. But that one is pretty much a perfect bullseye.

I’ve had this problem at times and it feels like one of those cases where a designer responsible for consistency is helpful. I end up oscillating between first and second person.

I don't see what would be so awkward about saying "Go to My Cases" even if it was spoken over the phone. The user is already looking at a screen that contains a menu that says "My Cases". You are reading out the name of that menu. That's enough context for most people IRL.

If you are genuinely worried that the user might try to look up your cases instead of their own, you can just add a few words to clarify: "Click the menu that says My Cases."

When spoken it helps to tell the user "my cases" in a monotonic voice (and/or slightly lower tone), which hints that is just a verbatim label (the reason this works is because it mimics how a lot of people sound when reading aloud).

> This gets extra fun when you have a product which is actually named "My Card" (which, of course, is a bad idea to begin with, but...). Is it "Your My Card" or "My My Card"?

Japanese use of "my" as a loanword creates a lot of these. Please park your my car in our my car parking lot.

It's a problem in Spanish too. You'll sometimes see buttons with the infinitive and others with the 2nd person command form.

I recently saw a major company's app using both in the same dialog. It's madness.

We have the same thing in Quebec. It pairs with the use of "on" to imply that you and everybody else is doing the thing: "ce vendredi, on vote bleu". It's a sort of mild suggestion.

Heh, Malaysia's two-letter country code is "MY". Guess what the national identity card is called?

Well myspace didn't have any issues, did it ?

90% of all important work is banal. That's kind of the thing.

I'm sure a lot of engineering hours were spent on getting the door handle on your car to the exact safety/cost/functionality requirements, and at the end of the day, it's a door handle. Replace "door handle" with 99% of hardware and software that you ever see, and the same thing still applies. And yet, imagine using a car without a door handle.

Most important work isn't sexy, it's banal stuff that's boring until you remove it and realize how important it is.

But what's wrong with calling that folder "Pictures" (or, even better, "pictures")? macOS calls it "Pictures".

For electronic communications with the Czech government, there's mojedatovaschranka.cz - "my data box". The first time I saw the url, I had to triple check it's not some kind of scam. It still weirds me out every time.

I see many English (UK) websites following your second example but none for the first. They need to account for low reading and comprehension skills among users which might explain this style, or it might even be to match search terms.

This reminds me a Russian localization of the "Search" bar on some version of Windows 10, which reads something like "Type the prompt to perform search". Also weirdly infantilizing, overly verbose and just plain weird. Had a couple overseas friends ask me a few times why the text on the search bar is so long haha

French fellow, 100%. It reads really unserious.

Even their product names follow this pattern, leading to long and childish app names: "Mon espace santé" (My health space), "Mon espace France Travail"

This kind of soft infantilization, especially coming from the government, has always been rubbing me the wrong way.