Last November I wrote an article about localising OpenERP into Japanese, and in the time since I have put close to 100 hours into improving the accuracy of the translation.
People joined the translation team from December as well, and the modules likely to see most use in implementations here are now translated to a reasonable standard — good enough, I think, that showing them to a Japanese customer feels natural.
We link to it from this website, so do check how it has turned out on the demo instance (user / password: demo / demo). (Having written all that — as of posting, the demo is running a build from about three months ago, so it does not carry the latest translation. I aim to bring it up to date this week.)
Running a business on OpenERP, I keep an eye on how much attention the product draws, and on Google Trends, while search interest in other ERP products is flat or drifting downwards worldwide, OpenERP is climbing steadily. Narrow it by region and you can see that over the past year or two attention has risen across Asian countries — China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam (the growth in China in particular is extraordinary), while in Japan there is not so much as a ripple yet.
Whatever the reasons behind it, in a sense this shows a situation where companies abroad are actively taking up a good open-source product and sharpening their competitiveness, while companies in Japan carry on with expensive commercial packages.
We would like to throw a stone into that pond. Why does a product that has spread globally struggle to take hold in Japan? Part of it is the need for features that fit Japanese business practice, and part is a culture that puts weight on an implementation track record. But the product's foundation is good, so obstacles like these should clear on their own as more people take part.
We have worked on the basis that getting the Japanese in order is a necessary condition for encouraging people to join in. OpenERP's Japanese has now reached a level where there is little to complain about, and we will keep improving it. Partner or user, your participation is warmly welcome.
OpenERP Japanese localisation, and what we are aiming for