When testing the sample files for an article for the well known german computer magazine c’t, I noticed a small but confusing translation error in Excel 2010.

The function „Zoom to Selection“ is incorrectly translated to „Fenster einfrieren“ in German instead of „Zoommodus: Auswahl“ (like in Excel 2007). Unfortunately „Fenster einfrieren“ means „Freeze panes“ and this feature is located next to the incorrect button on the ribbon tab. However, when clicking on the incorrect translated button, the right function „Zoom to Selection“ is executed, as you can see on the two screenshots below for Excel 2007 and 2010 in German.

The head line for the help window is also incorrect in german, the help text is however correct.

Since I could not remember whether the error was already present in the beta of Excel 2010, I tested this in a virtual machine with the Beta installed. Interestingly, there, the designation of the functon is correct.

I can not say whether if it is in fact „only“ a translation error or if Excel 2010 programmatically calls a wrong language resource. And I have not tested if the bug also exists in other languages as I have no other languages installed. However, this would be interesting to find out.

This article has also been published on my other blog www.software.maninweb.de
and on the German Version of the Excel Ticker blog.