Cat’s cradle

Just a wee update – something to bear in mind for your string table.
For those unsure what a string table is, essentially it's an excel spreadsheet file that contains all the text strings used in your game in all languages. The game then accesses this in real-time as required – pulling out the strings it needs to display on screen.
Now for us English-speaking devs it's tempting to re-use the same text for different contexts, after all it's the same word/phrase in English. But unfortunately for us, English is one of the laziest/most flexible languages that exists. So while we can use exactly the same word in different places and the meaning can be intimated from the surrounding words or screen layout, in many foreign languages this isn't the case.
In my QA experience this is one of the most common and time-consuming issues discovered during language testing (along with shortening over-long strings). A case in point is the current title I'm working on:
In English in this title there are three places in the front end where the word “Completed” is used:
1) Preceded by a “tick” icon to denote that a game area has been finished
2) Followed by a colon and then a percentage figure to denote how much of an area has been finished
3) Followed by a variable that denotes how many minigames were played in a game session
In the string table there is only one entry for the text “Completed”, and this one line has been used for all three occurrences above.
However in locations 1) and 2) the single line translation does not make sense in context, particularly in Italian and Spanish. The solution was to add a new line to the string table with a different translation for these two locations.
Now in the grand scheme of things, not a huge issue as it was picked up during the pre-arranged language testing phase anyway. However it's worth bearing in mind that while English is flexible enough to be abused in such a way, other languages cannot be assumed to be.
The lesson: always use a separate line for each individual piece of text in the game, even if in English it appears to be the same context. You'll probably get away with screen titles/discreet names, but for everything else best be safe.
Yes, text translations are paid for by the line, but language testers are paid for by the hour and are particularly expensive – so you'll be saving yourself money in the long term.